The world's top brand uses word of mouth

Umair Haque, a writer for the online Harvard Business Review, recently wrote an article, the shrinking advantage of brands, that may surprise you. When you think of the most powerful brands in the world, Coca-Cola, GE, IBM, and Microsoft all come to mind. And they should- they have all spent decades of hard work building their brands while investing in billions of dollars in advertising. But what may surprise you is that Google is the worlds number one brand right now according to the gold standard of brand valuation, Millward Brown’s Brandz report. Google spends next to nothing in advertising , something that the big boys over at Coke have a massive budget for. Haque attributes the success of Google to a shift in cheap interaction marketing rather than orthodox marketing techniques. Traditionally, brands were virtually impossible to interact with- being it too expensive. Marketers had to get their messages across using slogans and 30 second spots to promise an experience. Now, certain brands like Google, can utilize word of mouth and permission marketing so inexpensively and efficiently that it has pretty much replaced any form of traditional advertising. Instead of marketers pushing their product down consumer's throats, many companies are generating word of mouth- getting consumers to talk to eachother about the product, therefore leading to organic growth. Google has become the worlds number one brand in less than a decade and its all due to word of mouth.

The only problem I see with this shifting advantage to interaction and word of mouth is that not all brands can attempt it. Not all brands are so profoundly amazing that they generate intense word of mouth. Take shower curtains for example, or toilet paper. Not all brands can easily interact with the consumer before they purchase it. Does this mean an end to "poor" brands? Probably not, but it could. Check out the video all marketers are liars, by Seth Godin, to further investigate the word of mouth phenom. Its long but its worth it.