《财富》的500强长寿品牌之旅

    最近，一位非常有智慧的人这样对我说，我们并不是在为公司工作，而是在为品牌工作。我对此深有同感。我就职的《财富》杂志（Fortune）就是一个伟大的美国品牌。这个名字代表的是高质量的报刊文章、对目标的认真态度、求知欲、分析的精确性等，正是这些东西让《财富》杂志数十年历久不衰。

    听上去是不是有点矫情？也许吧。在这样一个新品牌随时出现，而品牌内涵却只是昙花一现的时代，能加入一支历史悠久的团队，总是令人高兴的事。而且，这个团队是我待过的规模最大的一个。

    于是，当《财富》杂志高级品牌主管兼总编苏安迪要求我开车前往硅谷，对其他一些伟大品牌表示感谢和祝贺时，我迫不及待地接受了任务。这些品牌都是当地进入《财富》500强（Fortune 500）榜单的公司。我们决定以登门拜访上榜公司领导人的方式来庆祝《财富》500强榜单日。

    于是，我从旧金山出发，驾驶一辆红色福特福星（Fusion）Titanium版混合动力车。这是由福特汽车公司（Ford Motor Co.，第10位）生产的插电式电动车，车身两侧带有“财富500强榜单日快乐！”的彩色标语装饰。（关于汽车的更多细节将在下文详细介绍）。副驾驶上坐的是《财富》杂志记者科特•瓦格纳，这次担任摄影师和协调人。我们的第一站是与半导体生产设备制造商应用材料公司（Applied Materials，第302位）CEO麦克•斯普林特进行简短会面。斯普林特坦言，目前半导体行业举步维艰。芯片制造商的产能增长速度不足以确保增长，而且太阳能电池板的生产能力也已萎缩殆尽。（太阳能曾在短期内为应用材料公司增加了20亿美元销售额，但如今太阳能对销售额的贡献已经萎缩殆尽。）当然，位于加州圣克拉拉市的应用材料公司并没有放弃，仍然在继续寻找新的市场。目前，它仍然有一半的生产在美国进行，由位于德州奥斯丁的一家工厂完成。这或许也是美国总统奥巴马于周四参观应用材料公司的原因。斯普林特计划说服总统，支持按照贝尔实验室（Bell Labs）等机构曾经采用的方式投入联邦研究经费。

    接下来，我们前往位于桑尼维尔市的数据存储公司NetApp（第408位）。公司CEO汤姆斯•乔根思向我解释了消费者技术这个被认为最不可能的因素对企业存储业务带来的影响。面向用户的大型网络公司越来越多地使用速度更快、容量更大的闪存，而不是传统的磁带存储器。虽然闪存价格更高，但胜在能够快速为用户提供服务。在米尔皮塔斯，闪迪公司（SanDisk）CEO桑贾伊•梅洛特也曾对我表达过同样的观点。消费者闪存公司目前日益向商业用户倾斜，包括苹果公司（Apple，第6位）。顺便说一下，苹果公司方面周一并没有和我会面。

    I heard a wise person say recently that we don't work for companies. We work for brands. That resonated for me. I work for Fortune, one of the great American brands, a name that stands for quality journalism, seriousness of purpose, intellectual curiosity, analytical rigor and all the things that have given Fortune the staying power of decades.

    Schmaltzy? Guilty as charged. It's a joy in this world of insta-brands and perishable content to be associated with a legacy and current team that is bigger than I'll ever be.

    So when Fortune's top brand steward, Managing Editor Andy Serwer, asked me to drive around Silicon Valley to thank and congratulate a handful of other great brands—the local companies in the Fortune 500—I eagerly accepted. We decided to celebrate Fortune 500 Day by personally saying hello to the leaders of the some of the companies on the list.

    I set off from San Francisco in a shiny red Ford (F) Fusion Titanium Hybrid, a plug-in electric variety made by Ford Motor Co. (No. 10), festooned with "Happy Fortune 500 Day" magnets on each side. (More about the car later), with Fortune reporter Kurt Wagner as my wingman, photographer and wrangler. Our first stop was a quick meeting with Mike Splinter, CEO of semiconductor manufacturing equipment maker Applied Materials (AMAT, No. 302). Splinter was blunt that business is tough. Chip makers aren't expanding capacity fast enough to ensure growth and solar-panel capacity is currently dead. (Solar briefly added $2 billion in annual sales to Applied; that has almost all dried up.) Still, Applied, based in Santa Clara, Calif., is hanging in, hunting for new markets, and continues to conduct half its manufacturing in the U.S., from a plant in Austin, Texas. That's likely why President Obama is visiting Applied on Thursday. Splinter plans to encourage the president to support federal research along the lines of the type that used to be done by Bell Labs and its peers.

    Next we went to Sunnyvale to see NetApp (NTAP, No. 408), whose CEO Thomas Georgens explained to me how the enterprise storage business is being affected by the unlikeliest of factors: the consumer technology business. Huge consumer-facing Web companies increasingly are using faster-speed and higher-capacity flash memory, as opposed to traditional tape storage. Flash is more expensive but worth it for applications that serve customers quickly. I heard a similar message from SanDisk (SNDK) CEO Sanjay Mehrotra in Milpitas. That consumer flash memory pioneer now tilts toward business customers, including Apple (AAPL, No. 6), which, in case you were wondering, didn't meet with me Monday.