Ten brands that lost the most value

Once again, Coca-Cola was ranked the most valuable brand in the world, according to Interbrand, one of the nation's top global brands experts. Apple, to the surprise of none, was very close behind.

Considering the consumer electronics company's growth, it will easily eclipse the long-time number No. 1 by next year.

While some of the biggest brands — including Amazon.com (AMZN), Samsung and Oracle (ORCL) -– have grown their value by more than 20% since last year's report, others have fallen precipitously.

Goldman Sachs, still one of the world's most valuable financial brands, lost 16% of its brand's worth. BlackBerry lost nearly 40% of its brand's value. Based on the Interbrand report, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed Goldman, BlackBerry and eight other brands that lost the most value compared to last year.

Several industries have grown substantially in the past year. Auto companies, still recovering from the recession, saw major gains in their brand value since the last report. Nine of the 11 large European, Japanese and American automakers on 100 most valuable brands list grew in value last year, up a combined 12%.

Together, technology firms measured by Interbrand, led by Apple's stunning 129% brand value growth, have grown by nearly 27% to more than $320 billion in total value. However, the performance of brands within the technology sector has been much more mixed than the auto industry.

While Apple and Samsung are among the most improved brands compared to last year, the sector also has some that are the worst-performing, which is no coincidence. As Apple and Samsung have redefined the mobile phone market, brands like BlackBerry and Nokia are being left behind.

Brands are successful when they are able to redefine a market, Interbrand CEO, New York, Josh Feldman told 24/7 Wall St. He cites Apple, which took the mobile phone market and turned it into an ecosystem in which consumers buy games, listen to music and browse the Internet on a single device.

When comparing brands that are doing well to struggling brands, Feldman said, the improving brands have been able to predict what consumers want. "Strong brands anticipate needs and transform desires," Feldman said.

Some sectors are struggling across the board, arguably none more so than financial services. In Interbrand's 2008 report, the combined brand value of the financial services industry was more than $130 billion. As of the 2012, brand value had fallen to just over $91 billion.

Damage to banks is partially a result of negative press generated from the recession, but also in part because they are performing poorly as a business.

Feldman explained that a large part of Interbrand's valuation comes from the performance of the company, and that has affected the Citigroup, J.P Morgan and some of the other large banks.

"If you can't make money with a brand, it's not really valuable," Feldman said.

24/7 Wall St. reviewed Interbrand's Top 100 GlobalBrands 2012 report that covers July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2012. Included in the valuation, using 24/7 Wall St. research, are the brand's strength, the parent company's financial success and the extent to which the brand plays a role in the company's success.

These are the brands that lost the most value over the past year:

10. Dell, 9% decline

--Brand value: $7.6 billion (49th), lowest in 11 years
--Parent company: Dell (DELL)
--Year-over-year revenue change: -2.36%
--Industry: Technology

Dell's brand has consistently lost value the past four years as the company has moved away from PC sales toward IT services, a strategy Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) also attempted with limited success.

Although Dell remains one of the world's largest PC makers, this year's second-quarter PC shipments declined by 11.5% from a year before. The company also has struggled to create a viable smartphone, and it stopped selling the devices in the U.S. in March.

Despite recent problems, Dell's last annual report indicated that in fiscal 2012 "enterprise
solutions and services business, a bellwether for execution of [the company's] strategy, grew 6% to $18.6 billion, and was nearly 30% of revenue and almost half of gross margin dollars."

9. Thomson Reuters, an 11% decline

--Brand value: $8.4 billion (44th)
--Parent company: Thomson Reuters (TRI)
--Year-over-year revenue change: 1.5%
--Industry: Business services

While Thomson Reuters used to be the dominant player in the financial terminal market, competitor Bloomberg has gained market share in recent years and has become the terminal to have on Wall St.

Burton-Taylor International Consulting managing partner Douglas Taylor told Canadian Business in February that Bloomberg's market share has finally caught up with that of Thomson Reuters, with each holding about a third.

"It's perceived as the Mercedes product," Taylor said of the Bloomberg terminal. "If you have a Bloomberg, you have the ultimate terminal."

The struggle to fend off challenges from Bloomberg and others led the Thomson family, the company's controlling shareholders, to remove Tom Glocer as CEO in December.

But despite the company allowing the competition to gain on it, Interbrand notes that Thomson Reuters continues to lead its respective market in other key areas, such as legal research databases for law firms and the Checkpoint database for tax and accounting professionals.

8. Honda, an 11% decline (tied for 9th)

--Brand value: $17.3 billion (21st)
--Parent company: Honda Motor (HMC)
--Year-over-year revenue change: 4.6%
--Industry: Automotive

The brand valuation of the worldwide automotive industry has begun to recover after a major dip during the recession, rising from to more than $160 billion in 2012 from about $128 billion in 2010.

The total value of all top car brands Interbrand measures increased since the 2011 report, except for Honda and Kia. Honda's brand value in 2012 of $17.3 billion — which is $13 billion less than its Japanese rival Toyota Motor (NYSE:TM) brand — is the lowest since 2006.

