How much are brands worth anyway?

Gabriele Guglielmi, OpenCorporation and international policies coordinator FILCAMS CGIL

According a study by Interbrand, the top one hundred brands are worth $2,667.524 billion

According to another ranking, again in 2021 the top one hundred are worth as much as $7,071, 148 billion

Do such different assessments have an explanation?

The newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore has already dealt with our observatory: OpenCorporation, quando il sindacato dà le pagelle alle multinazionali (Riccardo Saporiti February 20, 2019).

Inspired by Giulia Crivelli’s article published on October 2021 in Il Sole 24 Ore:

Apple, Amazon and Microsoft on the Interbrand podium, but the surprise is Prada: brand value grows 20% and

Technology dominates the 2021 ranking of the 100 best brands in the world, Italy is represented by high-end products: in addition to the fashion group, there are Gucci and Ferrari.

OpenCorporation’s research staff compared the two major Rankings that deal with “brands.”KANTAR BRANDZ 2021 MOST VALUABLE GLOBAL BRANDS  (methodology)

And Interbrand Best Global Brands 2021  (methodology)

Both rank 100 brands that most often correspond to companies. In the case of BrandZ, out of 100 case studies more than half, 53, aren’t among the 100 analyzed by Interbrand, so the same considerations are valid for 52 of the 100 that don’t appear in the BrandZ list.

50 brands and/or companies are featured in both rankings.

On the podium for both, although with reversed positions, there are both Amazon and Apple, while in the top 5 for both Rankings we find Google and Microsoft, and in the TopTen for both there are Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.

What is astonishing is the different evaluation of the same brands/companies present in the TopTen (from now on, “InterBrands” = IB and “BrandZ” = BZ).

• Samsung (5°  IB, 42° BZ)
• Facebook (15° IB, 6° BZ)
• Visa (39° IB, 8° BZ)
• Toyota (7° IB, 64° BZ)
• MasterCard (50° IB, 10° BZ)
• Mercedes-Benz (8° IB, 67° BZ)
• Disney (10° IB, 33° BZ)

In the Top20 a we find a similar evaluation for IBM (18th InterBrands – IB 16th -BZ)

The differences between those at the top and those at the bottom are constant throughout the ranking, besides the striking ones: Toyota (seventh position in InterBrands, but only sixty-fourth in BrandZ) and MasterCard (tenth position in BrandZ, but only fiftieth in 50th nterBrands), see:

BMW (12° IB, 71° BZ) Tesla (14° IB, 47° BZ) IKEA (27° IB, 84° BZ) Coca-Cola (6° IB, 16° BZ) Cisco  (16° IB, 41° BZ)   Pampers  (44° IB, 95° BZ) Zara (45° IB, 83° BZ) Gucci (33° IB, 56° BZ) adidas (49° IB, 79° BZ) Netflix (36° IB, 24° BZ) Starbucks (51° IB, 29° BZ) PayPal (41° IB, 19° BZ) Zoom (55° IB, 91° BZ).

How do you explain such a difformity in the rankings?

Also, how do you explain the huge differences in brand evaluations?

Fourteen brands valued above $100,000m are listed by BrandZ:

Amazon  Apple  Google Microsoft Tencent Facebook Alibaba Visa McDonald’s MasterCard Moutai  Nvidia Verizon AT&T but only 4 by InterBrands Amazon  Apple  Google Microsoft.

Comparison BrandZ vs Interbrands > 100m$

Comparison BrandZ vs Interbrands > 100m$

In future articles we will ask ourselves additional questions:

• Does reputation affect brand value?
• How reliable is the ISO 10668:2011 standard for quantifying the value of the brand(s)?
• How is the value of the brand (or brands) visualized and how much does it weigh in financial statements?