$67billion in2006, Interbrand says, and is
comfortably leading thepack.
What made Coke the top brand? Go-
ing global, says David Urban, amarketing
professor at Virginia Commonwealth Uni-
versity.Urban saysCokehas longpossessed
enviable strengths inproduct development,
manufacturing, marketing, and distribu-
tion, but that it was the energetic exten-
sion of those strengths to theworldmarket
— long before most American companies
didmuch looking, if any, beyondour shores
— that did the trick. As a result of Coke’s
currying favor with world markets, its
name, logo, and even the shape of its bottle
needno translation virtually anywhere.Ur-
ban says, “It’s hard to imagine a brand that
is anymore recognizable thanCoke is.”
Digital Equipment
Corporation
Not so long ago, Digital
Equipment Corporation was
one of the most recognizable
brands in information tech-
nology. And why not? Its in-
ventors claimed credit for suchmilestones
as networking and speech recognition. For
decades after its 1957 founding, DEC, as it
was known, owned theminicomputermar-
ket andwas secondonly to IBM in comput-
ers overall.
In the 1980s, PCs arose, andDEC’s star
sank. Unable or unwilling to fully commit
tomicrocomputers,Digital stuckwithmin-
is until too late. In 1998, the company sold
out to upstart Compaq, and today it exists
only as amemory. “They got caught in the
squeeze,” saysRichardSylla,NewYorkUni-
versity business professor and a trustee of
New York’sMuseum of American Finance.
“Youdidn’t reallyneedaminicomputer that
was somewhere between a PC and amain-
frame. That put DEC in the middle, and
they didn’t respond to the way the world
was going.”
KongoGumi
Consider the way the world
went 1,400 years ago. A lot
has changed since then, but
one thing hasn’t: The Kongo
Gumi company in Osaka,
Japan, still designs and con-
structs buildings, just as it
has since 578 AD. That’s the year a Japa-
neseprincebroughtmembers of theKongo
family from their native Korea to build a
Buddhist temple. The temple still stands,
and sodoesKongoGumi, theworld’soldest
continuouslyoperatingbusiness.
JamesHutcheson, a family-businesscon-
sultant in Dallas, attributes Kongo Gumi’s
longevity largely to the fact that 40 genera-
tions of the same family ran it. “In a fam-
ily business, the identity of the family is so
entwined in the viability of the business,”
Hutcheson explains. “You’ve got people’s
passions wrapped up in the performance
andperceptionof the company.”
If youdoubt thatwe live inextraordinary
times, consider that last year, trippedupby
falling values of real estate that it had pur-
chased during Japan’s 1980s land bubble,
KongoGumiwasovercomeby itsdebtsand
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