Microsoft Brand In Sharp Decline

Amy Bennett writes "A recent poll of about 12,000 US business decision-makers by market researcher CoreBrand found that Microsoft's brand power has taken a dive over the past four years. According to the study, Microsoft dropped from number 12 in the ranking of the most powerful US company brands in 2004 to number 59 last year. In 1996, the company ranked number 1 in brand power among 1,200 top companies in about 50 industries. The CEO of CoreBrand said: 'When you see something decline with increasing velocity, it's a concern.' To add some historical context, IBM suffered a much faster and more severe decline in brand power in the early 1990s and it took them 10 years to rebuild the brand's reputation."

Re:Wha?

[antikaos]

From TFA "CoreBrand measures brand power using four criteria. It first rates the familiarity of a company's brand. Once a company has a certain level of familiarity, they are ranked according to three "attributes of favorability": overall reputation, perception of management and investment potential..."

Re:So who is the current #1?

[Anonymous Coward]

Coca-cola. They advertise a lot.. Pepsi is 11. The pdf with the list is linked in TFA.

Re:So who is the current #1?

[phantomfive]

According to the PDF linked to in the article, the top eleven are:

1. Coca-Cola (same rank as last year)
2. Johnson & Johnson (same rank as last year)
3. Hershey Foods (up from number 8 last year)
4. Harley-Davidson (up from number 6 last year)
5. Hallmark Cards (same as last year)
6. Campbell Soup (up from 10 last year)
7. UPS (down from 4 last year)
8. FedEx (down from 7 last year)
9. Colgate-Palmolive (up from 12 last year)
10. Starbucks (up from 13 last year)
11. PepsiCo (down from 3 last year)

This list is measured from a telephone interview among business leaders. Their scores were weighted higher if they had more familiarity with the companies in question. They were rated based on the Brand's overall reputation, perception of management, and investment potential. Note that these are corporate brands, not consumer brands. Apple is not on the list, in case anyone was wondering.

Re:Wha?

[PPH]

The way it has been explained to me "brand power" is the value that consumers attach to a brand name in lieu of actually judging a product based on its attributes.

Apple has high brand value (for example) because people associated its name with a certain level of quality, ease of use, intuitive user interfaces, etc. Sure, ACME Computer Co could build a product every bit as good as Apple. You could put an ACME and an Apple laptop next to each other and, after extensive testing, come to the conclusion that the ACME was every bit as good as the Apple. But until the name ACME becomes as well known as Apple for anything other than contraptions [wikipedia.org] that it sells to Wile E. Coyote, it doesn't have the reputation, or brand power, that Apple does.

Re:popularity and peer pressure

[clickclickdrone]

in 2007 Apple were the number 5 laptop vendor pushing Lenovo (Thinkpad) off the number 5 spot. They're doing OK.

Re:What Microsoft has forgotten....

[trongey]

Apple wasn't included in the poll. Kinda hard to assign it a rank, eh?

Uh, check again http://www.corebrand.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=106&Itemid=134 [corebrand.com].
They just didn't rank high enough to get on the top 100 list. Apparently a quality product isn't really what gets you to the top.

Re:So who is the current #1?

[freemywrld]

To see a list of brands owned by Johnson & Johnson: http://www.jnj.com/product/brands/index.htm [jnj.com]

Chances are you have heard of at least some of these products (e.g. Tylenol, KY, Rolaids... the list is long).

Brandz Rankings of Most Powerful Brands

[riten]

The 2007 Brandz Rankings, based on survey conducted by Millward Brown, presents a different story http://www.brandz.com/z3_top_51.html [brandz.com] . Methodologies are different, but for the average person, which list makes more sense? Here's the top 10:

1. Google
2. GE (General Electric)
3. Microsoft
4. Coca Cola
5. China Mobile
6. Marlboro
7. Wal-Mart
8. Citi
9. IBM
10. Toyota

Re:Wha?

[fermion]

IMHO, brand power is the premium that consumer is willing to pay for the use of the brand. This premium is the result of real and perceived value. A common example is gas. Many people will pay more for Shell or Chevron rather than the minor or no name gas.

Another common example is the sharp loss brand for home products with the advent of the power of Walmart. Consumer seem much less willing to pay more for laundry detergent just because it is advertised on TV. Such brands are now must differentiate based on claims such as actual cost or functionality(specially formulated to keep colors brighter!).

I wonder if the conclusion is based on the unwillingness to pay the suggested retail price for MS products and the generic PC, and their relative willingness to pay the famed 20% markup on Macs.

Re:What?

[Hatta]

You jest, but there actually was a Mike Rowe Soft, which was shut down [theregister.co.uk] by Microsoft.

Re:Redmond weather alert

[dpilot]

Now peel the next layer...

Many of the domestic Hondas are made in Marietta, Ohio by American workers. Similarly for many of the other imports. American workers are capable of making good cars on American soil.

Gee, I wonder where else we can look for the reasons...

(Personal preference, I'd rather not look to the engineers. Nearly every engineer I know *wants* to do a superior job, but is handed (sometimes absurd) constraints.)

Re:So who is the current #1?

[couchslug]

More like "was atrocious". back in the Shovelhead days now decades gone. FWIW even those were so easy to work on that they very rarely went to scrap, unlike (check any cycle salvage if you doubt me!) most other brands.

Since the Evo engine in the 1980s, Harleys have been boringly reliable, and are easy to support with aftermarket parts. You can build a whole motorcycle from such if you wish. Going over 100K miles on an Evo isn't uncommon.

"A lot of people don't ride their harleys to the bike rallies: they drive their car and cart the harley in a trailer."

That applies to every brand as the riding population ages. Plenty of Gold Wings etc can be seen on trailers headed for Daytona etc, and they are sweet highway rides.

I've wrenched on all brands for years. Since I put a premium on being able to easily work on reliable bikes, I own a Harley and a BMW. Those are brands that not only work well out of the box, but you can continue running them for many years.