100 Global Brands

Business Week/Interbrand (September 5&12, 2005 Ed.) on the Top 100 Global Brands

Several things that catch my mind -- completely agree are:

There is this man equipped with every marketers nightmare gizmos: CallerID, pop-up & spam blockers, commercial satellite radio, TiVo ... he told BW that "The real beauty is that if we choose to shut advertising out, we can..."

All traditional rules of media ad are broken.
How do you build a brand in a world in which customers are increasingly in control of the media?

The best brands ... were able to unleash different campaigns for different customers in varied media almost simultaneously.
They blurred the lines between ads and entertainment... to make their brand messages so enjoyable ... customers see them as entertainment instead of an intrusion.

New venues: the Web, live events, cell phones, handheld compiuters.
Some concrete example: BWM features short movies and recently makes it available on TiVo start page (!), Apple with U2 iPod, Toyota with The Contender reality show, AmEx with Internet films starring Seinfeld.

"Brands are not being built on [traditional] marketing"