Why the world’s best brands are the world’s best brands

Brand image is probably the most important factor in what makes a company successful. Get it right and you can develop an enterprise that will become a world beater and a top known name. The world’s best brands are an ever-changing chart but as I write, Apple Inc is today the best known brand in the world. As you might imagine it probably was not that way ten years ago or even five. But with the loss of CEO Steve Jobs, seemingly loved by all, the success of the iPhone, iPad and Apple Mac PC, it seems many of us have come to trust and like the brand.

A friendly kind of aggressive

Apple appeared to be aggressive in its sales technique while coming over as friendly. The music store, iTunes aggressively did not allow its tunes to be played on any device apart from the iPod (eventually the iPhone and iPad later) but did we mind? Seemingly not.

Apple appears to brand its products differently from everyone else. It is unique in the way it rolls out new products. Take the iPhone for instance – it began a revolution in what was later to become known as the “smartphone.” Samsung, the North Korean giant, a big name brand on its own, released the Galaxy S smartphone which was so remarkably similar to the iPhone that Apple took Samsung to court (albeit unsuccessfully) for copying its innovation too closely.

Success = When a brand becomes verb

It would seem where Apple goes, others follow but what about the success of the brand Google: now a household name whenever someone wants to look something up on the internet you hear the phrase, “I’ll just Google that!” (not “I’ll just check that information on a leading search engine”). It reminds me decades ago when Hoover (the vacuum manufacturer) was as popular as a brand as ever that Brits would say (and still do), “I’m just going to Hoover the living room carpet”.

So what is it that the best brands do to promote themselves so successfully? How do they actually get us to “like” them? Let us know what you think.