BrandZ has released its annual 2018 Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking and shown a serious increase in the value of top brands, pushed primarily by technology and creative content providers. In fact, the total brand value of those brands grew by as much as 21-percent over the last year. That equates to around $750 billion in growth and brings the total value of the top brands to $4.4 trillion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no fewer than eight of the top ten brands are related to the technology industry. Google, for example, retained the top spot with a brand value of just over $302 billion and a yearly growth rate of 23-percent. The search giant’s growth was overshadowed by Amazon at 49-percent, moving the online retailer and tech giant to the third spot from fourth. While Amazon came in with a total worth of $207.5 billion, however, Apple kept its number two spot with a brand value of $300.59 billion.
The rest of the list is hardly shocking, either. Microsoft gave up position three with a value of $200.98 billion and Facebook fell to spot six from number five with a value of $162 billion. With that said, the two companies still gained value by 40-percent and 25-percent, respectively. That’s despite Facebooks many controversies over the past year. The other tech or tech-related companies on the list included AT&T, Alibaba, and Tencent. The latter two of those saw the most growth in brand value by far, at 92-percent and 65-percent respectively. In BrandZ’s rankings, that pushed Alibaba from position 14 to number 9 and Tencent from number 8 to number 5. The brands ended up being valued at $113.4 billion and $178.99 billion.
Interestingly, AT&T was the only company in the top ten most valuable brands to experience negative growth. That could be tied in with the companies employee strikes and government face-offs it has had over the past few months but it’s difficult to determine from the data provided. The company saw a 7-percent decrease in value, dropping it to a brand valuation of approximately $106.7 billion and placing it in tenth from its prior placement at number six. In any case, the chart and report follow others which have been reported recently with a fair degree of consistency. However, Samsung is notably missing from the top ten despite the fact that at least one report among those recently listed the Korean tech giant as the seventh most valuable brand.