Category: Top 100

The Top 100 Most Powerful Brands of 2016

Top 100 Most Powerful Brands of 2016

Each year, Tenet Partners analyzes the data in the CoreBrand^® Index (CBI) to determine the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands based on high awareness and positive brand perceptions. 2016 marks the ninth year of the report. For a comprehensive look at this year’s findings, including sector trends and analysis, download the full report.

Higher rank vs. 2015
Lower rank vs. 2015
Change of less than +/-2 or fewer ranks year-over-year

Company	BrandPower Rank	vs. 2015	Industry	Familiarity	Favorability
Coca-Cola	1	0	Beverages	0	0
Hershey	2	0	Food	0	0
Bayer	3	0	Chemicals	0	+1
Walt Disney	4	0	Hotel & Entertainment	0	+1
Apple	5	0	Computers & Peripherals	0	+1
Microsoft	6	+1	Computer Software	0	0
PepsiCo	7	0	Beverages	+1	0
Johnson & Johnson	8	-2	Medical	0	0
American Express	9	0	Financial	0	0
Google – Alphabet Corp.	10	+5	Internet	+1	+1
Harley-Davidson	11	-1	Automotive	0	0
Kellogg	12	-1	Food	0	0
Visa	13	0	Financial	0	0
Mastercard	14	0	Financial	0	+1
McDonald’s	15	-3	Restaurants	0	0
General Mills	16	0	Food	0	0
Colgate-Palmolive	17	+2	Household	0	0
General Electric	18	-1	Electronics	0	0
Campbell Soup	19	-1	Food	0	0
BMW	20	+1	Automotive	+1	0
Starbucks	21	-1	Restaurants	0	0
Yahoo	22	0	Internet	0	0
Exxon Mobil	23	+1	Petroleum Refining	+1	0
IBM	24	+8	Consulting	+1	0
FedEx	25	-2	Transport	+1	0
Nestlé	26	+2	Food	0	+1
Sony	27	0	Electronics	0	0
Revlon	28	-2	Household	0	0
eBay	29	+11	Internet	+1	+1
Whirlpool	30	+5	Home Appliances	+1	0
Estée Lauder	31	-6	Household	0	0
Barnes & Noble	32	-3	Retailers	0	0
AT&T	33	-3	Telecom	0	0
Nike	34	+4	Athletic	+1	0
UPS	35	-1	Transport	0	0
Avon Products	36	+1	Household	0	0
Volkswagen	37	-6	Automotive	0	0
Kraft Foods	38	+3	Food	0	0
Samsung	39	+9	Semiconductors	+1	+1
Honda	40	-4	Automotive	0	0
Walgreens	41	-8	Pharmacy Serv.	0	0
Mattel	42	-3	Hotel & Entertainment	+1	0
Toyota	43	-1	Automotive	0	0
Hilton Hotels & Resorts	44	+6	Hotel & Entertainment	+1	+1
Target	45	0	Retailers	0	0
L’Oréal	46	0	Household	0	0
Clorox	47	+11	Household	+1	+1
Lowe’s	48	-5	Retailers	0	0
Sunoco	49	0	Petroleum Refining	+1	0
Sharp	50	+4	Electronics	+1	+1
Volvo	51	-7	Automotive	0	0
Ford Motor	52	-1	Automotive	+1	0
Walmart	53	-2	Retailers	+1	0
Amazon	54	+15	Internet	+1	+1
Gap	55	-3	Retailers	0	0
Home Depot	56	-3	Retailers	0	0
Wendy’s	57	-1	Restaurants	0	0
Morgan Stanley	58	+2	Brokerage	0	+1
Eastman Kodak	59	-12	Photography	0	-1
Procter & Gamble	60	-1	Household	0	+1
Bed Bath & Beyond	61	-4	Retailers	0	0
Boeing	62	-1	Aerospace	0	+1
Hewlett-Packard	63	0	Computers & Peripherals	+1	0
Panasonic	64	0	Electronics	0	+1
Goodyear Tire & Rubber	65	+1	Rubber & Plastics	+1	0
Ralph Lauren	66	-4	Apparel, Shoes	+1	0
Tyson Foods	67	0	Food	+1	0
Bank of America	68	+12	Commercial Banks	+1	+1
Charles Schwab	69	-1	Brokerage	0	+1
Verizon	70	+4	Telecom	+1	0
Yamaha	71	+5	Automotive	+1	0
J.C. Penney	72	+3	Retailers	0	+1
New York Times	73	-3	Publishing & Printing	0	0
General Motors	74	-9	Automotive	0	0
Kohl’s	75	-3	Retailers	+1	0
La-Z-Boy	76	+1	Furniture	+1	0
Anheuser-Busch InBev	77	+1	Beverages	+1	0
Bristol-Myers Squibb	78	+3	Pharma	0	+1
CBS	79	-6	Hotel & Entertainment	0	0
Time Warner	80	+7	Hotel & Entertainment	+1	+1
Marriott	81	+3	Hotel & Entertainment	0	+1
J.P. Morgan Chase	82	+3	Commercial Banks	0	+1
Sherwin-Williams	83	-4	Chemicals	+1	0
Western Union	84	-13	Financial	-1	0
DuPont	85	-2	Chemicals	+1	0
Capital One	86	+7	Financial	+1	+1
Best Buy	87	+4	Retailers	0	+1
Costco Wholesale	88	+2	Retailers	0	+1
Nissan Motor	89	-1	Automotive	+1	0
Michelin	90	+4	Rubber & Plastics	+1	0
Bloomin’ Brands Inc.	91	-5	Restaurants	+1	0
Wells Fargo	92	+10	Commercial Banks	+1	+1
Allstate	93	-4	Insurance	0	0
Nintendo	94	-12	Electronics	0	0
Macy’s	95	+12	Retailers	+1	+1
Tiffany & Co	96	-4	Retailers	+1	0
Canon	97	+6	Electronics	+1	+1
Intel	98	+1	Semiconductors	+1	0
American Airlines	99	+9	Transport	0	+1
Sprint Nextel	100	-3	Telecom	+1	+1

