There is no doubt that Internet marketing has reached a crossroads. While social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, have allowed businesses and brands unprecedented access to consumers, rising concerns over privacy    means that advertisers need to strike a delicate balance between ever-more targeted approaches and maintaining their customers’ trust. As former Google CEO Eric Schmidt famously put it while discussing Google’s own targeting policies, “Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.”

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Apple was anointed the world’s most valuable brand yesterday, according to the folks who know how to calculate such things. The headline said that they surpassed Google, who had a four-year run in the top spot. It’s easy for us to conclude that the technology torch has been passed–that Apple is the new tech leader. But as much as we like to crown winners and losers, it’s not all that helpful. What marketers need to think about is not how successful Apple is, but how powerful it is.

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