How to be a Top 100 Brand

When most people think of a company rebranding themselves, they think of redesigning or revamping a logo, creating new products and package design. During this past week I came across a 2004 BussinessWeek article that showed me there were many more ways to reenergizing a pre-existing brand. The article listed the Top 100 Brands at the time in the world. The top 5 brands were the same as the previous year, #1 being Coca Cola for the past 2 years, but some of them had lost their strength and power over their competition due to poor management, competitors introducing new products and bad publicity. While some brands did use the traditional forms of branding I found that some brands made small changes with their pre-existing products and did increase in popularity. Some of the brands included Marlboro who reduced their prices to compensate for higher taxes; Citibank decided to expand globally and Gap used celebrity endorsements. However the brands that did lose and gain the highest percentages of notoriety were due to the introduction of new products and design concepts.