November 30, 2022

Invest in your brand. Invest in your future.
Understanding Brand Value Creation
A company’s brand is one of their most, if not the most, valuable asset they have. As an emerging example, companies such as Uber and Airbnb depend on the power of the brand to drive their business growth. To many, the brand is the company itself (Coke, GE, Nike, Mastercard), as it represents the myriad factors that contribute to its success. A brand is driven by the perceptions customers have adopted based upon its reputation, its favorability, and its perceived value. And these factors are driven by most everything a company does from the story it tells to the core values that define it, from the way it manages its daily operations to its ability to live up to its promises, from how it positions itself in the marketplace to how it meets consumer expectations – the very essence of a company becomes inextricably bound to its brand.
When a company gets it right—trust, affinity and allegiance are born— critical factors in driving favorable consumer and investor behavior.
When a company understands the role the brand plays in driving its success, it is better positioned to target and remedy weaknesses, and maximizes brand-building opportunities. At Tenet Partners, we’re able to derive the intelligence and insights necessary to measure a brand’s value with a precision that allows a company to shape it, manage it, increase its value and gain the competitive advantage over time.
The most powerful brands of 2016 accomplish this by:
- Aligning business strategy, brand innovation and marketing efforts.
- Creating brand clarity through a well-defined ‘story’ throughout all communication channels —consumers, employees and investors.
- Possessing an unwavering commitment to delivering consistent results for customers over time.
Tenet Partners has developed a standard set of CoreBrand metrics and reporting methods that, in combination with our custom research and advisory services, allow us to more precisely identify specific strategies to increase a company’s ‘brand power.’
The data we use to create Tenet’s Top 100 report for 2016 is collected throughout the 2015 calendar year, and is derived from our CoreBrand Index. Insights are gleaned from surveying and analyzing approximately 1,000 different companies across 50 industries each year for over 25 years.
Tenet is the only company that provides digital access to consistent, highly stable, tracking data that spans decades. Quantitative research from 10,000 consumers and business decision makers measure brand awareness (Familiarity) and perception (Favorability) for each company in our index, which is then combined to calculate a company’s brand strength, or, as we call it – “BrandPower.”
Tenet’s Top 100 Most Powerful Brands of 2016 highlights the strongest brands we’ve tracked throughout the year. The companies that make it on our list have captured high awareness (Familiarity), and positive brand perception (Favorability) in the marketplace. Objective measurements of these core brand metrics often provide meaningful indicators of a company’s management effectiveness, and therefore financial performance.
It is important to note that Tenet’s CoreBrand Index is not a brand value ranking. Though brand valuation is an important metric for ongoing management of a brand; looking solely at brand valuation cannot illustrate the effectiveness of brand management. Many well-managed brands can have a lower brand value for a number of reasons. To this end, the CoreBrand Index is a reflection of excellent brand management.
Our report findings are based upon a full calendar year of data to support our brand rankings, which include over 10,000 interviews with influential decision makers with broad reach. Survey participants hail from the top 20% of corporations in the United States (based on revenue), are carefully screened, and represent investment communities, potential business partners and business customers and highly engaged consumers.
November 30, 2022
A message from our CEO and Chairman
Welcome to Tenet’s 2016 Top 100 Most Powerful Brands report.
The contribution that ‘intangible assets’ make to the US economy is undeniable. In fact, recent studies show that roughly 84% of the value of the S&P 500 is made up of intangible assets including corporate brands.^*
Although a company’s brand is considered an intangible asset with significant value, the value of a brand is not calculated on the corporate balance sheet until it is bought or sold. Most companies will at some point be acquired, merge, or buy other companies – but until one these events happen, brands are not managed as a balance sheet asset. Further to this point, leading companies invest significant resources in their brand-building initiatives, but management and investors don’t have a clear view into the brand and the true impact it has on the company’s value. Without question, management, boards and investors must understand how brand performance is linked to business performance and value creation.
To help companies determine their corporate brand performance and brand value, Tenet’s CoreBrand^® Index (CBI) was created to answer a single question – “What does a brand contribute to a company’s value?” Today, our CoreBrand Index is the only research methodology and analytical model that yields data from a continuous examination of a company’s brand and the factors that contribute to enterprise value.
Every year of over 25 consecutive years, we track nearly 1,000 different companies across 50 industries to develop the benchmark data for our CoreBrand Index. It is from this data that we derive the findings for our annual Top 100 Most Powerful Brands report. 2016 marks our 9th annual publication of this ranking.
This also marks a milestone for Tenet and the world of branding and marketing. CoreBrand Data provides the foundation for the first ever investable Index that identifies stocks that are exhibiting a discount of brand and intangible asset value to market capitalization. Developed by BrandTransact^® Worldwide, the launch of the BrandTransact^® 50 (BTW50) is a watershed moment, and we are proud to be a key partner in helping investors tap into unrealized value of companies whose share value has not yet been fully recognized by the US markets. Over a five-year period through August 2015, the BTW50 Index outperformed the S&P 500 by over 500 basis points.
We hope this report and the case studies within provide a deeper understanding of key trends for individual companies, for different sectors, and for the market as a whole. Ultimately our mission is to help executives and investors gain the knowledge they need to unlock the power of a company’s most important asset – their brand.
Congratulations to the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands of 2016.
Hampton Bridwell
CEO, Tenet Partners
James Gregory
Chairman, Tenet Partners
^* (Source: Ocean Tomo, LLC)
November 30, 2022
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Tenet Partners determine the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands?
Tenet derives its annual Top 100 Most Powerful Brands from its quantitative database – the CoreBrand Index (CBI) – the results from continuous benchmark tracking via surveys of nearly 1,000 different companies across 50 industries for over 25 years.
Each year, we survey approximately ten thousand influential decision makers on two key metrics: Familiarity and Favorability. Familiarity measures awareness of the brand. Favorability measures the perception of the brand, based on how it performs on various attributes.
Familiarity – This component is a weighted percentage of survey respondents who are familiar with the brand being evaluated. Familiarity is rated on a five-point scale. Respondents are considered to be familiar with a brand if they state that they know more than just the company name. Familiarity scores can range from 0 to 100.
