Here is the world’s most valuable brands for 2006 according to a study done by BusinessWeek. I have sorted and presented them according to the relative magnitude of their brand value – the area of each circle represents the worth of the brand within.
Once put on a chart like this, it is very easy to notice the relative (and rapidly diminishing) worth of brands down the list. Some of the brands that I grew up with, or are very familiar with, are hardly visible when compared to behemoths like Coca-Cola and Microsoft.
While brands are intangible, their worth are far from trivial. Little circles may not show them clearly, but the worth of the top ten brands (almost $400 billion) would eclipse the Gross Domestic Product (PPP) of the world’s 80 poorest countries ($350billion). Or perhaps another way to illustrate it – if we place the country’s GDP within the brand-chart, Kuwait’s entire economy would sit just about where GE is now; meanwhile, Iceland would be as difficult to spot as UPS; and Brunei can snuggle comfortably with MTV (bottom left corner, smallest circle).
And I thought they were just some silly marques.
