Brandirectory (http://brandirectory.com/home) calls itself "the ultimate collection of
information for the world's largest brands." It is operated by Brand
Finance Plc, founded in 1996 and based in London with offices in 19 other
locations throughout the world. Brand Finance provides valuations of companies'
brands and other intangible assets for accounting, tax, and legal purposes and
for commercial transactions including acquisitions, divestitures, licensing,
and joint ventures.
I went looking for global brand directories because I
wanted to be able to identify the home country for several brands that I was
used to seeing. Ever since I moved to Spain, I've been running into many brands
that I had assumed were American, but I am discovering they are not. There are
several global brand rankings available; I explored three major providers.
Global Brand
Directories
The first directory I found
made the country identification process easy. Interbrand's Best Global Brands
2011 chart of the top 100 brands (www.interbrand.com/en/best-global-brands/best-global-brands-2008/best-global-brands-2011.aspx) provides the region/country listing right between
the name of the brand and the sector in which it does business. The Interbrand
list has a handy +Expand box to the left of each ranked brand, so you can click
to see 200 words or so describing the brand and its prospects. HTC, a new entry
from Taiwan in 2011 at no. 98, has "surpassed Nokia to become the
third-largest smartphone maker in the world in market value, placing it only
behind Apple and Samsung." Other factors shown for the top 100 brands are
the previous year's ranking, the brand value in $m, and the percent change in
value since last year. Interbrand provides rankings back to 2001, and other
reports, charts, interviews and articles are available from its website.
Another ranking is provided by Millward Brown, a
global research agency specializing in advertising, marketing communications,
media, and brand equity research since 1973. With 79 offices in 51 countries,
Millward Brown works with 90% of the top global brands. At their BrandZ
Rankings page (www.millwardbrown.com/BrandZ/) you can download a Top 100 Chart and the full report
of its rankings in 13 categories. The BrandZ Rankings Top 100 chart, presented
in PDF, does not identify the brand's country of origin, nor does it have the
handy-dandy text expansion describing the brand, but it does show ranking,
valuation, and percent of brand change valuation since last year.
I was intrigued by the presence of some brands that I
had not seen on the Interbrand Best Global Brands chart, but the top ten were
similar in composition if not exact rank. Both lists shared Apple, Google, IBM,
McDonald's, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and GE in the top ten. BrandZ also lists
AT&T, Marlboro, and China Mobile in their top ten; Interbrand lists Intel,
Walt Disney, and HP. Comparing the entire 100 for each agency, there were 46
brands in common, which means that 108 were unique to one of the two lists.
Doubtless the differences can be explained by a close reading of the
methodology of each (presented on the respective sites). as well as a difference
in timing: Intergroup publishes its list in October and BrandZ in May).
Brandirectory
Both Interbrand and BrandZ provide good lists, but
Brandirectory is the CyberSelection for the simple reason that its
"encyclopedia" of brands includes 500 rather than 100. The top ten on
its homepage (http://brandirectory.com/home) come out as Google, Microsoft, Walmart, IBM,
Vodafone, Bank of America, GE, Apple, Wells Fargo, and AT&T--giving four
names that were not on either of the two previous lists.
Click on the More link next to "the top 500
brands" at the center of the homepage to go to the complete list. Brands
are presented in tabular format, 50 to a page, ten HTML pages in all. There are
columns for this year's rank; last year's rank; a red, green, or yellow arrow
showing movement; logo file; name of brand; country; brand value (USD millions)
for this year and last; Brand Rating, this year and last; and Market Cap (USD
millions), this year and last. Data may be sorted by each of the columns
instantaneously with a single click--or click twice to put into descending
order.
Each brand is linked to a profile, but in order to see
profiles, you must register--a free, relatively fast, and privacy-retaining
operation.
