South Africa's top 10 most valuable brands ranked

Material will be available for publication from 10 May, including examples given from both developed and emerging countries.

Interbrand Sampson in Johannesburg, working with the Brand Valuation team at Interbrand in London, have now prepared a table of South Africa's Top 10 Most Valuable Brands. Prepared along similar lines to valuation exercises carried out country by country including the USA, UK, France, Spain, Mexico, Singapore, Chile, Brazil, Australia and Taiwan, South Africa is the 11th country to have this exercise carried out.

As a consequence of this, for the first time Interbrand Sampson says it can recognise South Africa's top brands and compare them with other emerging economies as well as first world countries, using exactly the same methodology. This is global best practice applied in the local context.

For some years the global captain's of industry have waited expectantly each year to see how their company has faired in the annual Interbrand 'Top 100 Brands' survey. Published each year internationally for the last five years in August by Business Week, and before that in the Financial Times, the annual tables have done much to focus the minds of top executives on the crucial importance and value of the brands for which they are responsible.

Today this applies as much if not more so to the corporate brand as well as products and services, said Interbrand Sampson in a statement.

Interbrand first developed the valuation methodology in 1988 and today it has evolved to be the most respected method of reviewing a brand from a 360 degree perspective that fuses financial, marketing and brand data. Over 3800 brands in over 35 countries to a value in excess of US$500 billion have been valued in a wide range of different sectors. Globally many of the top brands have been valued, whilst in South Africa major brands valued include Absa, Vodacom and FNB.

Many global giants work with Interbrand's 34 offices around the world to measure and monitor their brands on an ongoing basis. This in turn provides much marketing intelligence and makes marketing departments, brand managers, brand consultants, ad agencies, etc, more accountable, as a metric is now available that is able to measure what was previously considered immeasurable, according to Interbrand Sampson.