Healthcare companies are conspicuously absent from a list of the top 100 most valuable global brands compiled by Millward Brown.
Google, worth $159bn, overtook Apple to take the top spot in the 2014 BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands Ranking. IBM, Microsoft and McDonalds made up the top five.
“This year’s index highlights the end of the recession, with a strong recovery in valuations and, for the first time, real growth across every category and the Top 100 as a whole,” said David Roth, CEO of The Store, WPP.
“Strong brands have led the recovery. Seventy-one of the brands listed were there in 2008. Despite the financial turmoil and the digital disruption that have decimated many businesses during the last few years, these brands have remained in the ranking, proving the durability of strong brands.”
The combined value of the Top 100 has nearly doubled since the first ranking was produced in 2006. The Top 100 today are worth $2.9trn, an increase of 49 per cent compared with 2008, when the banking and currency crisis began.
Coca-Cola (soft drinks), Visa (credit cards), AT&T (telecoms), Marlboro (tobacco) and Amazon (retail) made up the rest of the top 10 brands.
While healthcare was nowhere to be seen, a number of categories saw significant improvements in their brand worth. Apparel recorded the biggest increase, up by 29 per cent, followed by Cars, up by 17 per cent, and Luxury and Technology, both up by 16 per cent.
Personal care was the eighth most valuable category, its worth having grown by 12 per cent.
The study, commissioned by WPP and conducted by Millward Brown Optimor, is now in its ninth year. It is the only ranking that uses the views of potential and current buyers of a brand, alongside financial data, to calculate brand value.