Favorability – Those respondents familiar with the corporation are then asked about three attributes that together, form a Favorability score, also on a scale of 0 to 100.
Overall Reputation – Do you have a favorable impression of the corporate brand? What is your view of the corporate brand’s ability to drive growth over time?
Perception of Management – What is your perception of the company’s management? How would you assess the way senior leadership leads the enterprise and engages stakeholders? Does leadership have a future-forward outlook on the competition and the market in which it operates?
Investment Potential – Would you invest in this company? What do you think of the organization’s ability to secure future earnings and increase brand value over time?
These quantitative metrics, Familiarity and Favorability, are then combined into a composite score we call BrandPower – a standardized measure that can be used to objectively to compare brands both within and across industries. BrandPower is calculated as a function of Familiarity and Favorability, and then reported on a 100-point scale.
Why is measuring BrandPower important?
It is widely accepted that brands play a key role in financial performance. But how? Tenet Partners believes this relationship has much to do with overall business strategy as it does with the brand itself. For example, a company’s brand becomes more powerful when a company invests time and money into finding innovative ways to invest in and manage both its business and its brand.
Good management of the brand and of the company – results in two outcomes that have a measureable impact on brand reputation: Familiarity and Favorability. Measuring each of these objectively can be meaningful indicator of management effectiveness and often, financial performance.
A high BrandPower score means that a company’s brand management practices have placed it in good standing – people know it, and people like it. That means they are more likely to do business with the company, and invest in it.
Having a single score BrandPower is tremendously helpful in evaluating the performance of a company’s brand – allowing it to see the affects of their brand investment by tracking their own score over time. It enables easy comparison among competitors, against industry averages and against world-class brands. It also allows us to contrast multiple industries to better understand the market dynamics that continue to impact brands.
How is Tenet’s ranking of the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands unique compared to the way other companies rank brands?
Our approach is market-research based. By understanding the true strength of a brand, not just its monetary value, business decision makers can gain important intelligence for creating and maintaining an advantage in the many areas that define business success. Unlike other brand value measurements, Tenet’s BrandPower is based on quantitative measurements across a significant number of data points – as opposed to subjective industry-panel assessment traditionally used to determine a brand’s monetary value. Our method allows brands to be evaluated objectively, providing new and valuable information for investors and brand stewards as they determine a brand’s ability to impact business results.
Brand Valuation is becoming a more common practice among many brand-consulting firms. Is Tenet Partners able to conduct specific brand valuations for companies?
Yes. Our methodology is completely transparent and free of ‘black-box’ judgments. Instead, we leverage reliable, stable market research and BrandPower data and couple it with financial data from widely accepted business sources. With 25 years of proven research data, we can ensure consistent input to our model. This statistical model identifies the contribution of the brand based on market research and through regression models, and then evaluates it in the context of financial impact to determine brand dollar value.
Tenet’s Brand Equity Valuation is expressed in two ways:
Market Value: A brand’s market value rises and falls depending upon a company’s ability to achieve its key business objectives. This number tells the executives responsible for building the brand how hard that brand is working to build value for the company. As this measure rises and falls, the brand becomes more or less of a contributor to a company’s success. This is an ideal number for a company’s KPI dashboard and a reliable measure of brand performance in the context of a company’s overall financial health.
Dollar Value: The dollar value of a brand is a result of multiplying the percentage impact of the brand by the company’s market capitalization. As the company’s overall enterprise value fluctuates, this number can change day-to-day. It helps to communicate the brand’s asset value to senor leadership and other constituencies, ensuring that the brand is properly accounted for in M&A activity, royalty and licensing cases, along with additional reporting vehicles.
Understanding the market value and the dollar value of a brand can be useful in many ways. The percentage a brand contributes to a company’s success is important to brand stewards because it reveals objectively, how hard the brand is working to create value. The dollar value of the brand is important to senior management, as it identifies the asset value of the brand. As a result, leadership can better understand a brand’s worth to the company, and communicate effectively its value to shareholders and to other critical audiences.
Apple is the most ‘valuable’ brand in this year’s Top 100 brands, but Coke takes the lead as the #1 most ‘powerful’ brand. Why?
The Coca-Cola Company is the uncontested leader in terms of its BrandPower score. In our view, BrandPower is a measure of brand strength, based on successful brand management, and independent of brand value. By contrast, brand valuation is the output of a time-tested statistical model, measuring the impact of a company’s brand in the context of its financial performance. BrandPower is a predictive driver that a company can manage – through increased communication, product innovation, service development and so forth, to ultimately increase its brand value over time. It is for this reason that Tenet’s Top 100 Most Powerful Brands are ranked by an objective BrandPower score, and not on the basis of brand value.
Tenet has developed a proven Brand Equity Valuation model. While it functions independently of our Top 100 rankings (it does not inform the ranking order of the Top 100), it is used as an important benchmark along BrandPower insights, to provide a broader, more holistic perspective of how companies can measure their brand-building efforts.
It is worth noting that while Apple leads as the most valuable brand, boasting a brand value of $102.5 billion, their brand contribution to market capitalization is 17.3% – lagging behind Coke – whose brand contribution to market capitalization of $19.5%. Apple’s lower percentage numbers suggests that they have room to create additional value by continuing to strengthen its brand.
Well-known brands such as Facebook and LinkedIn are not part of the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands of 2016. Why?
The brands listed on the Tenet Top 100 Most Powerful Brands ranking must meet several criteria to be considered. They must be: A corporate brand (not a product or divisional brand), publicly traded in the U.S. and tracked in the CoreBrand Index for 5+ years. Brands such as Facebook and LinkedIn have not met these criteria, and have not yet been tracked in the CoreBrand Index for five years or longer. As a result, they did not qualify to make it onto our Top 100 ranking this year, but we look forward to seeing their positions in the future.
November 30, 2022

