An Executive Voices Blog by Bryn Anderson, Valuation Director at Valuation Consulting, a Stobbs Group company

While revenue reflects a brand’s commercial performance—and is driven by the brand—it does not capture the full extent of the brand’s value, which goes far beyond sales figures.

A strong, authentic, and consistently managed brand creates significant utility in the market by fostering customer loyalty, trust, and preference over competitors. These attributes often enable businesses to command price premiums, lower customer acquisition costs, and sustain long-term competitive advantage.

Beyond commercial impact, a well-established brand also drives internal value—enhancing employee engagement, attracting high-quality talent, and strengthening stakeholder relationships, including those with partners and investors. In many cases, the brand emerges as an organisation’s most enduring and valuable asset—yet it is often one of the most misunderstood and underleveraged in strategic decision-making.

Recognising the capital value of a brand allows owners to make better-informed decisions across strategy, finance, and marketing. When it comes to strategic brand decision making, licensing, securing investment, acquisitions, or portfolio management, a clear understanding of brand value can uncover hidden opportunities or risks.

For example, understanding the value of the brand is considered a critical foundation for effective brand licensing. A robust valuation helps inform royalty rate negotiations, identify suitable licensing categories, and establish fair commercial terms. It also strengthens the brand owner’s position with partners and investors by quantifying and articulating the economic value of the brand’s equity.

Moreover, brand valuation supports internal reporting purposes, budget justifications, resource allocation as well as informs brand-building activities, helps track brand performance over time, and contributes to understanding return on brand investment. Ultimately, knowing the brand’s true worth allows brand owners to safeguard and grow its value and equity over time.

Valuation Consulting typically assesses brand value using a blend of financial, behavioural, and legal considerations within a range of valuation approaches—such as the income, market, or cost approach. The financial aspect of the exercise relates to the quantification of the brand’s contribution to future earnings, factoring in risk and growth potential.

Behavioural metrics examine a brand’s performance relative to competitors on a range of metrics, such as consumer (and other stakeholder) awareness, loyalty, preference, and perceptions, often using market research and brand tracking data.

Legal considerations focus on ownership rights, trademark protection, and brand control. Brand valuations should consider the most appropriate approach on a case-by-case basis and combine these elements to deliver a comprehensive, commercially sound result.

How often an organisation should re-examine its brand’s value can vary. Brand valuations for accounting purposes, for instance, are required when local or international accounting rules dictate. However, brand valuation for internal strategic decision-making purposes and performance tracking should be reviewed regularly—typically every one to three years—depending on the context and objectives. More frequent assessments may be necessary during times of strategic change, such as rebranding, mergers and acquisitions, expansion into new markets, or reputational challenges.

Routine re-evaluation enables brand owners to monitor performance, adapt to market shifts, and ensure valuations used for financial reporting or strategic planning remain current and defensible.

Brand valuation is a relatively recent discipline, having emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s alongside growing recognition of intangible assets. Since then, it has undergone significant evolution and continues to develop in response to shifting business priorities, methodological advances, industry standardisation, and technological change.

The digital landscape has reshaped brand–consumer interaction, elevating online presence, social engagement, and digital experience as key drivers of brand equity. In parallel, consumers increasingly value authenticity, sustainability, and ethical behaviour—prompting brand valuations to integrate ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) factors and digital performance metrics more prominently.

Protecting brand value requires proactive legal, strategic, and operational measures. Legally, brand owners should ensure trademarks are properly registered, monitored, and enforced. Strategically, consistent brand positioning, innovation, and strong governance are vital to sustaining relevance. Operationally, delivering a coherent brand experience across all consumer touchpoints is essential.

Additionally, regular monitoring of reputation, preparing for potential crises, and maintaining open communication with stakeholders help to mitigate risks. In essence, brand owners must treat the brand as a dynamic asset—one that requires ongoing investment, protection, measurement and valuation.

As Peter Drucker famously stated, “What gets measured gets managed.”

Valuation Consulting is a U.K.-based, leading provider of business and intangible asset valuation services globally, trusted by some of the world’s best-known brands in bringing understanding and transparency to the valuation of their businesses, intangible assets, and IP. Valuation Consulting is uncluttered by the need or desire to offer tax, legal advice, or audit services and is trusted by lawyers, accountants, and commercial organisations worldwide as objective third-party valuers. Clients are provided with real insight, deep understanding, and practical guidance—helping them to leverage the true value of their business and intangible assets. Valuation Consulting is a Stobbs Group company.

Stobbs is the world’s leading brand-advisory firm with over 200 staff seeking to disrupt the legal industry by offering higher-quality, better value solutions for brand-owning clients around the world. We created the category of Intangible Asset Management­—with the legal aspects of trademarks, designs, copyright, commercial, disputes, and litigation at the centre. Stobbs stands apart by having an industry-leading breadth of capability around monetisation (licensing, valuation), protection (online brand enforcement, anti-counterfeiting, domains, investigations), and optimisation (systems and legal tech). Our HQ is in Cambridge, and we have offices in London, Dublin, Eindhoven, Munich, and Charlotte (NC, USA) and work with a 150-strong network of firms around the world. Stobbs was formed in 2013 and has been ranked in tier one in Legal 500, WTR, WIPR for over five years. www.iamstobbs.com/