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Animated: The Most Valuable Brands From 2000–2022

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The Most Valuable Brands From 2000–2022

How much money is a brand truly worth?

For some companies, a brand is something that helps slightly boost customer engagement and sales. But for others, including some of the largest companies in the world, a strong brand is one of their most valuable assets.

This animated graphic by James Eagle uses the annual brand rankings from Interbrand to track the world’s most valuable brands from 2000 to 2022.

Measuring Brand Value

One of the difficulties of brand valuation is its subjectivity.

In accounting, the value of a brand is sometimes represented as an intangible asset called goodwill on the balance sheet. That’s because the brand power associated with a company (i.e. brand recognition, brand loyalty, customer base, reputation, etc.) often makes a company more valuable than just the sum of its tangible assets like land, buildings, or product inventory.

This works for accounting purposes but is still a rough estimation, and doesn’t precisely quantify a brand’s true value.

For Interbrand’s studies, a consistent formula for brand strength was utilized which is based on a company’s financial forecast, brand role, and brand strength. It uses estimates of the present value of earnings a brand is forecasted to generate in the future.

The Top 10 Most Valuable Brands Since 2000

When the 2000s started, the internet was top-of-mind in terms of both markets and customer perception. The Dotcom bubble was driving the world’s largest companies, and brand value at the time reflected tech’s popularity:

RankBrandValue (2000)Industry
1Coca-Cola$72.5BBeverages
2Microsoft$70.2BTech
3IBM$53.2BTech
4Intel$39.1BTech
5Nokia$38.5BTech
6General Electric$38.1BEnergy
7Ford$36.4BAutomotive
8Disney$33.6BMedia
9McDonald's$27.9BRestaurants
10AT&T$25.6BTelecom

Half of the top 10 most valuable brands at the time were in tech or telecom, including Microsoft, IBM, and Nokia.

Others were classic American brands and companies at the top of their fields, including Coca-Cola, General Electric, Ford, and McDonald’s.

But over the next 20 years, much of the old guard was replaced by new and rising brands. By 2022, only three of the top 10 most valuable brands from 2000 remained at the top:

RankBrandValue (2022)Industry
1Apple$482.2BTech
2Microsoft$278.3BTech
3Amazon$274.8BConsumer
4Google$251.8BTech
5Samsung$87.7BTech
6Toyota$59.8BAutomotive
7Coca-Cola$57.5BBeverages
8Mercedes-Benz$56.1BAutomotive
9Disney$50.3BMedia
10Nike$50.3BConsumer

Apple’s brand is now worth an estimated $482 billion, even though the company didn’t even crack the top 10 list back in the year 2000.

In fact, four of the top five brands on the 2022 list are directly in tech, and even Amazon (#3) is often considered a tech giant. Not surprisingly, brand value in the top 10 has grown almost across the board, though Coca-Cola is a notable exception, dropping $15 billion in estimated brand value over 22 years.

How will the most valuable brands continue to evolve over the coming decades?

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This article was published as a part of Visual Capitalist's Creator Program, which features data-driven visuals from some of our favorite Creators around the world.

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Meet the Exclusive Club of Trademarked Scents in the U.S.

Trademarking a specific aroma is tricky, but not impossible. This infographic explores the exclusive group of trademarked scents in the U.S.

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Meet the Exclusive Club of Trademarked Scents in the U.S.

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Imagine trying to trademark a color. Difficult, right? Now, think about what it would take to trademark a smell.

While technically possible, registering a scent trademark is a daunting endeavor. The act of trademarking a scent is surprisingly rare, with only a handful of successful registrations worldwide.

The graphic above, by Rosey Eason, is a visual summary of the 15 scents trademarked in the U.S. as of mid-2023.

The Two-Pronged Test

To succeed, a scent must meet two stringent criteria:

1. Non-Functionality: The smell can’t be the primary purpose of the product. A perfume or air freshener’s fragrance, for instance, is its core function and thus ineligible. (That said, a perfume’s composition can be patented.)
2. Distinctiveness: Consumers must unequivocally link the scent to a specific brand. Think of Play-Doh: its unique aroma has become synonymous with the brand itself.

Demonstrating these criteria demands substantial evidence, including data on consumer perception and association with the brand. This heavy burden of proof is one of the main reasons that the list of trademarked scents is so short. So then, what has been trademarked?

An Exclusive Club of Trademarked Scents

Play-Doh is perhaps the most well-known example of a trademarked scent. Play-Doh’s aroma is described as having a “sweet, slightly musky, vanilla fragrance with slight overtones of cherry” combined with “the smell of salted, wheat-based dough”. The parent company, Hasbro, claims that the scent has been in use since the mid-1950s.

Interestingly, many of the other trademarked aromas are used to brand more practical, industrial products. The list includes fruity smell used in vehicle lube, and a banana/evergreen scent used in gun bore cleaner.

The first ever U.S. “smell mark” was awarded to a company called OSEWEZ, which produced thread and yarn infused with the scent of plumeria blossoms. At the time, the company’s owner said, “We did this as a kind of gimmick. I never really thought we could do it.”

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