Interbrand will shortly be publishing its 2009 ranking of the world’s most valuable brands. Unlike Millward Brown and Brand Finance who published their 2009 rankings in the midst of the market meltdown in March, Interbrand has the benefit of publishing at a time of relative market stability (the S&P 500 traded in the range of 900 to 1,000 between May and August) and may therefore attract a little more media attention.
The publication of these league tables is helpful to marketers as it serves to highlight the importance of brands as economic assets. Despite their obvious flaws (notably the lack of consistency between the values ascribed to individual brands by different providers), the sheer scale of the numbers is impressive – the aggregate value of the top 100 brands is over $1 trillion according to Interbrand and Brand Finance (nearly $2 trillion if you believe Millward Brown) and represents close to 20% of the aggregate market value of their parent companies.
Given that net tangible book value for the S&P 500 represents only 21% of market value, it is nice for marketers to be able to make the sweeping generalization that, in aggregate, brands represent as large a proportion of market value as tangible assets.
As I have noted before, this generalization masks a huge variation in the individual brand values (2% of market value for BP and Shell vs. upwards of 80% for Gucci, Puma and Burberry).
