Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning pdf ebook

Table 6.1 
The global top ten brands

---

152
CHAPTER 6 UNDERSTANDING THE ORGANISATIONAL RESOURCE BASE
effort, and it is noticeable how many of the leading brands in the table have been able to 
retain their position, or close to, over many years. The presence of web/technology-based 
organisations on this list is noticeable, and perhaps unsurprising.
For companies where corporate identity is a liability or a non-existent asset, more 
emphasis is placed on building or acquiring individual brand names as assets. Beechams 
(now GlaxoSmithKline or GSK), for example, deliberately set out to acquire brands with a 
marketable reputation. The Bovril brand was originally purchased to ease the company’s 
launch into the stock cube market (Bovril being an established brand property in the similar 
meat extracts market). Companies with little customer-based corporate identity, such as 
RHM (acquired by Premier Foods), develop various brands into major assets. The Bisto 
brand, famous as the UK market leader in gravy making, has been used to good effect in a 
move into the soups and sauces market.
Branding operates at the level of the individual, too. For example, sportsmen and 
sportswomen have begun to take out patents on their names and nicknames, as they are 
used in merchandising and advertising. Famous footballers such as David Beckham, Alan 
Shearer, Paul Gascoigne and Ryan Giggs have all registered surnames, and in some cases 
nicknames (‘Gazza’, ‘Giggsy’), as brands. Partially facilitated by social media, individual 
branding has led to some very impressive financial outcomes for certain individuals. Tiger 
Woods (for those not into sport, he is a really famous golfer) has amassed a huge personal 
fortune, mainly through ‘off-the-golf-course’ sponsorship deals following impressive tour-
nament victories. For example, in 2011 Tiger Woods had an estimated income of around
$64 million, of which ‘only’ £2 million was from his tournament earnings; the rest was earned 
largely from endorsements of golf-related products (source Golf Digest, 2012). Clearly, Tiger’s 
undoubted ability on the golf course allowed him to leverage his personal brand and public 
profile to great effect (and gain) off the golf course also. Tiger is not alone, however, and those 
with far smaller celebrity media profiles (and hence weaker personal brands) generate signifi-
cant income from book launches, perfumes and a host of money-making satellite projects.
Of course, the overall power and worth of personal brands are closely linked to the 
performance and the behaviour of the individual concerned. Tiger Woods lost a number of 
sponsors (Accenture, AT&T, Buick and Gillette) following a spate of well-publicised prob-
lems in his personal life. However, Nike, Tiger’s main sponsor, did not abandon him, and 
their loyalty may well be rewarded handsomely. At the time of writing, Tiger Woods has 
just won The Masters golf tournament in the USA – one of only four ‘major’ tournaments 
that happen every year in golf, and his first major tournament win in over a decade. While 
past performance is no guarantee of future success, commentators suggest that the brand 
value accrued to Nike as a result of media exposure of their brand in the final round was 
around $22.5 million dollars! The longer-term impact on sales of other products endorsed 
by Woods could clearly be very significant.
Brands can be particularly powerful marketing assets for a number of reasons:
●