Best Global Brands

The best brands follow their stakeholders’ journeys so that they provide effective, consistent and appropriate messaging throughout the experience.

All businesses are under immense pressure to provide results quickly. The Best Global Brands study provides a compelling case that those which place high importance on managing the economic value of their intangible assets, and primarily their brands, consistently outperform basic economic measures.

Tangible asset growth is often a slow process that requires deep and resource-intensive long term planning. Intangible asset growth, on the other hand, involves getting the best out of something that the company already owns. It’s a case of managing these assets more effectively, and it’s an efficient method of adding very real value to business.

The turnaround brands all show a rise in their brand value because they have understood and adopted the theme of brand value creation and the brand management practices associated with this.

The principal strength is evidently Demand Creation, a simple theme that requires the brand to move and evolve with consumer attitudes and behaviors and create a motivating strategy that it delivers against. Once demand is created, management processes need to be put in place to ensure the brand lives through all its touch points, and that the business plans ahead effectively and efficiently to build value into its brand. The themes are intrinsically linked, and to master them all takes leadership and an organization-wide commitment to building the value of the brand. As we’ve seen, the rewards are high.

Correspondingly, the brands that have suffered a decline in brand value seem to have lost the ability to create demand. They have all been hugely successful businesses and brands in the past and the future is there for them to dictate.

The turnaround brands all show a sense of understanding consumers needs and desires, and rediscovering the appetite to meet their customer promise.

After all, what is a brand if not a promise to the customer? The brands that have failed to do this need to rediscover the connection with their markets and focus on the themes of brand value creation.