Top brands spend in recession but not Google

In BusinessWeek ’s annual ranking of the 100 Best Global Brands, several are keeping their U.S. marketing budgets steady, as a percentage of revenue. Among them are American Express (AXP) (No. 15) and Diageo (DGE) (owner of Smirnoff, No. 89). Others are going further. Louis Vuitton (No. 16), Kellogg’s (K) (No. 39), Accenture (ACN) (No. 47), and Kleenex (No. 74) are all aggressively boosting their marketing expenditures as a percentage of expected sales.

The Best Global Brands – Businessweek

But interesting enough the purely digital brand Google (now at number 10), the biggest mover whose brand value is up 43% on last year, hardly spends on advertising at all.

In Google’s case good product is doing all the branding work for them. In fact most pure play internet products are better off investing in good product and let their users do the talking for them.

Apple, the second placed brand mover is no slouch on ad spend, but it does have excellent product. Amazon, another purely digital brand is the third placed mover. Zara, the savvy fast fashion brand from Spain is the next big mover.

The list of the top 100 brands.