Growth In Trade Marks
A 10% growth in trade mark application filings over the past year, with 45% of those filings made by New Zealand
companies, shows that New Zealand companies are investing in the intellectual property of brand building, according to
intellectual property expert, John Hackett, of A J Park.
“It is now possible to put a dollar value on brands as standalone assets - unrelated to the tangible assets we used to
consider held all the value in a company”, he says.
John Hackett says good New Zealand examples of the value of brands, is where they have been sold, such as the wine maker
Kim Crawford selling the rights to his name for $14.8 million. Another example is Lion Corporation paying around $54
million for Wither Hills – which included land, vineyards and trade marks.
“There are now brand valuation firms that specialise in valuing brands for companies. This can improve a company’s value
to shareholders, increase their ability to borrow and allow their brands and trade marks to be shown as positive assets
on the balance sheet”, according to Hackett.
“One of the world’s leading brand valuation firms, Interbrand, has just released a report on the worlds top 100 global
brands. They evaluated global companies that had a brand value greater than US$1 billion and publicly available
marketing and financial data”.
In valuing the brands, Interbrand looks at how much the companies are projected to earn in the future, then discount to
a present value, based on how risky the projected earnings are. They analyse brand sales, project net earnings from the
brand and then deduct a charge for the cost of owning tangible assets. They are effectively valuing the brand as a
distinct part of the goodwill of the business.
John Hackett says a look at the list of the top 100 global brands identified by Interbrand, shows 62% were United States
owned brands. “The USA economy has been the power house of the global economy and this is reflected in the number of
billion dollar brands they have developed”, he says.
The top ten brands were; RANK 2003 BRAND VALUE $ BILLION COUNTRY 1. COCA-COLA 70.45 US 2. MICROSOFT 65.17 US 3. IBM
51.77 US 4. GE 42.34 US 5. INTEL 31.11 US 6. NOKIA 29.44 FINLAND 7. DISNEY 28.04 US 8. McDONALD’S 24.70 US 9. MARLBORO
22.18 US 10. MERCEDES 21.37 GERMANY