Tech companies amongst most regonised brands

Strong brands prove their resilience to economic downturn in the fifth annual Millward Brown Optimor BrandZ Top100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking released today. When most key financial indicators plummeted, the value of the top 100 brands rose by 4% in the last year to more than US$2 trillion. The BrandZ Top 100, commissioned by WPP, is the only valuation in the world that takes into account customers’ opinions on brands and demonstrates this with a dollar value.

“Nine of the top 10 global brands have a strong brand history or presence in Australia,” said Daren Poole, Chief Client Officer of Millward Brown in Australia. “Our research shows brand has become increasingly important to Australian consumers, with 89% saying brand plays a role in their purchasing decisions. This is slightly ahead of the global average and represents a 17% increase since we initiated the BrandZ survey in Australia 10 years ago.”

Other key findings include:

• Tech Takes All: Technology brands demonstrated their pervasiveness in our daily lives. Google leads as the Most Valuable Global Brand worth US$114 billion. IBM was second at US$86 billion, an increase of 30%. In third place, Apple’s brand value grew by 32% and is now worth US$83 billion, while Microsoft was fourth with a value of US$76 billion.
• Social Media in your Face(book): Facebook, the popular social networking site, entered the technology sector ranking for the first year with a brand value of US$5.5 billion. Use of social media was a key trend across many of the successful brands this year - for example, HSBC’s highly successful Expat Explorer online community.
• Strong Brands Bounce Back Higher: Brands such as Samsung, the highest riser with an 80% growth in Brand Value, and Starbucks, with an increase of 17%, are evidence that businesses with strong brands are able to recover from adversity faster.

Commenting on the ranking, Eileen Campbell, Global CEO of Millward Brown, said: “This ranking has elevated the importance of building brands among some of the world’s most successful companies. CEOs and CFOs around the world should be asking their brand and marketing teams how they can leverage brand to both protect and grow the business.”