Technology companies once again dominate the list of the world’s most valuable brands.
Apple is the most valuable brand in the latest listing by Brand Finance. Although not quite on a par with Ferrari or Lego in terms of brand strength, Apple still has a very powerful brand, and it is set apart by the company’s ability to monetise that brand.
Brand Finance CEO David Haigh comments: “The Apple brand is worth $128-billion. That value is huge not just in its own terms but also as a proportion of Apple’s record-breaking corporate valuation. It goes to show how valuable brands are as business assets, and how important it is to manage them well.”
Following Apple in the list of the most valuable brands are Samsung, Google, Microsoft, Verizon, AT&T, Amazon, General Electric, China Mobile and Walmart – with eight of the top 10 being pure technology companies.
Meanwhile, Twitter is the fastest growing brand; it has almost tripled its brand value in a year, increasing from $1,5-billion in early 2014 to $4,4-billion now.
Fellow technology giants Baidu and Facebook have also grown strongly, by 161% and 146% respectively. The three appear to be more effectively managing the transition to mobile advertising than other technology players such as Google, boosting expectations of the financial potential of their brands.
Meanwhile, Lego has overtaken Ferrari as the world’s most powerful brand, scoring highly on a wide variety of measures on Brand Finance’s Brand Strength Index such as familiarity, loyalty, promotion, staff satisfaction and corporate reputation.
Ferrari remains a very strong brand but its power is slowly diminishing. It has now gone several years without an F1 title and last season struggled even to mount a challenge. The sheen of glory from its 1990s golden era is beginning to wear thin. In fact, Ferrari now comes in at number nine on the list of the top 10 most powerful brands.
PWC is in the second spot, followed by Red Bull, McKinsey, Unilever, L’Oreal, Burberry and Rolex, with Nike rounding out the top 10 after Ferrari.