Some events that impacted the company were beyond its control, including the Japanese earthquake, which affected its manufacturing, and floods in Thailand that hurt some suppliers. The automaker, though, is responsible to some of the damage to its brand. Honda has issued multiple major recalls in recent years, including one for more than 570,000 Honda-branded vehicles in early October.

7. MTV, 12% drop

--Brand value: $5.6 billion (67th)
--Parent company: Viacom (VIAB)
--Year-over-year revenue change: 9.7%
--Industry: Media

Does the 'M' really belong in MTV anymore? Interbrand notes that MTV continues to steer further away from its musical roots and experiment in low-cost content, leading to an "identity crisis."

The agency added, "MTV would do well to push the boundaries and recapture some of its lost edge — the very thing that made it a household name more than 30 years ago."

Even some of its staple programming is hitting turbulence. "Jersey Shore," which became the most popular show in the history of MTV, started declining in the ratings in the beginning in
2011. The show ends after Season 6, which premiered Oct. 4.

Meanwhile, the ratings for the MTV Movie Awards in June were down 29% from a year ago.

6. Citi, 12% decline (tied for 7th)

--Brand value: $7.6 billion (50th)
--Parent company: Citigroup (C)
--Year-over-year revenue change: -5.2%
--Industry: Financial services

After five years of consecutive decline, Citi's brand value in 2012 is less than a third of its all-time high of $23.4 billion. By comparison, the brand value of JP Morgan Chase (JPM), another money center bank, has risen in two of the past three years.

During the last several years, multiple lawsuits have been filed against Citi for its role in the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis. A $45 billion bailout from the U.S. Treasury in 2008 and a failed Federal Reserve "stress test" — a test that evaluates a bank's ability to survive a stock or housing market
crash — also hurt the bank's reputation.

To help revitalize its brand, the bank secured an Olympic sponsorship and launched a major ad campaign to highlight its historic financial innovations. However, Interbrand's Josh Feldman told 24/7 Wall St. he did not believe Citi had a marketing problem, but that "evaluating banks on fundamentals is very much in play" in Citi's brand decline.

5. Yahoo!, 13% decline

--Brand value: $3.9 billion (97th)
--Parent company: Yahoo! (YHOO)
--Year-over-year revenue change: -10.6%
--Industry: Internet services

In the past year, news stories about Yahoo! have centered around the ouster of its chief executive and the dismissal of her replacement due to resume discrepancies. Although the company looks to have found a CEO who can last in Marissa Mayer, a change in Yahoo!'s fortunes will not come easily.

Over the past several years the company has increasingly lost its share of the display ad market to Google (GOOG) and Facebook (FB). EMarketer now predicts that Yahoo! will have 9.3% of the web's display ad revenue in 2012, below Google's 15.4% and Facebook's 14.4%.

In 2011, Yahoo!'s share of display ad revenue was 11%, down from 14% in 2010, when it brought in more display ad revenue than any other web property. Nevertheless, Mayer is looking to make Yahoo! into a more mobile company that can gain back revenue through smartphones and tablets.

4. Moet & Chandon, 13% decline (tied for 5th) 

--Brand value: $3.8 billion (98th)
--Parent company: LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton
--Year-over-year revenue change:22.4%
--Industry: Distilled spirits

Part of French luxury conglomerate LVMH, Moët & Chandon's brand value declined by more than $500 million the past year. The brand lost value despite opening a boutique hotel in St. Tropez and launching celebrity-hosted tours worldwide.

To help restore brand value, Moët & Chandon signed a sponsorship contract with the America's Cup, one of the most well-known sailing races worldwide.

Interbrand's Josh Feldman told 24/7 Wall St.: "It's not that the Moët & Chandon brand is any weaker, it's that rituals are changing" as economic growth comes from parts of the world that do not yet associate champagne with celebration.

The brand also remained the best-selling champagne in the U.S. last year, with sales volume rising 1.3% to reach 410,000 cases, according to Shanken News Daily, a wine, spirits and beer industry news service.

3. Nokia, 16% decline

--Brand value: $21.0 billion (19th)
--Parent company: Nokia (NOK)
--Year-over-year revenue change: -20.5%
--Industry: Electronics

Nokia has had a rough year. After Nokia lost market share for several years, Samsung finally overtook it as the largest manufacturer of mobile devices in the first quarter of 2012.

The company's stock price has been cut by more than half in the past year, and the company announced in June that it was cutting 10,000 jobs to preserve cash.

Now the Finnish company is staking its hopes on the Microsoft (MSFT) Windows' mobile operating system. In September, the company previewed its Lumia 920 smartphone to investors, but they were not impressed.

"The challenge is that the world is working on the fourth, fifth and sixth editions of their devices, while Nokia is still trying to move from Chapter One," RBC analyst Mark Sue told Reuters following Nokia's presentation to investors. "It still has quite a bit to catch up."

But even Nokia's catchup efforts were hurt in April when early buyers of the Nokia Lumia 900 had problems connecting to the web.

