Brand Z

Brand Z

BrandZ is a brand equity database. It holds data from over 650,000 consumers and professionals across 31 countries, comparing over 23,000 brands. The database is used to estimate brand valuations, and each year since 2006, has been used to generate a list of the top 100 global brands.

According to BrandZ, "Brand value is the financial value of a brand defined as the sum of all earnings that a brand is expected to generate." BrandZ collects data annually from consumers, with each person asked to evaluate brands in a competitive context from a category they shop in. This yields opinions from people who know the category and therefore can judge a brand based on the attributes that are important to them. Sectors covered include: consumer packaged goods (FMCG), retail/e-commerce, long purchase cycle brands, service, and corporate. Using this data, BrandZ attempts to compute numbers which quantify the degree of consumer loyalty to each brand, and the brands' growth potentials.

The credibility of the Interbrand and BrandZ league tables have been cast into doubt by an article written in Marketing Week by Mark Ritson. The lack of clear definitions and valuation dates in the both companies methodology raise questions about the subjectivity involved in brand valuations. Being part of multinational advertising groups, Interbrand and Millward Brown also suffer from the risk of objectivity. Transparency and objectivity are two of the requirements of the ISO 10668 standard of monetary brand valuations.