The State of Branding.

Executive summary.

In 2025 the world’s most valuable brands became more valuable, more American and more technological at the same time. Brand Finance put the combined value of the Global 500 at nearly USD9.5 trillion, up 10% on the year, with four technology brands in the top five.¹ Kantar BrandZ recorded a record USD10.7 trillion for its Global Top 100, up 29%, and found that US brands now account for 82% of that value, against 63% in 2006, while European brands fell from 26% to 7%.³ Interbrand’s Top 100 grew more slowly, by 4.4% to USD3.6 trillion, and Interbrand was explicit that the growth was uneven: it flowed to brands that used technology, data and a singular focus to become unavoidable.²

Underneath the league tables the operating climate turned harder. Edelman found that 61% of people worldwide carry a moderate or high sense of grievance, defined as the belief that government and business make their lives harder and serve narrow interests, and measured a 30-point trust gap between the high-grievance and low-grievance publics.⁴ Gartner found marketing budgets flat at 7.7% of company revenue, with half of chief marketing officers reporting 6% or less and 59% saying they lacked the budget to execute their strategy.⁷ PwC found that 51% of consumers named better value for money as a top reason to switch food brands.⁸ Kantar found that 43% of consumers did not trust AI-generated advertising, while the IAB reported that more than 70% of marketers had already met an AI-related incident.⁹¹⁰

Six shifts that defined 2025

1. 01

   Value concentrated

   US brands held 82% of BrandZ Top 100 value; four of Brand Finance’s top five were technology brands

   2026 implication

   Compete on distinctiveness and usefulness, not on category membership

2. 02

   Growth went to the unavoidable

   Interbrand recorded 12 new entrants, the most in 26 years, and uneven growth toward tech-led brands

   2026 implication

   Design the brand into daily use, not only into campaigns

3. 03

   Grievance became the climate

   61% of people worldwide carry moderate or high grievance; employer trust fell to 75%

   2026 implication

   Prove competence and ethics with behaviour before communication

4. 04

   Value for money became brand proof

   51% named better value as a top reason to switch food brands

   2026 implication

   Make the value equation visible in price, pack, service and quality

5. 05

   Budgets flatlined

   Marketing held at 7.7% of revenue; 39% of CMOs planned to cut agency spend

   2026 implication

   Spend on assets that compound: distinctive memory, owned evidence, governance

6. 06

   AI scaled output faster than trust

   43% distrust AI-generated advertising; fewer than 35% of marketers planned more governance

   2026 implication

   Put identity, claims and review controls before volume

What the rankings measure.

Three global rankings publish every year, and in 2025 they gave three different answers to the question of how much brands grew. That is not a contradiction. Each uses a different method, a different set of brands and a different definition of value, and the differences are the first lesson of the year.

Three rankings, three answers

The six shifts of 2025.

Finding 1
Value concentrated in technology and in America

Brand Finance’s Global 500 rose 10% to nearly USD9.5 trillion in 2025. Apple led at USD574.5 billion, Microsoft followed at USD461.1 billion after 35% growth, and NVIDIA climbed from thirtieth to ninth as its brand value nearly doubled to USD87.9 billion.¹ Kantar BrandZ found US brands holding 82% of its Global Top 100 value, up from 63% in 2006, with Chinese brands at 6% and European brands at 7%, down from 26%.³

Concentration is the environment every other brand now competes in. A technology brand can become a daily habit for billions of people at near-zero marginal cost, and the rankings reward exactly that scale. For everyone else, the lesson is not to imitate the giants but to refuse to compete on their terms: category membership and reach are theirs; distinctiveness, usefulness and closeness to a specific customer are still open.

