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100 Best Global Brands September 17, 2009, 5:00PM EST

Turmoil in the Rankings

As consumers rethink their priorities, companies struggle to revamp their marketing. Here's who's coming out ahead

By Burt Helm

Last fall, as the recession deepened, Microsoft's (MSFT) chief marketer, Mich Mathews, got an e-mail from her team in Australia. Believing that the upbeat advertising copy supplied by headquarters was unsuited to the times, the Australians informed her they had junked it and made their own ads. Mathews recalls the Australian campaign as slapdash and off-brand; it used the glass half-empty vs. half-full metaphor to describe how business customers could save money by using Microsoft products. But Mathews had to acknowledge that the campaign made more sense in the current environment. "It was 'Hello, Mich! We need to regroup dramatically,'" she says. The wake-up call from Down Under sent the Microsoft team back to the whiteboard. Within 21 days, headquarters had cooked up a new campaign focused on value.

The recession has presented brand stewards with the most severe test of their careers. "This is a Darwinian recession. Only the strongest will survive," says Jez Frampton, CEO of consultancy Interbrand, which computed the value of each brand in our ninth annual ranking of the Best Global Brands. Companies have had to adjust rapidly as consumers reexamine their purchases and rethink brand loyalties. Marketing executives are balancing the temptation to chase short-term gains with discounts and promotions against the risk of cheapening their brands over the long haul. Meanwhile, most have considerably smaller budgets with which to reach their customers.

Some brands have prospered amid the hard times—or at least held their own. You can read about five of them—Amazon (AMZN), Pepsi, Audi (VLKAY), Panasonic (PC), and Campbell's (CPB)—starting on page 51.

If the ranking has one theme, it is how the mighty have fallen. While Coca-Cola (KO) kept the No. 1 spot, and Google (GOOG), Amazon, and Zara continued their strong growth, UBS (UBS) fell an astounding 31 places, to No. 72, losing 50% of its brand value. Seven brands fell right off the list. Among the biggest: Merrill Lynch, which ranked No. 34 last year, and AIG (AIG), previously No. 54, after both required emergency assistance from the U.S. government. ING (ING), ranked No. 86 last year, also fell off the list after huge subprime losses. The other casualties placed near the bottom of last year's ranking and watched their prospects dim amid the recession: Hennessy (LVMUY), Marriott (MAR), Motorola (MOT), and FedEx (FDX).

Not surprisingly, big banks fared the worst. Several tried to win back consumers' goodwill—running ads in national newspapers defending their solvency and fiscal responsibility. But brand experts found their outreach unpersuasive. "Public-relations efforts like this are a Band-Aid," says Nancy F. Koehn, who teaches business administration at Harvard Business School. "

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