The news that Microsoft has hired a senior Wal-Mart executive to spearhead a move into retail will not come as much of a shock. These days retailers run the world, and companies like Microsoft, which have typically supplied big retail, are now increasingly drawn to the idea of opening up for themsel...

It is time to stop speculating about brand equity and turn, instead, to the ice-cold empiricism of financial brand values. Monday saw the annual publication of the BrandZ Top 100 brands from Millward Brown Optimor and, as usual, there were a host of winners and losers. The first slice of good news w...

No big surprise here. Google is the single most powerful brand in the world. Though it did little promotional advertising, the company for the second consecutive year claimed the top spot on Millward Brown Optimor’s annual BrandZâ„¢ Ranking–a list of the top 100 most powerful global bran...