Gabi Salinas (with whom I had the pleasure of working at Brand Finance), now global brand manager at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, has just published her magnum opus on the topic of brand valuation.
The book is very thorough and a surprisingly easy read – a testament to Gabi’s ability to focus on the essential details of what is potentially a very dense topic. It removes much of the mystery that currently surrounds the topic of brand valuation by outlining the core concepts and profiling the different methodologies in use.
Gabi’s obvious passion for the topic shines through. Most other authors might baulk at the prospect of comparing and contrasting 40 different brand valuation techniques from more than 60 providers – but Gabi has painstakingly collected all this information and spends 180 pages (nearly half the book) reviewing and commenting on each model.
This dogged perseverence gives immense credibility to the other sections of the book in which she provides a higher level summary of the topic. I would recommend the following three chapters in particular:
- Chapter 1 – the definition and economic relevance of brands
- Chapter 4 – summary of the main approaches to brand valuation
- Chapter 6 - classification of the 40 models reviewed
The book is a hugely valuable resource to anyone with a professional interest in brand valuation (and that is a wide set of audiences). Despite the worrying frequency of equations with greek letters, the style is very light and the narrative very simple to follow.
For me, the one thing missing from the book is a clearer sense of how brand valuation fits into the broader topic of marketing accountability. As it says in its title, the book is a “Manual” – it begins from the assumption that brand valuation is a valid goal to pursue, and provides the roadmap for achieving that goal.
Readers of this blog will know that my strong belief is that brand valuation is, with rare exceptions, a false trail for marketers to follow. It does not provide definitive proof of the value of marketing, and it involves treating the brand as a separable asset of the business (an assumption entirely at odds with marketing’s goal of getting the brand embedded into all aspects of the business). The uses of brand valuation are technical in nature, and few fall within the purview of marketing.
To be fair, Gabi did not conceive her mandate to be “brand valuation – what’s it for?” – she defines her remit as “brand valuation – how’s it done?” She has produced a comprehensive overview of the topic and has documented in admirable detail the specifics of the various approaches and models.
