Institute for Public Relations

In July, the Institute published a case study by Sean Williams examining how a financial services company used media measurement and content analysis to gauge the impact of financial turmoil on its brand and reputation. (See: http://alturl.com/oe3b) Sean’s intent was to provide a factual description of news media impact on reputation, and to provide senior executives with guidance for communication strategy and tactics. Now, more than six weeks after publication, we asked Sean to reflect on his paper and to summarize key findings. Media still matters. The research shows vividly that the news media has measurable impact on many aspects of ...

Wal-Mart moves up from third to the number one spot and is valued at $40.6 billion. Citi slides from 10th to 54th place but still has a value of $9.8 billion. These are just two of the calculations of the value of the world’s 500 most valuable brands in the 2009 report, produced annually by BrandFinance PLC. See the table of the top ten brands below. The Top Ten in 2009 (Source: Brand Finance plc) Rank 2009 Rank 2008 Brand Domicile Brand Value (BV) 2009 Enterprise Value (EV) 2009 Brand Value (BV) 2008 1 4 Wal-Mart United States 40,616 244,058 39,001 2 1 Coca-Cola United States 32,728 104,519 45,441 3 5 IBM United States 31,530 136,675 37,949 4 2 Microsoft United States 30,882 152,137 44,501 5 3 Google United States 29,261 79,164 43,085 6 6 GE United States 26,654 635,959 36,123 7 7 HSBC United States 25,364 131,577 35,456 8 11 Vodafone United States 24,647 152,551 26,594 9 8 HP United States 23,837 90,506 34,109 10 13 Toyota United States 21,995 217,481 26,056 For those who still cling to the ...