2. Goldman Sachs, 16% decline (tied for 3rd)

--Brand value: $7.6 billion (48th)
--Parent company: Goldman Sachs Group (GS)
--Year-over-year revenue change: -23.2%
--Industry: Financial services

Goldman Sach's brand has taken a major hit since the financial crisis because of its involvement in the sale of complex collateralized debt obligations and in the Greek debt crisis. The company's practices returned to the spotlight this March when an executive director in the firm's London office publicly resigned in a scathing op-ed piece publishedThe New York Times.

Smith said, "The interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money," and he noted that managing directors would often refer to clients over email as "muppets."

Revenue in the first half of 2012 was at its lowest level since 2005 due primarily to weak trading volume. The company responded by cutting pay by 14% during the first six months compared to the previous year and reducing its headcount.

1. BlackBerry, 39% decline

--Brand value: $3.9 billion (93rd)
--Parent company: Research in Motion (RIMM)
--Year-over-year revenue change: -25.2%
--Industry: Electronics

The BlackBerry, built by Research In Motion, used to dominate the smartphone market, with loyal users often joking about their addiction to their "crackberry."

Yet blunders, such as a BlackBerry outage in late 2011, the failure of its Playbook tablet and the stiff competition from Apple's (AAPL) iPhone and Google's Android devices, have led to a rapid decline of BlackBerry's brand value.

BlackBerry's share of the smartphone operating platform market dropped from 21.7% in July 2011 to 9.5% just a year later, according to comScore. Meanwhile, Apple's market share went from 27% to 33.4% in that time, while Google's share went from 41.8% to 52.2%.

The parent company has seen its stock decline nearly 90% in the past three years. RIM announced in June that it would cut approximately 5,000 jobs out of about 16,500 employees, or around 30% of its workforce.

RIM is pinning its hopes on the BlackBerry 10, which will likely come out in early 2013.

Refference: USA Today

Nokia to start selling make-or-break smartphone in November

The Lumia 920, which uses Microsoft's Windows software, is Nokia's bid to catch up with Apple's iPhone and a string of popular phones using Google's Android software, like Samsung's Galaxy models.

The new phone, which with its rounded edges and colorful covers look similar to its predecessors, was unveiled on Wednesday and drew a thumbs down from many analysts, who felt it lacked the "wow" factor to make big inroads against rivals.

They were also unsettled by Nokia's refusal to say when the phone, and the smaller Lumia 820 models, would go on sale, or to give details on the price and operator partners.

Once the world's biggest mobile phone maker, Nokia fell behind rivals in the fast-growing smartphone market and has struggled to catch up, racking up more than 3 billion euros in operating losses in the last 18 months and forcing it to cut 10,000 jobs, as well as sell assets.

By going on sale in November, the Lumia 920 will hit stores in time for the key holiday sales season. It will be priced similar to Samsung's flagship Galaxy S3, operators in several countries said. The Galaxy S3 sells for around 580 euros.

But the phone will probably land more than a month after Apple's new iPhone and will face stiff competition from Samsung, which last week unveiled the world's first smartphone with the Windows Phone 8 software that the Lumia 920 will use, as well as new models from HTC and Google's Motorola.

An executive at an eastern European telecoms operator said he would start selling the Lumia 920, which features a high-quality camera and touch screen that can be used with gloves, in the second half of November, adding larger countries would receive the model earlier that month.

"The problem is that Nokia has temporarily destroyed the market for its own phones. Nobody will buy the old Windows phone and until the new Lumia comes, the market is absolutely dead," the executive said, declining to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media on the subject.

Industry sources said on Thursday that Nokia had cut the prices of its older smartphones in a bid to boost demand until its new phones reach the market.

Analysts expect the Finnish firm to lose another 700 million euros in the July-September quarter and to sell around 3.6 million Windows phones, down from last quarter.

In comparison, Samsung sold more than 20 million Galaxy S3 smartphones in just 100 days.

Samsung has become the world's biggest smartphone maker as Nokia's share of the market has plunged to less than 10 percent from 50 percent during its heyday before the iPhone was launched in 2007.

The Lumia 920 is expected to go on sale in the United States around the same time as in Europe.

A Nokia spokesman declined to comment.

DIFFERENT VIEWS

While some operators and retailers said they would focus on the new iPhone and rival models, others were more positive.

"It looks really good, they chose to differentiate with the design and appearance, which are very important to people. The camera technology is very interesting," said Sami Aavikko from DNA Finland, the third-largest carrier in Nokia's home market.

Ernest Quingles, managing director for Italian distributor Tech Data, said he expects the new Nokia devices to be successful, but questioned whether Windows Phone can attract as much interest from developers as Android and the iPhone.

"What we need to check still now is how Microsoft and Nokia will be able to develop the apps part," he said.

Part of the reason for the limited success of Windows phones so far is that they support only 100,000 or so apps, compared with about 500,000 or more for Android or iPhones.

Apple's and Google's entrenched positions mean consumers have invested heavily in apps and content with them, and that could discourage switching to a new mobile system.

Nokia's volatile shares were 3.5 percent higher at 2 euros by 10:15 a.m. EDT (1415 GMT) in a firmer European market.