In the U.S.-centric world most Americans live in, all the greatest and most valuable brands were created here. Several studies by brand valuation experts show that to be true.
But some of the world’s most valuable brands are not only owned by companies outside the United States, they are brands that many Americans know nothing about and may never have heard of. 24/7 Wall St. has taken a look at some of these brands and found that the U.S. is not the only brand capital.
See the biggest brands Americans know nothing about >
U.S. brands that dominate the top spots of most brand valuation lists include Apple, Google, Microsoft, Marlboro, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and IBM. These top brands fall into one of two categories. They are either technology or consumer products brands. They are also all global. Apple, Microsoft and IBM have tremendous overseas sales. McDonald’s has restaurants around the world.
The most valuable brands owned by companies outside the U.S. fall into two different categories. The first is financial services and banks. The most widely known and highly valued of these brands have also been around for some time. RBS, the largest bank in Canada, is more than a century old. So is Sberbank in Russia.
The second set of famous overseas brands are cellular phone companies. By their nature they are relatively new, because the wireless revolution is barely 20 years old. China Mobile was incorporated in 1997. Japan’s NTT DoCoMo was formed in 1992.
To pick the most valuable brands that Americans have not heard of, 24/7 Wall St. relied on the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2012. We ranked the brands that made the list based on gross domestic product of country of origin, and then picked the most valuable brands from the eleven largest countries based on that GDP measurement. In order to exclude well-known brands in America, those with very large market share in the U.S were excluded. That meant Toyota, BMW and Louis Vuitton did not make the cut.
These are the most famous brands Americans don’t know.
11. Movistar
Brand value: $17.1 billion
Country: Spain
National GDP: $1.5 trillion
Industry: Telecom
Movistar is the mobile phone operation of Spain’s primary telecom company Telefónica S.A. Its parent company currently has nearly 314 million customers. Like other European nations that once had colonies in Latin America, Movistar does business in Argentina and Mexico. Movistar has business units that market wireless broadband; Internet TV, which includes the new Google TV product; software, which includes Microsoft Windows powered portable devices; and hardware devices, including Apple’s iPad.
10. RBC
Brand value: $17.2 billion
Country: Canada
National GDP: $1.7 trillion
Industry: Financial services
RBC, originally called the Royal Bank of Canada, has been in business since 1864. Forbes lists it as the largest company in the Canada. Like most extremely big financial services firms in the largest countries by GDP, RBC provides services ranging from consumer savings to underwriting for public companies.
One of the major ways that RBC promotes its presence as a global firm is via a comparison with banks around the world as measured by market cap. Based on this measure, RBC statistics put it in 12th place globally, just behind Citigroup, and Bank of America. RBC, which has more than 80,000 employees, reports its financial results in Canadian dollars. In the quarter that ended July 31, RBC had record net income of $2.2 billion, up from $1.7 billion the year before.
9. ICICI Bank
Brand value: $12.7 billion
Country: India
National GDP: $1.8 trillion
Industry: Financial services
Other than the State Bank of India, ICICI is the largest financial services firm in the world’s second most populous country. It had consolidated total assets of more than $91 billion as of March 31. ICICI operates similar to the way J.P. Morgan or Citigroup do in the U.S. All have large consumer banking, business banking, investment bank, wealth management, and underwriting operations. ICICI has driven part of its growth through joint ventures with companies based outside India. ICICI Prudential Life Insurance is a joint venture between ICICI Bank and U.K. insurance giant Prudential plc. ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company is a joint venture with Canada-based Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited.
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