Apple is now the most valuable brand on the planet, with Google growing faster and likely to overtake them.

Poor old Coca Cola has dropped to third while these upstarts reign.

Interbrand recurrently measures the strength of various global brands. They recently released their latest report that knocked Coke off its thirteen year perch at number one. As the chart shows, Google began their assent in 2009 and Apple followed in 2011, all riding the wave of a highly wired and wireless global society. You may drink Coke, Pepsi or bottled water, but everybody sips while searching Google on their iPhones.

Interbrand’s analysis is not the old school, completely financial estimate of customer good will that expresses a brand’s cumulative equity. If we used that measure, Coke would still command the lead with Coke $12B in customer good will, Google would have $10B worth, and Apple would trail with a measly $1B. But brands are more than how much money appears in an isolated accounting bucket. Interbrand assesses profits, demand and competitive factors to create a brand measurement that more closely monitors how real people perceive a brand. The up side is that the measure is more meaningful, but the downside is that it is more transient and subject to fickle perceptions.

Creating a strong brand makes money. The perceived value of a product or company biases buyer preference as Apple, Google and Coke demonstrate daily. The perceived value of a brand has shown in many studies to create brand preference if not brand religion. Many companies never reach even basic brand preference because they fail to understand what a brand is and how the entire organization creates the brand. Coke gets it. So did Steve Jobs (though Tim Cook’s perspective is questionable). Page and Brin certainly did, do and are likely to continue.

We wrote the definitive statement of what is a branding, and know this by how often other consultants “borrow” our statement.

Branding is making the market think and feel what you want them to think and feel about you and your products.

Grab your iPhone and ponder what you felt and thought about it when you first considered buying one. There was likely some sense of magic interlaced with style made you want the gizmo. That Steve Jobs centered his work and Apple’s brand on these essences is no mistake because style and magic are very power concepts. But it took Apple’s employees – from their engineers, to their receptionists to their genius bar staff – to embrace the brand definition as well. Only when all employees know, see and believe in a brand’s essence do they grow and perpetuate it.

Step one define the brand. Step three profit.

Building a brand requires building. The labor of all your craftsmen has to be guided toward creating what you want the market to think and feel about you. Image without substance is marketing smoke that evaporates quickly. Make sure you execute step two.