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Brand Finance's Ten Most Powerful And Valuable Brands In The World

This article is more than 8 years old.

Disney is now the world's most powerful brand, attributing the runaway success of the Star Wars brand and The Force Awakens movie to its top slot.

Every year the brand valuation and strategy consultancy Brand Finance evaluates thousands of the world’s top brands to determine which are the most powerful and which are the most valuable to be ranked in their annual Brand Finance Global 500 report.

Factors such as familiarity, loyalty, promotion, marketing investment, staff satisfaction and corporate reputation are all taken into account to calculate the Top 10. According to the results,  Apple is still the world’s most valuable brand, up 14% to $145.9 billion. Unsurprisingly VW's brand value fell by $12 billion following the emissions scandal last year. Four of the 10 fastest growing brands are Chinese, according to Brand Finance.

  • Lego loses its top spot due to a series of controversies such as the fine by German regulators for attempting to prevent retailers from discounting its products.
  • Apple's brand value remains as strong as ever, up 14% thanks to the huge success of the iPhone 6 and recently released iPhone 6s

The Most Powerful Brands In The World

The research also suggests that if you were to invest in just these 10 companies your investment would significantly outperform the S&P 500 average.

Between 2007 and 2015, the average return across the S&P was 49%. However by using Brand Finance’s data, investors could have generated returns of up to 97%. Investing in companies with a brand value to enterprise value (BV/EV) ratio of greater than 30% would have generated returns of 94%. Investing exclusively in the 10 companies with the highest BV/EV ratios would have resulted in a 97% return.

The report also give insight into the top 10 movers and losers from 2015.

  • Apple remains at the top a second year
  • Google moves up to second place, pushing Samsung to third place
  • Amazon moves up 4 places to take the fourth slot

You can read the full report from Brand Finance here and read Forbes own Most Valuable Brands list here too.

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