Finding 2
Growth went to brands that became unavoidable

Interbrand’s 2025 report recorded 12 new entrants to its Top 100, the most in the report’s 26-year history, including Booking.com, Uniqlo, Airbnb and Uber, and described growth as flowing disproportionately to brands that harnessed technology, data and singular focus.² Kantar BrandZ reported retail brand value up 48% as e-commerce and private label created value for consumers, while alcohol brands lost ground to health and wellness.³ Kantar Worldpanel’s Brand Footprint found more than half of tracked FMCG brands growing their consumer reach in 2025, and that the brands which gained ground were easy to understand, easy to find and relevant to everyday life.⁶

The winners of 2025 were not the loudest brands. They were the ones built into a routine: the app opened before a trip, the shop on the way home, the product that is on the shelf every time. Habit is a brand outcome, and it is designed at the level of the product, the channel and the service, not at the level of the campaign.

Finding 3
Grievance became the operating climate

Edelman’s 2025 Trust Barometer found that 61% of people worldwide have a moderate or high sense of grievance, and a 30-point gap in institutional trust between those with high and low grievance, a Trust Index of 36 against 66. Among the high-grievance public, business was seen as 81 points less ethical and 37 points less competent than among everyone else. Trust in “my employer” fell three points to 75% yet remained the most trusted institution.⁴

Grievance does not stop people buying. It changes what they believe. A brand operating in this climate cannot assume its claims are read generously; they are read for evidence of self-interest. The brands that held trust in 2025 were the ones people used, worked for and could check, which is why the employer remains the most trusted institution when almost nothing else is.

Finding 4
Value for money became brand proof

PwC’s Voice of the Consumer 2025 surveyed 21,075 people in 28 countries and found that 51% named better value for money as a top reason to switch food brands, with cost of living the leading near-term concern in several regions.⁸ Kantar Worldpanel’s Brand Footprint reported roughly half of the world’s FMCG brands in growth and half in decline, with 88% of growing brands over thirteen years having increased their shopper base rather than only their price.⁶

Value is the customer’s judgment of what they receive against everything they give up: money, effort, waiting, risk and inconvenience. Discounting stimulates a sale. Dependable quality, a pack that fits the household, availability where people already shop, service that answers and a product that lasts build the brand. In 2025 the customer’s arithmetic became more visible, and brands that could not show their working lost the argument.

Finding 5
Budgets flatlined while expectations rose

Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey of 402 marketing leaders in North America, the United Kingdom and Europe found budgets flat at 7.7% of company revenue, with half of respondents reporting 6% or less. Paid media took 30.6% of budgets. Fifty-nine percent said they lacked the budget to execute their strategy, and 39% planned to cut agency spend, with a further 39% planning to reduce labour costs.⁷

When the budget does not move and the expectations do, the only lever left is what the money builds. Spend that buys attention for a month leaves nothing behind. Spend that builds a distinctive asset system, an owned body of evidence, a governed brand platform and a repeatable creator and content system compounds, and compounding is the only strategy that works on a flat line.

Finding 6
AI scaled output faster than trust

Kantar’s Marketing Trends 2025 found that 43% of consumers did not trust AI-generated advertising.⁹ The IAB reported that more than 70% of marketers in its 2025 study had encountered an AI-related advertising incident such as a hallucination, bias or off-brand content, while fewer than 35% planned to invest more in governance or brand-integrity oversight.¹⁰ Brand Finance recorded NVIDIA as the fastest-growing technology brand of the year at 98%, a measure of how quickly the infrastructure of generated content arrived.¹¹

Scale without a clear identity system produces faster sameness. Every generated variant drifts a little from the asset system, every partner interprets the brand a little differently, and after a year of volume the brand is everywhere and recognisable nowhere. The controls a brand needs are the same controls it always needed, applied earlier and to machines as well as people.

The industry lens.

The six shifts land differently in different industries. This section reads them through the ten sectors Brandesis works in, using the sector’s own 2025 evidence where it exists and marking clearly where the global pattern is being applied by interpretation.

