Strong brands prove their resilience to recession in the fifth annual Millward Brown Optimor BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking released April 28. When most key financial indicators plummeted, the value of the top 100 brands rose by four percent 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.

"In the past, many companies were quick to cut their marketing spend during a down economy," said Joanna Seddon, CEO of Millward Brown Optimor. "A new trend has emerged in the wake of the recession as more companies realized the importance of maintaining and even increasing budgets to support brand loyalty and engagement."

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 percent. In third place, Apple’s brand value grew by 32 percent and is now worth US$83 billion, 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.

• All the BRICs in the Wall: The first Indian brand, ICICI Bank, enters the Top 100 at number 45. This is the first year that all members of the BRICs have been represented with new entrants from China, Russia and Brazil.

• Banking on Brands: Taking the BrandZ Top 100 as a portfolio and comparing it to the S&P 500 over the last five years reveals that US$1000 invested in the BrandZ Portfolio in 2006 would now be worth US$1185 compared to US$885 invested in the S&P 500, proving that strong brands outperform the stock market.

• Strong Brands Bounce Back Higher: Brands such as Samsung, the highest riser with an 80 percent growth in Brand Value, and Starbucks with an increase of 17 percent 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."

Download the complete BrandZ ranking, including regional and category breakdowns. The rankings are also available as a free application for the iPhone, Nokia and BlackBerry from http://www.brandz.com/mobile.

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