2014 BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands Unveiled

BEIJING, May 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — China’s Tencent has emerged as the fastest growing brand in the world, in the 2014 BrandZ^TM Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brand ranking. The brand almost doubled its value to $54 billion to rise to No.14 ranked brand globally. In the process it overtook China Mobile as the most valuable Asian brand.

Globally, Google has overtaken Apple to become the world’s most valuable global brand in the 2014, worth $159 billion, an increase of 40% year on year.

After three years at the top, Apple slipped to No.2 on the back of a 20% decline in brand value, to $148 billion. Whilst Apple remains a top performing brand, there is a growing perception that it is no longer redefining technology for consumers, reflected by a lack of dramatic new product launches. The world’s leading B2B brand, IBM, held onto its No.3 position with a brand value of $108 billion.

Deepender Rana, Managing Director of Millward Brown Greater China, commented “With 11 brands in the Top 100, China continues to have the largest representation from Asia. However, Chinese brands should not be complacent about the need to continuously invest their brand-building, as apart from the technology brands, other brands saw significant fluctuations. There is a need for the big SOE brands to become more market-oriented, and for Chinese brands to go abroad to become truly global.”

On Tencent’s rise, Rana said “The big story here is that a market-driven Chinese brand is now at the top, rather than a SOE that might have benefited from being a monopoly. Tencent continues to innovate and increasingly plays a bigger role in helping people to organise their lives, like other successful brands such as Google and Facebook.”

Nick Cooper, Managing Director of Millward Brown Optimor, commented on the number one brand, “Google has been hugely innovative in the last year with Google Glass, investments in artificial intelligence and a multitude of partnerships that see its Android operating system becoming embedded in other goods such as cars. All of this activity sends a very strong signal to consumers about what Google is about and it has coincided with a slowdown at Apple.”

“This year’s index highlights the end of the recession, with a strong recovery in valuations and, for the first time, real growth across every category and the Top 100 as a whole,” said David Roth, CEO of The Store, WPP. “What’s remarkable is the way that strong brands have led the recovery. Seventy-one of the brands listed in our 2014 Top 100 were there in 2008. Despite the financial turmoil and the digital disruption that have decimated many businesses during the last few years, these brands have remained in the ranking, proving the durability of strong brands.”

The BrandZTop 100 Most Valuable Global Brands study, commissioned by WPP and conducted by Millward Brown Optimor, is now in its ninth year. It is the only ranking that uses the views of potential and current buyers of a brand, alongside financial data, to calculate brand value.

The combined value of the Top 100 has nearly doubled since the first ranking was produced in 2006. The Top 100 today are worth $2.9 trillion, an increase of 49% compared with the 2008 valuation, which marked the start of the banking and currency crisis.

The BrandZ Top 10 Most Valuable Global Brands 2014