The Top 100 Most Powerful Brands of 2015

Each year, Tenet Partners analyzes the data in the CoreBrand^® Index (CBI) to determine the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands based on high awareness and positive brand perceptions. 2015 marks the eighth year of the report. For a comprehensive look at this year’s findings, including sector trends and analysis, download the full report.

Company	BrandPower Rank	vs. 2014	Industry	Familiarity	Favorability
Coca-Cola	1	0	Beverages	0	0
Hershey	2	0	Food	0	-1
Bayer	3	0	Chemicals	0	-1
Walt Disney	4	+2	Hotel & Entertainment	0	+1
Apple	5	+5	Computers & Peripherals	+1	+1
Johnson & Johnson	6	-2	Medical	0	-1
Microsoft	7	+4	Computer Software	0	0
PepsiCo	8	-1	Beverages	+1	0
American Express	9	-1	Financial	0	+1
Harley-Davidson	10	-5	Automotive	-1	-1
Kellogg’s	11	-2	Food	0	-1
McDonald’s	12	0	Restaurants	0	+1
Visa	13	0	Financial	0	-1
Mastercard	14	+1	Financial	0	-1
Google	15	+11	Internet	+1	+1
General Mills	16	+2	Food	+1	+1
General Electric	17	+3	Electronics	0	0
Campbell’s Soup	18	-4	Food	-1	-1
Colgate-Palmolive	19	-3	Household	+1	-1
Starbucks	20	-1	Restaurants	-1	+1
BMW	21	-4	Automotive	-1	-1
Yahoo	22	+6	Internet	+1	0
FedEx	23	-2	Transport	0	-1
ExxonMobil	24	+5	Petroleum Refining	+1	0
Estée Lauder	25	0	Household	0	-1
Revlon	26	-2	Household	0	-1
Sony	27	+4	Electronics	+1	-1
Nestlé	28	+7	Food	0	-1
Barnes & Noble	29	+5	Retailers	-1	-1
AT&T	30	+3	Telecom	+1	-1
Volkswagen	31	-4	Automotive	-1	-1
IBM	32	+13	Consulting	+1	-1
Walgreens	33	-10	Pharmacy Serv.	0	-1
UPS	34	-12	Transport	-1	-1
Whirlpool	35	+8	Home Appliances	+1	+1
Honda	36	-6	Automotive	0	-1
Avon Products	37	-5	Household	-1	-1
Nike	38	+4	Athletic	+1	-1
Mattel	39	-1	Hotel & Entertainment	0	-1
eBay	40	+13	Internet	0	+1
Kraft Foods	41	+5	Food	+1	-1
Toyota	42	-5	Automotive	0	-1
Lowe’s	43	-4	Retailers	0	-1
Volvo	44	-8	Automotive	-1	-1
Target	45	-4	Retailers	0	-1
L’Oréal	46	+2	Household	+1	0
Eastman Kodak	47	-7	Scient, Photo, Cntr Eq	+1	-1
Sunoco	48	+1	Petroleum Refining	+1	-1
Ford Motor	49	+2	Automotive	-1	+1
Gap	50	-6	Retailers	0	-1
Home Depot	51	-1	Retailers	-1	0
Walmart	52	+3	Retailers	+1	+1
Wendy’s	53	-6	Restaurants	-1	-1
Bed Bath & Beyond	54	-2	Retailers	0	-1
Clorox	55	+10	Household	+1	+1
Procter & Gamble	56	+4	Household	+1	+1
Morgan Stanley	57	+9	Brokerage	0	+1
Boeing	58	-4	Aerospace	-1	0
Polo Ralph Lauren	59	-3	Apparel, Shoes	0	-1
Hewlett-Packard	60	+9	Computers & Peripherals	+1	+1
General Motors	61	0	Automotive	0	-1
Goodyear Tire & Rubber	62	+5	Rubber & Plastics	+1	0
Tyson Foods	63	-6	Food	-1	-1
Charles Schwab	64	+10	Brokerage	0	+1
Amazon	65	+20	Internet	+1	+1
New York Times	66	-7	Publishing & Printing	0	-1
Western Union	67	-9	Financial	-1	-1
Kohl’s	68	-4	Retailers	+1	-1
CBS	69	-6	Hotel & Entertainment	0	-1
Verizon	70	+1	Telecom	0	-1
J.C. Penney	71	+2	Retailers	0	+1
Yamaha	72	-10	Automotive	-1	-1
La-Z-Boy	73	-3	Furniture	0	-1
Sherwin-Williams	74	-2	Chemicals	0	-1
DirecTV Group	75	+1	Telecom	0	0
Bank of America	76	+5	Commercial Banks	+1	-1
Bristol-Myers Squibb	77	+1	Pharma	-1	+1
Nintendo	78	+4	Electronics	0	+1
DuPont	79	+1	Chemicals	-1	+1
Marriott	80	-5	Hotel & Entertainment	-1	-1
J.P. Morgan Chase	81	-8	Commercial Banks	0	+1
Time Warner	82	+8	Hotel & Entertainment	0	+1
Nissan Motor	83	-6	Automotive	-1	-1
Allstate	84	-5	Insurance	0	-1
Costco Wholesale	85	+2	Retailers	0	+1
Best Buy	86	+7	Retailers	+1	+1
Tiffany & Co	87	-1	Retailers	+1	-1
Capital One Financial	88	+11	Financial	-1	+1
Michelin	89	-6	Rubber & Plastics	-1	-1
Nokia	90	-6	Telecom	0	-1
Hormel Foods	91	-3	Food	+1	-1
Sprint	92	+5	Telecom	+1	+1
Foot Locker	93	-2	Retailers	0	-1
Intel	94	+14	Semiconductors	+1	+1
Xerox	95	-1	Office Equipment	-1	+1
Rite Aid	96	-4	Pharmacy Serv.	+1	-1
Wells Fargo	97	+13	Commercial Banks	+1	+1
Canon	98	+5	Electronics	+1	-1
Staples	99	-3	Office Equipment	0	-1
Family Dollar Stores	100	+7	Retailers	0	+1

