The biggest brands are ones we’re intimately familiar with – the ones that have been around since we were kids. Right?
Well, no actually. You can build the biggest brand in the entire world in just over a decade. You just need a catchy name, great design and to stand head and shoulders above your competitors.
That’s what Larry Page and Sergey Brin did back in 1996 when they launched Google while studying at StanfordUniversity. The search engine deities positively blew their rivals out of the water with a superior system which projected crisp clean simplicity on the outside, masking an intricately complex back-end. Twelve years on, a YouGov study has named Google Britain’s biggest ‘superbrand’.
The company beat Microsoft, founded in 1975, Mercedes-Benz, which formed in 1926, and the BBC, another 1020s brand. I’m not arguing heritage doesn’t count for a lot. How else would British Airways have survived a year of fuel charge conspiracies, lost luggage disasters and flight cancellation turmoil? But few would argue Google isn’t just as, if not more, recognisable a brand than the airline founded decades earlier.
So next time you’re sitting there doubting your little start-up’s chances of becoming a household name, consider this: Google hadn’t even reached its teens before becoming the biggest brand in the world.
