Coca Cola #1 Brand, Microsoft Beats Apple

According to the polling people at Harris Interactive, Coca Cola is the best known brand, followed by Sony and Toyota. It seems amazing to me that this is the first time that Coca Cola has been at #1 but that's what the number say.

The top ten brands according to the survey are:

Coca-Cola

Sony

Toyota

Dell

Ford

Kraft Foods

Pepsi Cola

Microsoft

Apple

Honda

The survey was unprompted so I also find it hard to believe that Kraft Foods came out of people's mouths. I wonder if the surveyors rolled up all of the brands under Kraft Foods? I also find it hard to believe that Microsoft beat Apple. This must have been done before the iPhone. Or, does the iPhone and Apple just appeal to a very specific segment of the population?

I'm also struck by the fact that no Internet companies made the list. I spend so much time on the Web that I think companies like MySpace, Facebook, Amazon, etc, are well established brands. Not so. In fact, the biggest brands are established companies with big advertising budgets. This may fly against the conventional wisdom now prevalent amongst Web companies of not building brand through advertising.

Of course, many of these companies can't afford advertising and marketers are still grappling with the impact a powerful brand has on sales and revenue.

You can read the results of the survey at:

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070717005109&newsLang=en