November 30, 2022

BrandPower + Brand Equity Valuation = Deeper Insight
The corporate brand is one of a company’s most precious assets. It can be one of the greatest levers in building brand value. Beyond just building name recognition and reputation, a powerful brand is an accelerator – of growth, influence, and innovation. A powerful brand not only drives economic value, but also serves as the glue between a company’s actual business strategy and the ways in which it wins the minds and hearts of consumers. It is this power that the brand holds that ultimately determines whether people will buy its products and invest in the company.
BrandPower is a unique and useful quantitative measure of brand strength. It is, however, just one way of looking at brand performance. The more traditional view of a brand’s monetary value also has its place. When both are considered, it is possible to get a more complete, contextual view of a brand. We collect BrandPower data on such a large scale that it can produce information comparable to other key financial fundamentals. This solid foundation of data allows us to accurately generate a variety of useful metrics, such as Brand Equity Valuation and Communications Return-on-Investment.
BrandPower, through its Familiarity and Favorability metrics, enables prescriptive analysis of the brand for diagnostic purposes. This allows executives to assess strengths and weaknesses of the brand and identify where greater attention is needed. This information helps our clients to manage communications to enhance brand performance.
Brand Equity Valuation is the output of CoreBrand Analytics’ market value model. This unique valuation approach uses BrandPower in the context of the company’s financial statistics to determine how much of the company’s market capitalization can be assigned directly to the brand – typically 5 to 7 percent.
BRANDPOWER + BRAND EQUITY VALUATION = DEEPER INSIGHT
Apple
BrandPower Top 100 ranking: 5th
Brand Value $: 117.7B, the most valuable in the Top 100
CoreBrand Analytics Brand Equity Valuation produces two numbers: percentage of market capitalization attributable to the brand and the corresponding dollar value.
- Percentage tells the people responsible for building the brand how hard that brand is working to build value for the company. As this measure rises and falls, the brand becomes more or less of a contributor to a company’s success. This is an ideal number for a company’s KPI dashboard and a measure of brand performance in the context of overall financial health.
- Dollar value helps communicate the brand’s asset value to senior leadership and other constituencies, ensuring that the brand is properly accounted for in M&A activity, royalty and licensing cases and other reporting vehicles.
BRAND VALUE %
17.3% of market capitalization, much lower than the highest percentage in the Top 100 (20.1%).
WHY IT MATTERS
High BrandPower ranking combined with high dollar contribution indicates that the brand is very valuable. However, the relatively low percentage score suggests that Apple can create additional value by continuing to grow its brand.
Used in conjunction, Brand Equity Valuation and BrandPower help brand managers and senior executives identify the monetary contribution of the brand and uncover prescriptive insights to unlock its full potential.
This knowledge allows Tenet Partners to bring our full analytic and brand strategy resources to bear. With a complete picture of BrandPower and Brand Equity Valuation, we can predict valuation growth, model ROI, and inform strategic decision-making for our clients.
For more information on how we determine BrandPower and Brand Equity Valuation, see our Frequently Asked Questions.
November 30, 2022
A message from our CEO and Chairman
A message from our CEO and Chairman
Brands are boldly moving forward. This momentum is the strongest since the recession, thanks to significant investments in business model innovation, digital and brand. Corporate leadership is looking to deliver growth by reshaping customer experiences. Our Top 100 report shows these leaders are outpacing their peers.
The macro trends that are driving change are fairly concentrated – industry lines blurring, digital convergence, and the emergence of fast-moving disruptors. Together, these trends are altering consumer behavior, delivering new experiences and driving value through innovation. In some industries, the fast pace of change is overwhelming management teams.
To seize on the opportunity this presents, leaders are reframing the marketing function to have greater influence on operations and shape customer experience, digital transformation and design of organizational culture. Success today requires a broader, more holistic view of the customer. A human-centered philosophy can translate into a common language that unites the various disciplines of business to ensure the enterprise is future-ready for the opportunities ahead.
2015 marks the 25th anniversary of the CoreBrand^® Index, a rich data set covering 1,000 companies. This represents a milestone in Tenet’s mission of enabling leaders to create value in one of the most critical assets for any organization: its brand and reputation. With eyes to the future, we see exciting times ahead for those pacesetters who successfully wrap their business strategy and brand experience around their customers’ needs and aspirations.
We hope this 8th edition of the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands provides you with valuable insights as you seek to achieve brand leadership and drive business growth.
Hampton Bridwell
CEO, Tenet Partners
James R. Gregory
Chairman, Tenet Partners
November 30, 2022
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Tenet Partners determine the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands?
The starting point for determining the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands is the CoreBrand^® Index (CBI) – a quantitative database based on a continuous benchmark tracking survey of nearly 1,000 companies across 50 industries. The study has been in the field continuously since 1990.
The Top 100 Most Powerful Brands are ranked in corresponding order by a measure of BrandPower, a single metric that represents both the awareness (Familiarity) and perception (Favorability) of a brand. In one metric, we capture a brand’s reputation in the marketplace as well as its ability to impact business performance.
Familiarity – We ask survey respondents how familiar they are with a brand. Their answers reflect their awareness beyond just the company name.
Favorability – We ask those whose familiarity with brands goes beyond just name recognition to rate brands based on three factors:
Overall Reputation: Do you have a favorable impression of the corporate brand? What is your view of the corporate brand’s ability to drive growth over time?
Perception of Management: What is your perception of the company’s management? How would you assess the way senior leadership leads the enterprise and engages stakeholders? Does leadership have a future-forward outlook on the competition and the market in which it operates?
