On the way back from my road trip, I picked up the latest BusinessWeek magazine, which features a cover story on the Top 100 Global Brands. Seeing that the top brands haven't moved much since last year, I spent time looking at those that have gained and lost the most ground on the list. The big gainers were Google, Starbucks, eBay, Motorola and Hyundai. Starbucks is a favorite brand of mine (and I don't even drink coffee) because it hitches its wagon to the customer experience. Starbucks rarely advertises, although its signs on every corner of major cities do a pretty good job. But what you know about Starbucks comes from what you experience in its stores, either good or bad.
Seems mostly good - Starbucks was up 20 percent.
The big losers were Gap, Ford, Kodak, Heinz and Intel. Of those, I think Intel is the most interesting. Despite Apple beginning to use Intel chips for its latest Macs and what seems to be good industry feedback on its latest processors, the company faces strong competition from AMD (especially in the server market) and also has confused the marketplace with challenging processor names.
If you check out the article online, the slide show and data table are both nice features.
