You know you have a successful brand when your market share dominates the category. Another good indicator of success is when your brand’s name becomes a verb. A third way to demonstrate brand prowess is to top the BrandZ Most Valuable Global Brands ranking three years in a row. Now Google can say, “Been there, done that,” to all three.

The review published in AdAge today reveals that Google continues its reign as the world’s most valuable brand. No mean feat for a company that makes its money selling eyeballs rather than a tangible product or service.

As I reviewed in last week’s post, Google derives its brand value through the emotional connection that users have with the brand. This connection keeps them coming back to use Google time after time. In BrandZ terminology, a high proportion of people around the world are “Bonded” to Google. Google monetizes that devotion by selling access to its users to advertisers.

The amazing thing is that Google’s growth has been fueled mostly by one product. As Joe Weisenthal states in his blog on The Business Insider, “Ten years into its existence…Google is still basically a one-product company: Adwords. (AdSense is very successful, but far less profitable).  From a revenue perspective, almost everything else has been a flop.”

That may be true with regard to revenue, but applications like Google Earth, Maps, Picassa and Translate are a regular part of my digital life. As I have suggested in previous posts, Google’s record of relentless innovation on behalf of its users has helped to cement their loyalty to the brand.

Google’s growth may have slowed in the first quarter of this year but there is little doubt that it will recover. Despite the slowdown, Google beat many analyst expectations by posting a 9 percent rise in net profits for the first quarter of the year. Commenting on his company’s performance, chief executive Eric Schmidt stated, “These results underline both the resilience of our business model and the ongoing potential of the web as users and advertisers shift online.” (Click here to read the article on MarketingWeek UK.)

Google is well positioned simply by dint of being online, but I would suggest that Eric has forgotten a key component of the company’s success. It’s not all about growth prospects and business models. As the BrandZ Top 100 Global Brands ranking confirms, a strong brand can be take a strong business and make it even more valuable.

The full results of the BrandZ ranking will be published by The Financial Times on Wednesday. Meanwhile, please share your thoughts on Google’s success. Do you think that success will last? Will Google automatically benefit from new people coming online or will other brands like Twitter and Baidu start to erode its current advantage?

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 8:45 am and is filed under Brands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Print this Page