Investment Potential: Would you invest in this company? What do you think of the organization’s ability to secure future earnings and increase brand value over time?
BrandPower is calculated as a function of Familiarity and Favorability, and then calculated on a 100-point scale. Both Familiarity and Favorability must be strong to place in the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands ranking, meaning the company has both high awareness and is favorably perceived. If a corporate brand has high Familiarity but low Favorability, it will not show up in the Top 100 rankings. The same holds true for niche players who have low Familiarity but high Favorability – they will not appear either.
We use a full calendar year of data to support our rankings, which includes over 10,000 phone interviews with business-decision makers (typically Vice President level or above) at the top 20 percent of corporations in the United States based on revenue.
How is Tenet’s ranking of Top 100 Most Powerful Brands unique compared to other brand rankings?
Our approach is market research based. By understanding the true strength of a brand, not just its monetary value, business decision-makers can gain important intelligence for creating and maintaining advantage in all the areas that define business success. Unlike traditional brand value measurements, BrandPower is based on quantitative measures across a significant number of data points, as opposed to a subjective industry-panel assessment. Our method allows brands to be evaluated objectively, providing new and useful information for investors and brand stewards as they determine a brand’s ability to impact business results.
Why is understanding BrandPower important?
The corporate brand is one of a company’s most precious assets. It can be one of the greatest levers in building corporate value. To many outsiders, the powerfulness of a brand (a distillation of factors such as name recognition, reputation, and economic value) determines whether people will buy its products, invest in the company, consider it as a place to work and support it in a time of crisis.
A high BrandPower score means that a company’s brand management practices have placed it in good standing – people know it; people like it. That means they’re more likely to do business with the company and invest in it.
Having a single score (e.g. BrandPower) is incredibly helpful in evaluating the performance of a corporate brand. It allows companies to see the affects of their brand investment by tracking their own score over time. It enables easy comparison among competitors, against industry averages and against world-class brands. It also allows us to contrast multiple industries to better understand the market dynamics that impact brand.
Brand valuation is becoming more common practice among many brand consulting firms. Does Tenet Partners have an established methodology for valuing brands?
Yes. Our methodology is completely transparent and involves no “black-box” set of judgments. Instead, we leverage reliable, stable market research, BrandPower data and marry it with financial data from widely accepted business sources. With 25 years of proven research data, we can ensure consistent input to our model. This statistical model identifies the contribution of the brand based on market research and through regression models evaluates it in the context of financial impact to determine brand dollar value.
Brand Equity Valuation is expressed in two ways:
**The percent that the brand contributes to market cap** tells how much value can be directly attributed to the corporate brand. It measures the overall impact a company’s brand-building efforts. In turn, senior leadership can build a business case and evaluate the return-on-brand investments, in a way that is easily understood. (i.e. how hard the brand is working to create value for the company).
**The dollar value of the brand** is a result of multiplying the percentage impact of the brand by the company’s market capitalization. This number can change day-to-day as the company’s overall enterprise value fluctuates. It is used to help senior leadership understand the brand’s asset value and is also a measure of the value that the market places on the brand.
These two measures are useful to different audiences. The percentage of contribution of the brand is important to brand stewards because it reveals objectively, how hard the brand is working to create value. The dollar value of the brand is important to senior management, as it identifies the asset value of the brand. As a result, leadership can better understand a brand’s worth to the company, and communicate effectively, its value to shareholders and to other critical audiences.
The Coca-Cola Company is the #1 Most Powerful Brand of 2015. Why does it continue to the hold the top position, despite not being the most valuable brand?
The Coca-Cola Company is the uncontested leader in terms of its BrandPower score. In our view, BrandPower is a measure of brand strength, based on successful brand management, and independent of brand value. Brand valuation is simply the output of a statistical model, measuring the impact of a company’s brand in the context of its financial performance. As brand value is based largely on a company’s financial performance – its revenue and stock price, it offers little in terms of measuring the drivers that actually create a strong brand.
BrandPower is a lever that a company can manage – through increased communication, product innovation, service development and so forth, to ultimately increase its brand value over time. It is for this reason, that The Top 100 Most Powerful Brands are ranked by an objective BrandPower score, and not on the basis of brand value.
However, as previously mentioned, we have a proven Brand Equity Valuation model. While it functions independently of our Top 100 rankings (i.e. doesn’t inform the ranking order of the Top 100) it is used as a pivotal model (along with BrandPower insights) to provide a broader, more holistic perspective of how companies can measure the overall impact of their brand building efforts.
Lastly, it is worth noting that while we have determined that Apple leads as the most valuable brand amongst the Top 100, with a brand value of $113.7 billion, its brand contribution to market capitalization is 17.3%, which lags behind The Coca-Cola Company, with a brand contribution to market cap of 20.1%. This lower percentage score suggests that Apple can create additional value by continuing to grow its brand.
Well-known brands such as Facebook and LinkedIn are not part of the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands 2015. Why?
The brands listed on the Tenet Top 100 Most Powerful Brands ranking must meet several criteria to be considered. They must be: A corporate brand (not a product or divisional brand), publicly traded in the U.S. for 5+ years, and tracked by the CoreBrand^® Index (CBI) for 5+ years. Brands such as Facebook and LinkedIn have not been tracked in the CoreBrand Index for five years or longer. As a result, they did not qualify to make it onto the Top 100 ranking this year, but we look forward to seeing their position in the future.
November 30, 2022

