Branding: keep it simple and go wide round walls

Any marketer who wants to reach the Bublitz family of Montgomery, Ohio, has to leap a lot of hurdles.

Telemarketing? Forget it - the family of five have caller ID on their phones.

The internet? No way - they long ago installed spam and pop-up ad blockers on their three home computers.

Radio? Rudy Bublitz, 47, has non-commercial satellite radio in his car and in the home.

Television? Not likely - the family record their favourite shows on TiVo and skip most ads.

"The real beauty is that if we choose to shut advertising out, we can," Rudy says. "We call the shots with advertisers today."

Ad-zapping consumers such as the Bublitz family pose an enormous challenge to marketers building new brands and nurturing old ones.

The BusinessWeek ranking of the 100 most valuable global brands shows the names that gained the most in value focused ruthlessly on every detail of their brands, honing simple, cohesive identities that are consistent in every product, in every market worldwide, and in every contact with consumers.

Many of the biggest and most established names, from Coke to Marlboro, achieved their global presence decades ago by pioneering the 30-second TV commercial.

But it's a different world now. Monolithic TV networks have splintered into cable channels and mass-market publications have given way to special-interest magazines.

Given that fragmentation, it is not surprising that a new generation of brands, including Amazon.com (68th), eBay (55th) and Starbucks (99th), have amassed huge global value with little traditional advertising. They have discovered new ways to captivate and intrigue consumers.

Now the more mature brands are adapting the new techniques.

How do you build a brand in a world in which consumers are increasingly in control of the media?

The names that rose to the top of the ranking all had widely varied marketing arsenals and were able to unleash different campaigns for different consumers in varied media almost simultaneously. They wove messages over multiple media channels and blurred the lines between ads and entertainment.

As a result, they can be found in a host of new venues: the web, live events, cellphones and handheld computers.

Marketers have worked to make their brand messages so enjoyable that consumers might see them as entertainment instead of an intrusion. When leading brands are seen on TV they are apt to have their own co-starring roles rather than just lending support during the commercial breaks.

Take Apple Computer (41st), which last year launched a special iPod in partnership with rock band U2. Not only did it say "U2" on the front and have band signatures etched into the back, but the band starred in a TV ad and buyers got discounted music downloads.

It is no accident that most of the companies with the biggest increases in brand value this year operate as single brands worldwide.

Global marketing once meant crafting a new identity for each local market. But the goal for many now is to create consistency and impact - a lot easier to manage with a single identity.

- INDEPENDENT