Apple tops Kantar’s most valuable global brand ranking for 2023

Apple has retained its title as the world’s most valuable brand for the second consecutive year with brand value of $880bn in the Kantar BrandZ Most Valuable Global Brands Report 2023. Google is in second position with a value of $578bn and Microsoft is third with a brand value of $502bn. Amazon is fourth and McDonald’s fifth.

The most valuable brands in the world have built powerful connections allowing them to create shareholder value faster, resist market downturns and recover sooner from recessions, says Kantar.

The firm adds that brands with powerful connections have three essential qualities: they are meaningful, different and salient.

Coca-Cola rejoined the top 10 this year, rising seven places to No 10 and increasing its brand value by 8%.

A total of 16 brands grew in value, with Indian telecom provider Airtel (76), the fastest riser in the global ranking, increasing its brand value by 24%, followed by Pepsi (91; +17%).

Two Chinese brands join the top 100 for the first time: Shein (70) and Nongfu (81).

Nine brands return to the global top 100, including Red Bull (93; $19bn) and Colgate (95; $18bn).

The overall value of the top 100 most valuable brands declined 20% this year in the face of strong macroeconomic headwinds. Their value now stands at $6.9-trillion, down from the record $8.7-trillion valuation in 2022.

However, the world’s top brands are worth considerably more in 2023 than the $5-trillion in total value of 2020. Kantar says the brand value growth of 2021 and 2022 represented an unprecedented, and temporary, spike in a period characterised by easy money policies that buoyed brand values generally and high valuations of tech brands in particular.

Top brands, says Kantar, have still come out ahead of where they were in 2020, reflecting several permanent structural advances around digital transformation and new forms of experience based on true omnichannel thinking.

The overall progress of top brands this decade, says the firm, “reflects a new consumer calculus around trust and value, as people responded to upheaval by flocking to the tried-and-true reliability of the world’s best companies”.

The survey found that the luxury, fast-food, and food and beverages categories were the most resilient. Kantar says this is testament to what it calls pricing power: a measure of brands’ ability to set their own prices. “Brands that improved their pricing power over the past four years grew twice as fast as those that declined — and also proved more resilient in 2023.”

Interestingly, demand power — or the ability to drive volume — proved less important to brand value resilience. However, it was an important driver of medium-term value growth. Brands with high demand power have increased in value by 146% over the past four years.