The Top 100 Most Powerful Brands of 2019

Each year, Tenet Partners analyzes the data in the CoreBrand^® Index (CBI) to determine the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands based on high awareness and positive brand perceptions. 2019 marks the twelfth year of the report. For a comprehensive look at this year’s findings, including sector trends and analysis, download the full report.

Higher rank vs. 2018
Lower rank vs. 2018
Change of less than +/-2 or fewer ranks year-over-year

Company	BrandPower Rank	vs. 2018	Industry	Familiarity	Favorability
Coca-Cola	1	0	Beverages	0	0
Apple	2	0	Computers & Peripherals	0	+
Walt Disney	3	+1	Hotel & Entertainment	0	+
Bayer	4	-1	Chemicals	0	0
Microsoft	5	+1	Hotel & Entertainment	0	0
PepsiCo	6	+1	Beverages	+	0
Johnson & Johnson	7	+1	Medical	0	+
Google – Alphabet Corp.	8	+1	Internet	0	+
Hershey	9	-4	Food	0	0
American Express	10	+1	Financial	0	0
Facebook	11	-1	Internet	0	0
IBM	12	+4	Consulting	+	0
Visa	13	0	Financial	0	0
Mastercard	14	+1	Financial	0	0
Kellogg	15	-3	Food	0	0
General Mills	16	-2	Food	0	0
Colgate-Palmolive	17	0	Household	0	0
Amazon	18	+8	Internet	+	+
Campbell’s	19	-1	Food	0	0
Twitter	20	0	Internet	0	0
BMW	21	+1	Automotive	0	0
Harley-Davidson	22	-3	Automotive	0	0
Yahoo	23	0	Internet	0	0
ExxonMobil	24	+3	Petroleum Refining	+	0
eBay	25	0	Internet	0	0
McDonald’s	26	-5	Restaurants	0	–
Hilton	27	+6	Hotel	+	0
Morgan Stanley	28	+9	Brokerage	+	+
Sony	29	0	Electronics	0	0
Nike	30	+2	Athletic	+	0
General Electric	31	-7	Electronics	–	–
Whirlpool	32	-2	Home Appliances	0	0
Bank of America	33	+14	Commercial Banks	+	+
Nestlé	34	-3	Food	0	0
Revlon	35	-1	Household Products	0	0
Estee Lauder	36	0	Household Products	0	0
Starbucks	37	-9	Restaurant	0	–
Samsung	38	+3	Semiconductors	+	0
Clorox	39	-1	Household	+	0
Bristol-Myers Squibb	40	+18	Pharmaceuticals	+	+
AT&T	41	-6	Telecommunications	0	–
Barnes & Noble	42	-3	Retailers	0	0
L’Oréal	43	-3	Household Products	0	0
St. Jude Medical, Inc.	44	0	Medical Supplies	0	0
Toyota	45	+3	Automotive	+	0
Dr. Pepper Snapple Group	46	-4	Beverages	0	0
Avon	47	+3	Household Products	0	0
Procter & Gamble	48	+4	Household Products	0	0
Ford	49	+12	Motor Vehicles	+1	0
Volkswagen	50	+6	Motor Vehicles	+	0
Mattel	51	+3	Hotel & Entertainment	0	0
Michael Kors	52	-7	Apparel	0	0
Honda	53	+2	Automotive	0	0
J.M. Smucker	54	+10	Food	+	0
FedEx	55	-9	Transportation	0	–
Volvo	56	+1	Motor Vehicles	0	–
Boeing	57	+10	Aerospace	0	+
UPS	58	-15	Transporation	0	–
Chevron	59	+4	Chemicals	+	0
Netflix	60	-11	Internet	+	–
Gap	61	+1	Retailers	0	0
Sharp	62	-11	Electronics	–	0
Walmart	63	-10	Retailers	0	–
HP Inc.	64	+1	Computers & Peripherals	+	0
Sunoco	65	+6	Petroleum Refining	+	0
General Motors	66	+9	Automotive	0	+
Target	67	-8	Retailers	0	–
Capital One	68	+13	Financial	+	+
Kodak	69	+3	Photo	0	0
Walgreens	70	-10	Pharmacy Serv.	0	–
Panasonic	71	-3	Electronics	0	0
Goodyear	72	-2	Rubber & Plastics	0	0
Intel	73	+9	Semicondutors	+	–
Charles Schwab	74	0	Brokerage	0	0
Marriott	75	+4	Hotel	+	0
American Airlines	76	+12	Transportaion	0	+
LG	77	+17	Electronics	+	0
J.P. Morgan Chase	78	0	Commercial Banks	0	0
Home Depot	79	-13	Retailers	0	–
Pfizer	80	+34	Pharmaceuticals	+	+
Lowe’s	81	-12	Retailers	0	–
Wendy’s	82	-9	Hotel & Entertainment	0	–
T-Mobile	83	-3	Telecommunications	+	0
JetBlue	84	+2	Transportation	0	0
Verizon	85	-2	Telecommunications	0	0
J.C. Penney	86	-10	Semiconductors	0	–
La-Z-Boy	87	-2	Furniture	+	0
Canon	88	+7	Electronics	+	0
Sherwin-Williams	89	0	Chemicals	0	0
Bed Bath & Beyond	90	-13	Retailers	0	–
Macy’s	91	0	Retailers	+	–
Hanesbrands	92	+9	Apparel	+	0
Michelin	93	+4	Rubber & Plastics	0	0
Kohl’s	94	-7	Retailers	0	0
Heineken	95	+13	Beverages	+	0
Yamaha	96	-12	Motor Vehicles	0	0
Tyson Foods	97	-7	Food	0	–
Adidas	98	-2	Athletic Equipment	0	0
