Last week, the FT released it yearly ranking of the global Top 100 brands in association with Millward Brown. For the first year, Google tops the list, kicking out Microsoft from the top spot. For a brand that did not exist 10 years ago and whose marketing budget is ridiculously small compared to the advertising big hitters that are FMCG, car producers and mobile operators, that's not bad! It just shows how important the internet has become in our everyday life.

Vodafone ranks #22 overall with a brand value of $21bn. It also ranks #2 among mobile operators and #8 in the consolidated telecom/tech sector. The fact that China Mobile ranks #5 overall and has a brand value twice the size of ours however shows the limits of the methodology. By definition, large companies - with large market caps - will rank higher than smaller companies, even if the latter have stronger brands. It also favours companies with significant intangible assets vs companies with real assets, e.g. software companies vs car manufacturers for example... If you consider Vodafone, had we not impaired some of our goodwill over the last year, we would rank higher....

Anyway, you can always argue with rankings...As this one has become a reference, let's just make sure we manage to strengthen our position. After all, the Vodafone brand value is twice Orange's, three times T-Mobile and six times O2....