Most Valuable Global Brands Recovering Faster Than S&P 500

Slightly off-topic, but likely worth a look to anyone with a vested interest in how the global economy fares (which means pretty much everyone reading this blog): Millward Brown Optimor has compared the financial performance of its list of most valuable brands – you know, the one that pegs Google to be the most valuable at a whopping $100 billion – with the S&P 500 as a whole.

The analysis shows the top 100 brands, which Millward Brown refers to as the BrandZ Portfolio and includes many technology companies like Apple, Vodafone, Microsoft, Nokia, BlackBerry, Intel and others, are recovering from the recession at a faster pace than the market. As the chart above shows, the most valuable global brands have been outperforming the S&P 500 for a number of years now but show a much faster recovery from the recession than the market in recent months.

The BrandZ Portfolio is now worth 28% more than the S&P 500, and it has returned to profit (+5.6%) ahead of the market. I’m just happy to see both lines on the chart are showing an uptick in the first place.

For your reference: the BrandZ study, commissioned by Millward Brown Optimor owner WPP , measures the brand equity of thousands of global “consumer facing” and B2B brands, and including over 1 million consumers from more than 20 countries. The ranking is calculated using a methodology called “Economic Use”, taking into account the role that brands play in purchase decisions and identifying what proportion of the business value can be attributed purely to the brand. Besides inputs from the BrandZ study, the ranking uses financial data from Bloomberg and market and product data from Datamonitor. The ranking takes into account regional variations since even for truly global brands measures of brand contribution might differ substantially across countries.