Toyota crowned most valuable auto brand – again

TOYOTA has regained from BMW the distinction of being the world’s most valuable automotive brand this year, according to the latest Millward Brown’s ‘BrandZ’ report released this week.

The 2011 BrandZ report, Toyota’s brand value grew 11 per cent to $US24.2 billion ($A22.35 billion), compared with BMW’s three per cent rise to $US20.7 billion ($A19.12 billion).

The BrandZ report, which calculates brand values based on each company’s financial performance and its relationship with customers, lists the world’s top 100 most valuable global brands as well as top tens for various industry sectors.

In addition to an eight per cent global sales increase, Toyota worked hard to address the public’s concerns over quality that arose from its recall dramas and was exonerated by NASA experts over the brand’s reputation-damaging unintended acceleration incidents.

According Millward Brown data, the 2009 and 2010 values of all automotive brands nosedived from their 2008 peaks following the global financial crisis, with only Volkswagen managing to gain ground last year.

This year, however, every brand that has consistently occupied automotive the top 10 since the annual report began in 2006 has rebounded – with the exception of Honda, which is down one per cent.

The biggest value rises were for Nissan, up 17 per cent to $US9.3 billion and Mercedes-Benz, which rose 12 per cent to $US14.2 billion.

With the exception of Volkswagen, which has managed to main growth of 3.7 per cent since 2009, all the brands have a way to go before reaching the values they attained in the 2008 report.

In contrast to the top 100 most valuable brands overall, which have increased 64 per cent since in value 2006, of the automotive brands only Porsche and Volkswagen grew in value, by three and nine per cent respectively. On average, the top 10 auto brands have lost more than 10 per cent in value.

The biggest loser of the brands consistently occupying the top 10 is Ford, which has lost 46.6 per cent of its brand value since 2006, followed by Toyota (down 19.9 per cent) and Mercedes-Benz (down 13.8 per cent).

Biggest loser of all though was Chevrolet, which dropped out of the top 10 altogether in 2010 after declining by 65 per cent between 2006 and 2009.

Toyota’s number one ranking in the automotive category places it 27th in the overall top 100, with BMW in 30th. The two are separated by HSBC bank and Chinese search engine Baidu – which after social networking phenomenon Facebook (up 246 per cent) was the second fastest growing brand in the top 100, growing 141 per cent.

Apple’s $US153 billion value usurped long-standing Google from the top spot, registering 84 per cent growth against the search engine giant’s two per cent decline into second place. IBM, McDonalds and Microsoft made up the top five.

2011top 10 most valuable automotive brands
#	Brand	Value	Movement
1	Toyota	$US22.4b	11%
2	BMW	$US20.7b	3%
3	Mercedes-Benz	$US14.2b	12%
4	Honda	$US13.2b	-1%
5	Porsche	$US11.5b	3%
6	Nissan	$US9.3b	17%
7	Volkswagen	$US6.7b	6%
8	Ford	$US6.7b	6%
9	Audi	$US3.5b	5%
10	Lexus	$US3.5b	N/A