Facebook Attains 86% Growth as Global Top 100 Brands Increase by $2.9tn

By ‘Femi Ogunji

Interbrand, the world’s leading brand management consultancy reports the top 100 most valuable brands for 2014 at 12 percent growth overall with Facebook recording a whopping 86 percent growth valuation year on year at $14,349m standing 29^th position on the log. The United States technology company comes first on the log with a 21 percent appreciation, valued at $118,863m followed by Google, grown by 15 percent, valued at $107,439m. Coca-Cola, the world’s carbonated soft drink logs at the third position valued at $81,563m.

Although, IBM comes in at the fourth position with $72,244m, the computer company lost 8 percent of its value while Microsoft 3 percent growth now valued at $61,154m and General Electric 3 percent depreciation now logs in at 6^th position worth of $45,480m completes the American routing of the first six most valuable brand positions. The South Korean mobile phone makers, Samsung, Japanese automobile giant, Toyota, USA food chain, MacDonald and the German luxury auto maker, Mercedes-Benz completes the top ten of the 100 most valuable brands of 2014.

Besides the 86 percent monumental growth of Facebook brand in 2014, other high paced growth recorded during the year includes 45^th placed German automobile brand, Audi with 27 percent growth, fifteenth place positioned online bookseller, Amazon that grew by 25 percent. Volkswagen and Nissan, both logs in a phenomenal growth of 23 percent each, giving the automobile brands a good showing and positive indicator for 2015.

Some former heavyweights like Nokia, Nintendo and IBM, though remaining on the list, actually saw a dip in their brand value with Nokia being the worst hit, losing 44 percent brand value in just one year. The list also saw newcomers with Chinese upstart, Huawei being a prominent new entrant on the list. The cherry on the cake here is Facebook, market observers may be wondering how the Mark Zuckerberg led Facebook achieved the feat.

The various entities of which Facebook holds a controlling interest

One recalls that when Facebook launched 10 years ago, it indeed defined the social media space and has continued to live up to that mission “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected” and is currently building the groundwork to once again redefine human interaction. Its vision of being relevant to its users and the forward thinking of its management has earned it space as a top growing brand of 2014. Certainly the social media phenomenon today is more or less synonymous with Facebook. Despite notable competition, including Google Inc.’s own Google+, and the fact that even though Facebook’s user base growth has slowed down, innovations in advertisement format and delivery, and of course, its success in unlocking mobile revenue, have accelerated the company’s growth.

Facebook has also been continuously working to optimize its advertisement to make them more relevant for marketers. Currently, Facebook’s ad platform is driving higher engagement and able to command higher pricing. As a result, in the first quarter of 2014, the brand saw 82% growth in its ad revenue. While the brand’s previous approach was to develop things quickly, put them out to market, and “see what happens”, clearly learning as it goes, and working harder to make sure it is getting things right, fixing bugs faster, and building better experiences for its many users.

This attitude combined with an ethos that embraces both disruption and progress has helped Facebook to become one of the best companies to work for and is reflected in its acquisitions of WhatsApp, crucial in improving its instant messaging business globally.

Facebook has also acquired Oculus VR, the manufacturer of the virtual reality headset that has the potential to revolutionize Facebook. With technology becoming more immersive and the rise of wearable computers or ‘wearables’ as they are cutely called, (think Samsung’s Gear watch or Google Glass), Facebook has positioned itself as ready to move into that future space.