Brand Rewired: Connecting Intellectual Property, Branding, and Creativity Strategy

Chapter 1. The Billion-Dollar Question

At the beginning of the decade, Procter & Gamble had 10 billion-dollar brands in its portfolio, brands that generate more than one billion dollars in sales each year. Today, they have 23 of these billion-dollar brands.

—P&G 2009 Annual Report

Google was formed in 1995 as a start-up company by a group of Stanford students. Less than 10 years later, its brand is reported to be valued at $100 billion.

—Millward Brown Annual Brand Report 2009

How do Procter & Gamble, Google, and others like them build a billion-dollar brand? They design strong intellectual property strategy into their innovation and branding processes through the power of collaboration and interdisciplinary teams. In this book, we chronicle our discussions with the innovation, branding, and intellectual property leaders from top global brands to share their ideas and best practices in the next generation of branding and innovation. Whether a company is maintaining a brand that has endured for more than 100 years, such as Tide, or creating a new brand that will capture the attention of the world, such as Google, a rewired branding process can provide key competitive advantages.

We ask the question: "How does a company ensure that when it invests in developing new technology, products, and services, the brand it builds to sell that product will have long-term staying power and produce a greater return on investment?"

Based upon our research and discussions with brand leaders, the key to ...