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Brand research firm Millward Brown announced its third annual BrandZ Top 100 Most Powerful Brands ranking on Monday.

The annual BrandZ study measures the brand equity of 50,000 global “consumer facing” brands, and has interviewed over 1 million consumers globally.

Consumer perception of a brand is a key input in determining brand value because brands are a combination of business performance, product delivery, clarity of positioning, and leadership.

In addition to utilising BrandZ data, the Top 100 ranking assesses Brand Value (using market and consumer research, in combination with financial data from Bloomberg and Datamonitor, to calculate and break-down intangible earnings), Brand Contribution (the brand’s effectiveness in driving business earnings), and Brand Momentum (an index of expected short-term brand growth).

The ranking takes into account regional variations since even for truly global brands measures of brand contribution might differ substantially across countries.

Vodafone was listed as the most powerful British brand with a value of $36,962 million. Since the last ranking Vodafone showed a +75 per cent increase in brand value and moved up the ranking 11 places.

Google’s top position was followed by GE with a brand value of $71.4bn and Microsoft at $70.8bn.

Although only six British brands meet the criteria of being a Top 100 global power brand, their combined value did better than average by rising 33 per cent - from $97,725 billion in 2006 to $127,220 billion in 2007 - compared to a rise of 21 per cent for the Top 100 as a whole.

The 2008 ranking is based on analysis of consumer opinion and publicly available financial data for the period January to December 2007.

Other British brands in the ranking were:

The ranking reflects the growing power of brands in driving business growth. Analysis shows that companies that own brands in the BrandZ Top 100 have significantly outperformed the stock market when compared to the S&P 500.

Joanna Seddon, CEO of Millward Brown Optimor, said that this year’s brand ranking demonstrated the importance of investing in brands, especially in times of market turmoil.

“Strong brands generate superior returns and protect businesses from risk. Our data shows that strong brands continue to outperform weak ones in terms of market share and share price during recessions,” she added.

Warwick Nash, CEO for the UK and Ireland at Millward Brown, added that the results this year highlighted the strength of those British brands that have global clout and are leveraging their brands to help aid their growth.

“This ranking is a wake-up call for companies to invest in the power of their brands if they want to grow their business or sustain it in tougher times,” he warned.

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