New York and London, 2019/6/19 – The Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB) has announced that Brand Finance’s Brand Value Rankings have been certified through the Marketing Metric Audit Protocol (MMAP), the formal process for validating the relationship between marketing measurement and financial performance. The audit is now included in the MMAP Metric Catalog.
Brand Finance’s Brand Value Rankings are a global study of brand strength and value, across more than 40 sectors and 40 countries, based on a transparent methodology and using publicly available data.
The valuation methodology used is the Royalty Relief method, which models the expected royalties that a business would have to pay to license the brands it uses. These brand royalties are forecast and discounted to give a net present value of the brand.
The valuation assumptions are influenced by the Brand Strength Index (BSI), which is a balanced scorecard of brand strength metrics in three main areas – Marketing Investment, Stakeholder Equity and Business Performance – and includes Brand Finance’s proprietary consumer market research.
According to the audit, “Brand Finance’s Brand Value Rankings create an easily understandable measure that quantifies the importance of a brand to the business, its size and influence, while also facilitating tracking over time and competitor comparison.”
Brand Finance puts approximately 5,000 brands to the test each year, tracking the movements, trends and response to events. The Brand Value Rankings are used to compare the most valuable and strongest brands globally, across sectors and geographies, and between nations.
“The Brand Finance assessment was among the most extensive to date,” said Frank Findley, MASB Executive Director and Chief Advisor of the MMAP Center. “Of particular note was the inclusion of both brand strength and brand value metrics. Not only did this allow Brand Finance to bridge the gap between marketing metrics and financial metrics, they showed an emerging relationship to share price.”
“I am delighted that the methodology we use to produce our annual rankings on the most valuable and strongest brands has been certified by MASB,” said David Haigh, CEO of Brand Finance. “At Brand Finance, we strive towards providing a mutually intelligible language for marketing and finance teams. We look forward to working together with MASB in the future to support the development of accountable marketing standards and practices.”
The MMAP assessment provides vendors and users of marketing performance metrics with a systematic way of thinking about specific metrics with criteria for assessing their usefulness, their relationships with one another, and their relationships to measures of financial performance.
ENDS
About MASB, the Marketing Accountability Standards Board
MASB is an organization of top-tier marketers, measurement providers, industry associations and business academics devoted to establishing and advancing accountable marketing practices that drive business growth with tools like the MMAP Metric Catalog and the Continuous Improvement in Return Assessment. For more information, visit themasb.org or email info@themasb.org.
About Brand Finance
Brand Finance is the world’s leading independent brand valuation consultancy. Brand Finance was set up in 1996 with the aim of ‘bridging the gap between marketing and finance’. For more than 20 years, Brand Finance has helped companies and organizations of all types to connect their brands to the bottom line.
Brand Finance puts thousands of the world’s biggest brands to the test every year, evaluating which are the strongest and most valuable. Brand Finance helped craft the internationally recognised standard on Brand Valuation – ISO 10668, and the recently approved standard on Brand Evaluation – ISO 20671. For more information, visit brandfinance.com or email enquiries@brandfinance.com.
Brand Finance is the world’s leading brand valuation consultancy. Bridging the gap between marketing and finance for more than 25 years, Brand Finance evaluates the strength of brands and quantifies their financial value to help organizations of all kinds make strategic decisions.
Headquartered in London, Brand Finance has offices in over 20 countries, offering services on all continents. Every year, Brand Finance conducts more than 5,000 brand valuations, supported by original market research, and publishes over 100 reports which rank brands across all sectors and countries.
Brand Finance also operates the Global Brand Equity Monitor, conducting original market research annually on over 5,000 brands, surveying more than 150,000 respondents across 38 countries and 31 industry sectors. Combining perceptual data from the Global Brand Equity Monitor with data from its valuation database enables Brand Finance to arm brand leaders with the data and analytics they need to enhance brand and business value.
Brand Finance is a regulated accountancy firm, leading the standardization of the brand valuation industry. Brand Finance was the first to be certified by independent auditors as compliant with both ISO 10668 and ISO 20671 and has received the official endorsement of the Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB) in the United States.
Brand is defined as a marketing-related intangible asset including, but not limited to, names, terms, signs, symbols, logos, and designs, intended to identify goods, services, or entities, creating distinctive images and associations in the minds of stakeholders, thereby generating economic benefits.
Brand strength is the efficacy of a brand’s performance on intangible measures relative to its competitors. Brand Finance evaluates brand strength in a process compliant with ISO 20671, looking at Marketing Investment, Stakeholder Equity, and the impact of those on Business Performance. The data used is derived from Brand Finance’s proprietary market research programme and from publicly available sources.
Each brand is assigned a Brand Strength Index (BSI) score out of 100, which feeds into the brand value calculation. Based on the score, each brand is assigned a corresponding Brand Rating up to AAA+ in a format similar to a credit rating.
Brand Finance calculates the values of brands in its rankings using the Royalty Relief approach – a brand valuation method compliant with the industry standards set in ISO 10668. It involves estimating the likely future revenues that are attributable to a brand by calculating a royalty rate that would be charged for its use, to arrive at a ‘brand value’ understood as a net economic benefit that a brand owner would achieve by licensing the brand in the open market.
The steps in this process are as follows:
1 Calculate brand strength using a balanced scorecard of metrics assessing Marketing Investment, Stakeholder Equity, and Business Performance. Brand strength is expressed as a Brand Strength Index (BSI) score on a scale of 0 to 100.
2 Determine royalty range for each industry, reflecting the importance of brand to purchasing decisions. In luxury, the maximum percentage is high, while in extractive industry, where goods are often commoditised, it is lower. This is done by reviewing comparable licensing agreements sourced from Brand Finance’s extensive database.
3 Calculate royalty rate. The BSI score is applied to the royalty range to arrive at a royalty rate. For example, if the royalty range in a sector is 0-5% and a brand has a BSI score of 80 out of 100, then an appropriate royalty rate for the use of this brand in the given sector will be 4%.
4 Determine brand-specific revenues by estimating a proportion of parent company revenues attributable to a brand.
5 Determine forecast revenues using a function of historic revenues, equity analyst forecasts, and economic growth rates.
6 Apply the royalty rate to the forecast revenues to derive brand revenues.
7 Discount post-tax brand revenues to a net present value which equals the brand value.
Brand Finance has produced this study with an independent and unbiased analysis. The values derived and opinions presented in this study are based on publicly available information and certain assumptions that Brand Finance used where such data was deficient or unclear. Brand Finance accepts no responsibility and will not be liable in the event that the publicly available information relied upon is subsequently found to be inaccurate. The opinions and financial analysis expressed in the study are not to be construed as providing investment or business advice. Brand Finance does not intend the study to be relied upon for any reason and excludes all liability to any body, government, or organisation.
The data presented in this study form part of Brand Finance's proprietary database, are provided for the benefit of the media, and are not to be used in part or in full for any commercial or technical purpose without written permission from Brand Finance.
