Interbrand has published the list of 100 Best Global Brands since 1999 and as you all know, it is recognized as the most authoritative institute to valuate companies by an objective standard. Here are the top 10 brands of the 100 Best Global Brands of 2016 announced by Interbrand.

 Brands in the top 10 run neck and neck with each other every year and they are all very familiar to us. Looking at the list, the top four brands have remained the same compared to last year and there's only one change in the top 10 – which is Mercedes-Benz, which pushed McDonald's out. As it explains on the website, the top 10 brands were selected based on the level of growth and their global presence. To evaluate brands with an objective approach, Interbrand has set five criteria. One criterion, public awareness, is based on a subjective point of view, but the other four are each financially measurable. Big names at the top of the list have already built infrastructure across the world and maintain a certain level of revenue; this means that it's hard to see a new name in the top list.

 That is because you need to look into the list of brands based on their growth, as well as the list of the top 100 brands. The table below shows top brands listed according to the level of their growth in 2016.

 In terms of growth, Facebook was the best brand last year. And Amazon took second spot with growth as high as 30%. But in the 100 Best Global Brands by Interbrand, Facebook jumped from 25th to 15th in only one year while Amazon moved up from 10th to 8th. Amazon and Facebook climbed two steps and ten steps each in the top list that's quite solid and they must have several growth engines. According to Interbrand's report, one of the accelerators behind their remarkably rapid rise is offering a brand experience that truly caters for customers.

 What then is brand experience? How does it separate successful brands from others?

 Warren Buffett said, "Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it's not going to get the business." And that something special is believed to be experience by many brand managers, marketers and designers. As mentioned earlier, the CEO of Interbrand expressed the importance of brand experience.

  The growing emphasis on brand experience is related to the traits shown by Millennials. In the past when Generation X was the largest customer group, they were very much conscious of brand image as they identified with the brand. But now with Millennials growing into the mainstream consumers in most countries including the United States and China, experience is thought of as an extension of personal identity. They interact with each other through experience-oriented events, build relationships by sharing memories of the experience and thereby develop their self-identity. And as their strength grows in the market, brands offering a positive experience are well-positioned to benefit. In other words, we are entering a new era of experience consumption.

 What is brand experience? Marty Neumeier, author of The Dictionary of Brand, defined it as all the interactions people have with a product, service or organization; the raw material of a brand. Brands are no longer determined by an image that they wish to deliver to customers, but all the memories and emotions of customers; what they experienced through different contact points and how they felt. It is the same when we recall an impression of a person. Our direct and indirect experience of that person is built into our overall impression of him/her and it's the same with brand recognition. In this context, brand experience can be defined as moments that leave an impression. Moments capture the temporal and sequential nature of experience while impression describes emotions and ideas of a person generated through all the interactions with the brand.

 Design and business consultant Clement Mok said that experience is the brand. It is controversial to equate experience with the brand, but there is certainly a growing emphasis on the term "brand experience" as brands are competing against each other across multi-channels, multi-touch points, and across social and global markets.

 To put brand experience into perspective, experience design is more than designing elements of experience that takes place both online and offline. It is about designing the whole journey through which people have an experience of a brand across all channels.

 Experience design consists of three major components: brand experience, customer experience and user experience.

 First, brand experience design is at the broadest level. It covers all the actions done by a brand to design various stimuli, which help evoke a response from customers, who in turn recognize the ultimate purpose of the business. Here, stimuli are elements involved with branding, for example, BI, product, communication tool and environment created by a brand. In other words, brand experience design is required when building up a new brand or going through a broad-scale transformation. It is about planning the arrangement of various elements and the cohesion between them so that a brand can leave an impression as it desires.

 Second, customer experience design aims to appeal to a specific group of customers. It focuses on delivering brand-related information to target customers and luring them to make a purchase. Assume that you are opening a new store in Gangnam district, Seoul. At the level of customer experience design, you are required to draw a service roadmap by focusing solely the customer journey, i.e., first being informed of the location and opening date of your store, coming into the store and the shopping itself.

 Third, user experience design is used to create new products and service and to improve the quality of existing products and services. For example, user experience design is taken into account when planning a new lip product and its life span, or improving a search engine to help users find information they need on a website. In this case, the design is centered on experience of users when they are using products and/or services.

 In terms of scale, brand experience design is like designing a forest where the customer experience is akin to the tree and the user experience is akin to the leaf. Lastly, service design proposes and applies tools and methods required for designing experiences at all levels.

 Brand experience design needs more than designers; it creates better results when individuals involved with a brand work together and put their ideas into shape with a clear understanding of the brand's vision.

 This is the end of my first column. I wanted my columns to be fun and easy to read and, at the same time, offer a fresh impetus to play your full imagination when I first applied for columnist, but on reflection, my first column seems a little dry. New brand terms come up every year and when they sound almost the same, I took them in the most commonly understood sense and moved on. This was my chance to find the right definition of each term. I hope that my columns can help you understand the difference between each term as I did.

 Brand experience design can never be done by an individual specializing in a certain area. Everyone involved must be well aware of the desired impression of a brand and therefore work together to meet a one common goal. That is the only way building up a brand that offers a good experience. Because there are different touch points and moments for individuals to have an experience of the brand, it's impossible to provide everyone with the same consistent experience. But, there are several ways that we can take in order to offer a more positive and better experience. In the next column, I will tell you about these ways and how some brands wisely used them.