Best Global Brands 2021: Apple retains top spot, Tesla highest gainer

Valued at $249,249 million, Amazon ranks second; Microsoft, Google, and Samsung follow

Apple, valued at $408,251 million, retained its first spot for the ninth consecutive year in Interbrand’s list of the best global brands for 2021. However, it was Tesla that was the highest gainer with a 184 per cent increase in value to rest at $36,270 million and the 14th spot.
 
The combined value of the top 100 brands increased from $2,326,491 million in 2020 to $2,667,524 million in 2021 – a jump of nearly 15 per cent. Technology remained the fastest growing, most valuable and top performing sector. The top three brands – Apple, Amazon (valued at $249,249 million) and Microsoft ($210,191 million) – made up 62.3 per cent of the total value of the top 10 brands.
 
Apple co-founder Stephen Wozniak – better known as the Woz — in a conversation with Daniel Binns, CEO, Interbrand New York, credited Apple’s relevance and success to its flexibility of moving with the market and being honest to consumers.
 
Besides Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, the top ten brands included Google ($196,811 million), Samsung ($74,635 million), Coca Cola ($57,488 million), Toyota ($54,107 million), Mercedes-Benz ($50,866 million), McDonald’s ($45,865 million), and Disney ($44,183 million).
 
Sephora — the multinational beauty and fashion product retailer — was the only new entrant this year, valued at $4,628 million. CEO Martin Brok credited the feat to his 35,000 colleagues across the globe and their culture of disruptive innovation.
 
With Sephora’s entry, the LVMH group became the first to have five brands — Louis Vuitton at 13th spot, Dior (at 77), Tiffany and Co (92), Hennessy (95) and Sephora (100) — in the list.
 
The brands were valued keeping three key components at the centre: analysis of the financial performance of the branded product or service; the role the brand plays in purchase decisions; and the brand’s competitive strength.

Global brand consulting firm Interbrand defined the coming decade as the decade of possibility, with an urgent need to address issues like climate change, overconsumption, and resource depletion among other concerns that affect the world economically, politically and socially.
 
Harkening back to the impressionists who broke away from art conventions to represent not the subjects but their human experiences, Interbrand stressed on the need for brands to rethink the role of business and become part of the solution to the problems the world faces today.
 
“Some of the rising brands in our study are actively expanding possibilities, by driving decisive innovation, developing kinder, more viable business models, making hard choices and taking uncompromising stances,” said the Interbrand report.
 
Colin Fleming, senior vice president, global brand, events, product, content, and customer marketing at Salesforce — the second fastest growing brand, ranked 38 and valued at $14,770 million in the list—attributed their success to a consumer-focused approach.
 
Lorraine Barber-Miller, vice president and chief marketing and e-commerce officer at Royal Philips (ranked 57 and valued at $12,088 million) spoke of the company’s transformation from an electronics company to a health-tech business.