Kraft Heinz	99	-6	Food	+	–
Wells Fargo	100	0	Commerical Banks	+	0

November 10, 2022

Culture of Innovation
In business, Innovation is a concept that constantly re-invents itself.
Whether invigorating established business segments with fresh ideas or inventing entirely new business categories, innovation has become a foundational value for today’s successful corporations.
But to be more than a buzzword, innovation must be supported and promoted by management and employees throughout a corporation’s culture. This consistent Culture of Innovation (COI) can be seen in the ways a company puts a priority on advancing new ideas that will create value across all operations.
In theory, a Culture of Innovation would seem to be a worthwhile pursuit for any company to nurture. However, measuring and valuing the financial impact of a Culture of Innovation has eluded many corporations. Typically, organizations define innovation as a focus on R&D, or by the number of patents granted and new products developed.
While these are all significant quantitative components of innovation, a cultural definition for innovation must encompass the entire company, and the quantifiable results should be reflected in the financial performance as a whole.
These thoughts opened my doctoral dissertation that I defended last August at the Muma School of Business, University of South Florida. I was curious to find out how an engaged audience of impartial observers viewed the importance of a Culture of Innovation.
Culture of innovation and its impact on the cash flow multiple

Utilizing the quantitative research database of the CoreBrand Index™ (CBI) my dissertation studied, for the first time, the impact of the Culture of Innovation attribute associated with 160 large public companies. The findings were then analyzed with the cash flow multiple (CFM), which is a firm-wide financial variable that explains the premium investors are willing to pay over the cash flow of the corporation.
The CFM is calculated by dividing the stock price per share by the cash flow per share, which provides a calculation that reflects the premium value of market capitalization. Since estimates of future cash flow are a component of quarterly reports, the CFM has the advantage of being able to project expected returns into the future; this helps a company to evaluate the potential return on investment (ROI) for capital spending required for improving—and innovating—intangible assets.
The analysis evaluated whether COI is more or less predictive of the CFM than historical attributes collected in the long running, and highly reliable CoreBrand Index. The dissertation verified CoreBrand’s past research and reconfirmed that each of the individual attributes in the CoreBrand Index contributes a positive effect to the firm’s market value.
The study supported the conceptual framework that adding the additional attributes to the intangible assets of a company could explain even more of the unexplained variable associated with stock market value, which is paramount to the development of the emerging theory of intangible capital.
By adding Culture of Innovation attribute to the historical attributes measured by CoreBrand, the predictability of the cash flow multiple improved from 64% to 77%. This is not only statistically significant, but also an important breakthrough on the ability to forecast the potential return for investments made in intangibles such as brands.
The Theory of Intangible Capital

For more information please contact us:
November 9, 2022

Category: Top 100

Top 100 Most Powerful Brands of 2016

Understanding Brand Value Creation

Culture of innovation and its impact on the cash flow multiple

The Theory of Intangible Capital