Agriculture and agribusiness

How Brandesis works with agriculture

PwC’s 2025 consumer study found value for money the leading reason to switch food brands, at 51% globally, and cost of living the leading near-term concern across several regions.⁸ Kantar’s Africa Life 2025 and NIQ’s 2025 outlook both found demand for locally adapted products, language and design moving upstream into the proposition itself.¹²¹³

For growers, processors and input suppliers, the brand carries the weight the product cannot carry alone: provenance, safety, consistency and the promise that the next bag or the next season will be the same as the last. In a switching market the brand that explains its value in the buyer’s terms, yield per pula, shelf life, traceability, keeps the customer the discount would have lost.

Consumer goods and retail

How Brandesis works with consumer brands

Kantar Worldpanel’s Brand Footprint 2025, the thirteenth edition, found more than half of tracked FMCG brands increasing consumer reach, with the winners easy to understand, easy to find and relevant to everyday life; its 2024 global ranking had Coca-Cola as the world’s most chosen brand for the twelfth year with 8.3 billion consumer reach points.⁶ Kantar BrandZ reported retail brand value up 48% in 2025 as e-commerce and private label created value for shoppers.³

Consumer brands are competing with the retailer’s own brand and with the algorithm that decides what is shown first. Distinctive assets that are recognised without the name, and availability wherever the customer already shops, matter more than ever, because the moment of choice is shorter than it has ever been.

Financial services

How Brandesis works with financial services

Brand Finance’s Banking 500 2025 put the world’s 500 most valuable banking brands at USD1.6 trillion, up 13%, the first double-digit rise in four years. ICBC led at USD79.1 billion, Revolut was the fastest-growing banking brand at 795%, and Indonesia’s BCA was the strongest with a Brand Strength Index of 97.1.¹⁴ In Africa, Brand Finance attributed 71% of the Africa 200’s brand value to South African brands, with five South African banks in the top ten.¹⁵

Banking value is growing, and it is growing fastest for challengers that made one thing simple. In a grievance climate, financial brands are judged on fairness, transparency and remedy before features. Trust is the product.

Health

How Brandesis works with health

Brand Finance’s 2025 pharmaceutical ranking placed Johnson & Johnson first for the seventh year, up 16% to USD15.5 billion, with Eli Lilly climbing from fifth to second on 36% growth.¹⁶ Edelman’s 2025 Trust and Health special report, covering 16,000 adults in 16 countries including South Africa, found that no institution, business, government, media or NGOs, was trusted to address health needs, and that a majority in nine of the countries surveyed believed institutions were actively undermining access to care.¹⁷

Health brands sit at the sharp end of the grievance shift. Clinical evidence and access are the brand; communication that runs ahead of either destroys trust that took years to build. The brands growing in 2025 grew on demonstrable outcomes.

Impact and development

How Brandesis works with impact organisations

Edelman found that people with a high sense of grievance trust none of the four institutions it measures, NGOs included, and that only 36% globally believe the next generation will be better off, with lows of 9% in France and 17% in the United Kingdom.⁴ In its health special report, NGOs and business both saw significant declines in trust since 2023.¹⁷

Organisations built on purpose can no longer assume purpose is trusted. The impact brand that holds in 2026 shows named partners, named outcomes and an accountable owner for every claim, and it explains its economics as plainly as it explains its mission.

Infrastructure, energy and construction

How Brandesis works with infrastructure

Brand Finance named China State Construction Engineering Corporation the world’s most valuable engineering brand for 2025 at USD28.3 billion, and China Railway Construction Corporation the strongest with a Brand Strength Index of 93.3; the twelve Chinese engineering brands in its ranking were together worth USD115.1 billion.¹⁸

In infrastructure the brand is judged over decades: safety record, delivery on time, and the behaviour of the company when something goes wrong. Distinctiveness matters at tender, where evaluators must trust a company on sight, and consistency matters after, where every site sign and every safety brief is a brand execution.

