The world's most powerful brands

Donna Ferguson reveals which brands are most effective at convincing us to buy their stuff.

Most of us like to believe we aren’t influenced by advertising. After all, it’s not like we all rush out to buy everything that’s advertised on TV the second we see it on our screens.

But the fact is, when forced to choose between a brand we’ve seen advertised and one we've never heard of before, most of us will go for the one we are more familiar with. And when we are familiar with both, it’ll be the one we identify with the most.

This is the case even when the cheaper, less well-known brand are actually better products, as we found recently when we blind taste-tested some of our best-known food brands in The easiest way to slash your food bill.

Whether we like to acknowledge it or not, brands have a huge influence on the choices we make and the way we spend our money – something that most of us vastly underestimate.

Brands which make you do stuff

So which brands influence – or rather, manipulate – us the the most? A marketing company called Interbrand thinks it knows the answer. It’s ranked of the top 100 brands in the entire world by three key attributes: the financial performance of the branded products or services, the role of the brand in the purchase decision process and the strength of the brand to continue to secure earnings for the company.

As well as the brands that have come top this year, it’s interesting to note which ones have not: following the Gulf oil spill, BP, for example, failed to make it into the ranking this time, while Toyota (#11) fell out of the top 10 after recalling more than 7 million vehicles. Banking brands such as Citi (#40) and UBS (#86) also lost double-digits in brand value, while others like Santander (#68), Barclays (#74) and Credit Suisse (#80) made their debut on the list for the first time.

The fastest growing brand was Apple (#17), which – unsurprisingly - increased its brand value by 37%, beating Google’s 36% rise to fourth place. Less predictably, however, luxury brands like Cartier (#77), Armani (#95), Louise Vuitton, (#16) , Gucci (#76) and Hermes (#69), all saw their brand values rise despite the economic downturn. And according to the survey, Ford (#50) offered other brands the best example of how to use social media, based on evidence gathered from Youtube, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook.

And the winners are....

So, which brands made it into the top 10?

Sadly there were no British brands in there. But then, as lovemoney.com revealed in 10 great British brands sold off to foreigners, very few of our most loved brands are British-owned nowadays anyway.

As you might expect, technology brands dominated, with Hewlett Packard coming 10th,  Intel coming 7th and Google in 4th place muscling in on Microsoft at number three and IBM at number two.

Coca-Cola maintained its rank at number one for the 11th year in a row, and McDonald’s also clung on to number 6.

GE continued its two-year decline in brand value, dropping from 4th place to 5th, while Nokia fell the furthest – from 5th place to 8th –  clearly suffering from the growth of Apple.

Disney, meanwhile, rose one place from 10th place to 9th, after successfully cultivating a strong social media presence and offering discounts on its theme park admissions during the downturn.

All the brands in the top 10 were valued at more than $28m (£17m), with the top three clocking up more than $194m (£123m) between them.

You can find the full list of the top 100 brands and find out more detail about why the brands shifted their positions on interbrand.co.uk, but for now, here’s a list of the top 10:

Top 10 global brands

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