Profile Pages
I thought that Vodafone was a Spanish brand, because I
first saw Vodafone in Spain, it is ubiquitous there, and it uses an
"f" instead of "ph," but I was mistaken. It is a brand of
Global Telecommunications Company, headquartered in London--the world's largest
telecom company measured by revenues and second largest (behind China Mobile)
measured by subscribers. Vodafone operates networks in over 30 countries and
shares partner networks in an additional 40, including owning 45% of Verizon
Wireless in the US. Brand performance figures for the past four years were
available on the Vodafone profile page, including brand value, brand rating,
and enterprise value. Brandirectory also shows user ratings in several
categories: Value for money, Reliability, Performance, Corporate
responsibility, and Emotional attachment. Vodafone had only earned two or three
stars, out of five, for each of these categories, but those scores were based
on only three votes. I clicked on the "click here to vote" link and
put in my ratings, but the resulting scores did not change appreciably. My
three co-voters obviously had greater emotional attachment to Vodafone than I
do.
Also available on the profile page are League Tables,
showing ranks of this company in all tables maintained by Brand Finance. In
addition to ranking no. 5 in the BrandFinance Global 500, Vodafone ranks no.1
in the BrandFinance Top 500 Telecom Brands. You can click through to either of
these tables from the League Table link. Also prominent on this page in early
November was a promotion for an interview with Vodafone group chief commercial
officer Morten Lundal in issue 1 of Brand Finance Journal. The full text
of this new quarterly is available free online
(http://www.brandfinance.com/knowledge_centre/articles/brand-finance-journal-issue-1).
Search, Browse and Compare
A series of links across the top of any Brandirectory
page leads to some useful information and options. The League Tables link lists
25 specific or historic brand listings, including the Top 20 Airline Brands,
Top 50 Cosmetics Brands, and the China 100 (for 2010). A Search link allows you
to search by a single brand name. Browse opens a map of the world to browse by
geography; but you can also browse by 66 industry groups, or other attributes
(brand rating, brand name A-Z, brand value, and user rating).
A Compare Brands link opens a deceptively simple page
allowing you to search for a brand by name. If the brand you enter is in the
database, you can click a checkbox in front of the name, then search another
name, click it and add it to a list to do a cross-comparison. I searched and
compared Alcampo, Carrefour, and Eroski, three hypermarkets popular in Spain.
The series of resulting comparison tables (Brand Value/Enterprise Value, Brand
Ratings, Market Cap, and Brand/enterprise value vs. brand rating) showed me
quickly that Carrefour, a French brand, easily outweighed the others. I then
removed Alcampo and Eroski from the comparison and added Walmart. The resulting
comparison may be viewed online, downloaded in PDF, or emailed (a link to the
online version). Strangely, the email arrives with only a "Please click
here" on an ominous black screen with a subject line saying "(your
email address) sent you a brand comparison on brandirectory.com." It's
probably a good idea to advise your recipients separately that it is safe to
click this link.
Following up on my earlier comparison of the
Interbrand and BrandZ lists, where we found less than 50% congruence between
the two lists, I checked and determined that all 46 of the brands common to
those two lists were also in the Brandirectory. Only a few of the 108 brands
unique to one of those two lists were not in the larger Brandirectory: Armani,
Ferrari, and Sprite from the Interbrand list, and Deutsche Telekom, Pampers,
Tencent, Subway, US Bank, Aldi, Sperbank, and MTC from the BrandZ list.
And One More...
Yet another brand site can help in searching for
information when you already have a brand name. Ranking the Brands
(www.rankingthebrands.com/) collects published brand ranking lists and has a
handy A to Z list of all brands named
(www.rankingthebrands.com/The-Brands-and-their-Rankings.aspx). Each name is
hyperlinked to a page for that brand that gives some ranking information, but
perhaps more importantly, offers a link to the website for the brand itself.
Since website links are not evident in the three directories discussed earlier,
the Ranking the Brands aggregation may be the quickest way to find background
information about an unknown brand.
Susanne
Bjørner provides editorial services to publishers, librarians, authors, and
researchers from a base in Spain. Contact her at bjorner@earthlink.net or www.bjorner.info.
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