The State of, global edition · annual study
Brand StrategyThe State of Branding.
Brand value is concentrating in the largest technology-led brands while trust, budgets and attention fragment. For everyone else, growth comes from distinctiveness, provable usefulness and governance, applied to the specific industry the brand lives in.
- AnnualNext edition February 2027
- Public evidenceSources named, limits stated
- Ten industriesOne agenda, read sector by sector
Latest edition
2026Published 5 September 2026. Evidence to August 2026.
The decision it servesWhere a brand in any of ten industries should invest its next year of effort.
Central finding, 2026
What changed in brand building worldwide in 2025 and the operating agenda for 2026, read through the ten industries Brandesis serves.
The world's most valuable brands became more valuable, more American and more technological at once, while the public grew more aggrieved, budgets flatlined and AI made output cheap. Every one of those forces rewards the same brand: easy to understand, easy to find, provably useful and consistently governed.
How the study works
One method, kept stable year to year
Public evidence first: official statistics, platform and industry datasets, then reproducible audits of public material. Every figure carries its source, geography and collection date. Continent-wide language is used only where a finding holds across at least three regions and seven markets; otherwise it is labelled by country.
The original layer
What this study measures
A ten-industry brand-system reading: the six global shifts applied to agriculture, consumer goods, financial services, health, impact, infrastructure, professional services, property, technology and tourism, with each sector's own 2025 evidence.
Report outline
Six chapters, every year
- What the rankings measure, and why they disagree
- The six shifts of 2025: concentration, habit, grievance, value, budgets and AI
- The industry lens: ten sectors, one agenda
- The brand system and a balanced scorecard
- A practical 90-day plan
- Methodology, limitations and public sources
Editions
One edition a year.
- 2026
What changed in brand building worldwide in 2025 and the operating agenda for 2026, read through the ten industries Brandesis serves.
Read - 2027Coming February 2027
The second edition, with the first year-on-year comparison.
Get it first through Ground Truth
Where this lands
This study maps to Brand Strategy.
Ten industries, one operating change: the brand as a system that is fixed where it must be and adaptable where the market demands it. That system is what Brand Strategy Discovery builds, on our Brandesis framework, in three weeks.