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1Taking A Brand Global Ten Steps To SuccessI. Introduction The Importance of Being GlobalA virile global brand is a powerful weapon. These days, however, it may also be anindispensable one, even as the economy challenges our faith in brands to deliver a profit.According to Interbrands Worlds Most Valuable Brands 2000 study, for example, althoughAmazons share price has declined, its brand value has increased by 233%. On the otherhand, international power player Coca-Cola, although even so the worlds 1 brand, saw its valuedrop by 13%. And technology brands did quite well&8212 Microsoft, IBM, Intel, and Nokia placedsecond through fifth&8212not at all foreshadowing the precipitous crash in their stock prices abouthalf a year after the study findings were released. Overall, notes marketing writer JaneBainbridge in Marketing 20 July 2000, Interbrands second annual study of this kind revealsnot only that global brands are stable assets, but also that the most valuable brands areglobal. I n fact, she argues, to have a billion-dollar brand, a company has to be global.II. Branding As The New Universal LanguageBased on a recent survey of more than xlv thousand people across nineteen countries,Young & Rubicam makes a rather startling claim. In its newest Brand Asset Valuator report,issued in March 2001, the fast(a) asserts that brands have taken on a godlike status consumersfind greater meaning in them and the values they espouse than in religion. As Conor Dignamreports in Ad Age Global 12 March 2001, the study claims that superbrands like Calvin Klein,Gatorade, IKEA, Microsoft, MTV, Nike, Virgin, Sony PlayStation, and Yahoo can thereforealso be called belief brands. Although Dignam argues against the idea that consumers wouldtreat brands as gods (because they go forth not be dictated to by them), he does accept theimplications of the argument and make a different analogy. Brands, he says, are more likebest friends, in that they are an important part of peoples lives, do carry specific meaningsfor the consumer, and they are respected or rejected based on how well they keep theirpromises. just whether one calls them gods or best friends, brands have clearly started to take ongreater importance in consumers lives. In fact, they have gone from objects with identity toidentities in the guise of objects.The trend has gone so far, in fact, that people are beginning to speak the language of brandsand even to market themselves as brands in their own right. in that respect is more than one book inprint along the lines of Brand Yourself Ballantine, 2000 devoted strictly to the notion that the