These are the most valuable brands in the world

Dusseldorf A good brand “touches and moves” customers, employees and investors, says Simon Thun. He should know: Thun is head of the international brand consultancy Interbrand, which presented its annual “Best Global Brands” ranking this Wednesday. The list of the 100 most valuable brands worldwide was available to the Handelsblatt in advance.

It is the 22nd edition of the ranking, and brand values ​​have never risen as strongly as this year. Taken together, the value of the 100 most valuable brands according to Interbrand is 2.67 trillion US dollars – an increase of 15 percent compared to the previous year 2020.

Brand expert Thun explains the significant increases in value – despite the corona crisis – with the approaching end of the pandemic. Brand values ​​also reflected future growth fantasies. “Many companies have had to restructure themselves, but they are now looking positively to the future,” says Thun. The situation has stabilized: only 15 of the 100 brands have fallen in value, last year there were 54.

As in the previous year, the most valuable brand in the world is Apple. According to Interbrand, the iPhone manufacturer has increased its brand value by a quarter and now comes to over 408 billion dollars. Anyway, technology brands are leading in the ranking. With Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Samsung, five tech brands make up the top five.

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“These companies have understood how to build a brand,” says expert Thun. However, it would also be easier for tech brands than for example those in the manufacturing sector. Consumers come into contact with the products of tech companies on a daily basis, and they could cause bigger surprises with new products or entertainment offers.

Apple and Amazon at the top

The gap between the first placed and the rest has increased again this year. The three top brands alone represent a third of the total value of the 100 brands. Even if iPhone fans accuse the company of not being innovative enough with its new smartphones and tablets, brand connoisseur Thun assumes that Apple will remain at the top of the ranking for some time: “The gap is extremely large.”

When evaluating “Best Global Brands”, the brand consultancy Interbrand uses financial indicators such as the expected earnings. Second, the role of the brand is included: For example, the authors measure the extent to which the brand played a greater role for the consumer than the price or the product properties, for example. Third, the strength of the brand compared to direct competitors is incorporated. The brand consultants transfer this to an index and calculate the monetary value of a brand.

Depending on the ranking, however, these numbers vary. The British market research company Kantar also regularly rates the global brand landscape in its “BrandZ” ranking and comes up with significantly higher values.

For industry experts, however, it is less the absolute number that matters, but rather the placement and the relative change compared to the previous year. Only a comparison with the rest of the brand world reveals the value of an individual brand.

For “BrandZ”, Amazon is in first place in the latest ranking – with a brand value of 684 billion US dollars. Interbrand winner Apple follows in second place at Kantar with 612 billion US dollars. With Google and Microsoft, tech values ​​are also at the top.

Tesla is the climber in the brand ranking

As with “BrandZ”, Tesla is one of the big winners in “Best Global Brands”. The e-car pioneer almost triples its brand value and is now in 14th place with 36.3 billion dollars. “That is an incredibly high leap,” says Interbrand CEO Thun. “Tesla manages like hardly any other brand to touch and inspire investors and customers alike.”

A few years ago, Tesla was one of the top 100 brands, but has since dropped out. But it is now clear to customers and investors that Tesla’s electric car plans are no longer a niche technology, says Thun.

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Even if Tesla was still just behind the long-term bestseller Golf from Volkswagen in the registration numbers in September with its Model 3, the US company has long overtaken its German competitor in the global brands ranking. VW is only 47th with 13.4 billion euros. Tesla is not yet the most valuable car brand: Toyota (7th place), Mercedes Benz (8th place) and BMW (12th place) are still ahead of Elon Musk’s company.

Otherwise, tech values ​​in particular are among the rising brands. Most of them were among the winners last year. New among the newcomers are the sports manufacturer Nike and the video conferencing provider Zoom, which is benefiting from the home office trend.

The Canon brand suffers the greatest depreciation

The losers include numerous classic brands into which a lot of marketing money has flowed for decades. First and foremost: Canon. The camera manufacturer has to accept a minus of 14 percent, the loss of brand value was similarly high in the previous year. The Japanese are suffering from the smartphone boom, many cell phones are hardly inferior to expensive cameras in terms of photo quality.

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The IT companies IBM and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise have long been among the losers. The brands of both companies lose five percent of their value this time. Thun says: “Other large corporations like Siemens are splitting up and can therefore work more agile.”

Siemens had spun off the electrical divisions Energy and the medical technology Healthineers in the past few years. In the Interbrand ranking, Siemens rose by five percent and has a brand value of eleven billion euros.

Sephora is new to the leaderboard

The French cosmetics chain Sephora (100th place) is new in the ranking of the 100 most valuable brands. It belongs to the French luxury goods group LVMH, which has four brands in the top 100 with the handbag manufacturer Louis Vuitton (13th place), the jeweler Tiffany & Co. (92nd place), the cognac producer Hennessy (95th place) and Sephora.

In any case, the value of the brands in the luxury industry in the Interbrand ranking has risen by nine percent over the past five years. Only the brands of technology companies (plus twelve percent) and sports equipment manufacturers (plus eleven percent) grew in value even faster.

What Thun says applies to all industries: “After the pandemic, all brands can move forward, provided they address major societal challenges such as climate change.”

More: Companies benefit from the upswing: brand values ​​are increasing sharply worldwide.

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