UK brands fail to keep pace with the growth of the BrandZ top 100

The combined value of UK’s top 13 brands has dropped by 4% over the past year, according to the latest data from Kantar Millward Brown’s BrandZ.

Vodafone, which tops the UK ranking, has seen a 14% drop in brand value to $31.6bn. BT has seen a similar fall in its value, meaning it drops back into fourth place with a valuation of $16bn.

BT has had a tough few months after an accounting scandal in Italy wiped £8bn off the stock market value of the company and the quality of the BT OpenReach service was called into question in Ofcom’s Digital Communications Review (DCR) in 2016.

“The past year has been a humbling experience for us all at BT. Too often we have made the headlines for the wrong reasons,” BT CEO Gavin Paterson admitted in March.

However, it is Barclays that suffers the most in 2017 with a 20% knock to its brand value giving it a new total of $6bn. It does, however, manage to retain its position in eighth ahead of Dove which grew 6% to $5.8bn.

Despite dropping 14%, Vodafone is still by far the UK’s most valuable brand, followed by HSBC which saw a 1% increase to $20.5bn. This year’s fastest riser in the UK is Shell, which after a 23% boost to $18.3bn, leapfrogs BT into third place. It has benefitted from a rise in oil prices, as well as investments in its business aimed at future proofing the brand.

There are now just four UK brands in the global top 100 – Vodafone, HSBC, Shell and BT – down one from last year.

Shell is one of the top 20 risers in the global ranking, meaning it climbs nine spots to 57 in the overall top 100. Conversely, following its 14% dip, BT falls back 17 places in the global ranking to 69, HSBC drops five spots to 48 and Vodafone falls two places to 27.

The UK now accounts for just 2% of brand value in the global top 100, down from 3% in 2016.