Professional services

How Brandesis works with professional services

Brand Finance valued the top 100 commercial services brands at USD474 billion in 2025, up 6%, with Deloitte the most valuable and strongest for the seventh consecutive year at USD41.1 billion.¹⁹ Gartner found 39% of chief marketing officers planning to cut agency budgets and eliminate unproductive agency relationships.⁷

Professional services brands are bought on trust and reviewed on outcomes, and in 2025 their clients were consolidating rosters. The firms that hold their place are the ones whose expertise is visible before the meeting: published thinking, named methods, and evidence of results that a buyer can check.

Property

How Brandesis works with property

Brand Finance’s Real Estate 25 for 2026 found the combined value of the world’s 25 most valuable real estate brands down 14% to USD54.9 billion, with Chinese brands accounting for five of the top ten, US brands up 13%, and Emaar growing 21% to USD4.9 billion, the sector’s largest rise.²⁰

Property brands rise and fall with capital and confidence, and in a down year the ones that held value were the ones with a reputation for delivering what they sold. Where the asset cannot speak, the brand’s record of completion, quality and honest marketing does.

Technology

How Brandesis works with technology

Brand Finance’s Tech 100 2025 valued the world’s leading technology brands at USD3.2 trillion, with 44 US brands contributing USD2.5 trillion or 78% of the total. Apple led at USD574.5 billion, NVIDIA grew 98% to USD87.9 billion, and WeChat was the strongest brand in the world with a Brand Strength Index of 95.2.¹¹

Technology is where value concentrated, and where most of the new sameness comes from. A technology brand outside the top tier wins by being the answer to a specific problem for a specific customer, described in language the customer and the machines that now answer for the customer can both understand.

Tourism and hospitality

How Brandesis works with tourism

UN Tourism recorded 1.4 billion international arrivals in 2024, up 11% and back to 99% of pre-pandemic levels, with receipts of USD1.6 trillion.²¹ Brand Finance’s Hotels 50 2025 put the top 50 hotel brands at USD58.8 billion, up 4%, with Hilton the most valuable for the tenth year at USD15.1 billion after 30% growth, and Taj the strongest at a Brand Strength Index of 92.2.²²

Demand has returned; distinctiveness has not. In a market where every destination shows the same sunset, the brands that grew were the ones with a recognisable system behind the experience: a name that travels, standards that hold across properties, and an offer legible to a guest who has never heard of the place.

The 2026 brand operating agenda.

The brand system

A balanced brand scorecard

A practical 90-day plan

The leadership scorecard

Methodology and limitations.

Research design

This study synthesises public evidence available by August 2026. It reviews brand shifts observed or reported in 2025 worldwide and converts them into an operating agenda for 2026, then reads that agenda through ten industries. It is not a representative survey of consumers, categories or brands, and it does not create a proprietary ranking.

Global rankings are used for direction and structure, never for a single number, and each figure is kept inside the instrument that produced it. Sector evidence is used only for the named sector. Where a sector has no 2025 brand-specific public evidence, the global pattern is applied and labelled as interpretation.

Limitations

• Brand Finance, Interbrand and Kantar BrandZ use different valuation methods and brand sets; their totals and growth rates are not comparable and are never combined here.
• Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey covers 402 marketing leaders in North America, the United Kingdom and Europe, mostly at companies with revenue above USD1 billion; it does not describe small-business budgets.
• Edelman’s Trust Barometer and its health special report cover named country samples; the global figures are averages across those countries.
• PwC’s consumer switching figure is category-specific to food brands and is a global average across 28 countries.
• Kantar Worldpanel’s Brand Footprint measures consumer reach in FMCG; the Coca-Cola figure is from its 2024 global ranking, the most recent global edition with published totals.
• Brand Finance’s Real Estate 25 for 2026 was published in early 2026 and describes 2025 performance.
• The agriculture and impact sections rely on cross-sector evidence because no comparable 2025 brand ranking exists for those sectors; both are labelled accordingly.

Editions.

1. 2026
   This edition

   Published 5 September 2026. Evidence to August 2026.

2. 2027
   Coming February 2027

   The second edition, with the first year-on-year comparison.

   Get it first through Ground Truth

All editions of The State of Branding.