Interbrand has now released its 2009 league table. The data shows a very modest decline in the aggregate value of the top 100 brands from $1.22 trillion in 2008 to $1.16 trillion. The 5% decline contrasts with a 25% decline in the market value of the parent companies and results in a jump in the proportion of brand value to market value from 18% in 2008 to 23% this year.
93 brands are common to the 2009 and 2008 lists – notable departures from the list this year are Merrill Lynch, AIG and ING which together represented over $20 billion of brand value.
86 brands are common to the last 4 years, of which 76 belonged to publicly quoted companies. Using just this sample set, aggregate brand value was down 4% in absolute dollar terms versus 2008 but rose from 20% to 25% as a proportion of aggregate market value.
Interbrand scores well for internal consistency across the years – each movement in brand value is accompanied by an apparently plausible thumbnail explanation for the rise/decline.
What continues to cause doubt about the reliability of the numbers is the lack of consistency across the three main publishers of brand valuation league tables. There are only 33 brands that are common to the three lists of the top 100 brands! 25 brands that appear on both the Millward Brown and Brand Finance lists do not feature on the Interbrand list, while Interbrand chooses to include 32 brands that do not appear on either the Millward Brown and Brand Finance lists.
Hence my advice to marketers – use these league tables to support a general assertion about the economic value of brands BUT beware of making any strong assertions about the value of individual brands. Otherwise you will find yourself explaining why the brand values of Amazon, Apple, BlackBerry, Google, Marlboro and UPS differ by a factor of 2 or more – and why it requires a brand value of “only” $3 billion to crack the Interbrand top 100 list but over $6 billion to make it into either the Millward Brown or Brand Finance top 100.
