Some Of The World's Most Powerful Brands, And Some That Are Not (AAPL)(GOOG)(IBM)(C)(SBUX)

Once a year, the firm Millard Brown puts out its BrandZ 100 Most Valuable Brands. The data used for the list comes from consumer research and financial data on the companies. The research house gives it entire methodology here.

For those who think Google (GOOG) is the top brand, give yourself a pat on the back. It has a brand valuation of $86 billion, up 30%. For those research mavens in the crowd, the figure makes absolutely no sense. Google has a market cap of $168 billion. Most of that would go away, no matter how good the technology is, if it changed it name to Dawdle.

Apple (AAPL) is up high on the list, at No.7 with a brand valuation of $55 billion, up 30% over last year. The number may not be right, but with improved Mac sales and the iPhone intro the increase rings true.

IBM (IBM) clocks in at $55 billion, up 65%. No one can argue that the company has not had a good year.

Cisco (CSCO) did well at $24 billion, up 28%. Oracle (ORCL) had a brand value of $23 billion, up 29%.

Citgroup (C) lost a lot of ground, down 10% to $30 billion. At this point, Citi would be better off changing its name, so the figure may be a little heavy, by about $30 billion.

Of all the brands on the list, the one with the largest increase in value was Blackberry, up 390% to almost $14 billion.

There were not a lot of surprises among the losers. Starbucks (SBUX) dropped 25% to $12 billion. The entire market cap of the company is $13 billion. All that extra coffee and real estate must not be worth very much.

Yahoo!’s (YHOO) brand value dropped 13% to $11.5 billion. A lot of analysts think that if Yahoo!’s investment in other companies went away, the core portal business would only be worth about $15 billion.

Ebay (EBAY) dropped 13% to just over $11 billion. Ford (F) Ford was also down 13% to $11 billion. With a market cap of $17 billion, that does leave much for the rest of the car company’s assets.

Finally, Motorola (MOT) fell 30% to $7.5 billion. That number should probably be zero.

Douglas A. McIntyre