Apple is now the most valuable brand in the world. I’ve said it before in this solar blog, the reason why they will continue to grow both in brand and shareholder value is the basic principle which drives them….making each user’s experience with their products, websites, services, personnel, stores…a holistic one based on the single notion that the customer’s life matters.
As any company which is creating stakeholder value understands, it doesn’t stop at “earning a buck”. We see companies like Facebook which don’t earn money, having huge valuations both for their brands and their business. This is because of a belief that their business model will eventually turn a large profit for its shareholders, even if it doesn’t do that now. Considerations such as customer loyalty, which give a strong likelihood of revenue projections, are factored in.
Yet we also see profitable operations-focused companies, such as Dell, losing brand value. What gives? Well perhaps Dell’s brand has not the relevance it once had, in this ever changing world with “ipads” taking over a lot of portable computing market, and the interface between pad/phone/pod/tunes becoming so dominant and important in the consumer’s evaluation process.
The lesson is perhaps that relevancy can change with the wind if you don’t pay attention and that brand/shareholder value are built not only on future promise, yet on the customer’s link to your brand and their belief in it based on past delivery and execution. Add to this the “lovemark” factor of the world’s most valuable brands and you can see why they are worth so much.
It will be interesting to see which company will grab hold of brand value concepts in the EV and solar world and execute these in order to gain their consumer’s loyalty and adoration, and in turn translate that into future growth potential, which will in turn explode their share valuation accordingly.