On June 11, the 2019 BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands list was released in New York. Amazon topped the rankings, replacing Google, which was the previous champion. Fifteen Chinese brands were included on the list this year, with Alibaba as the frontrunner. China Life, Bank of China (BOC) and SF Express, three Chinese brands included on the 2018 list, did not make the 2019 list. This year’s newcomers from China were Haier, Meituan, Didi and Xiaomi. Of the 12 Chinese brands that remained on the list, Alibaba, Ping An and Huawei moved up, while Tencent and eight other brands moved down. BrandZ’s brand value system is a reminder that brand value is not necessarily directly proportional to a firm’s size as global brand value must be endorsed by a global customer base. The list shows that the combined value of the top 100 brands stands at USD4.7 trillion, representing a year-on-year increase of USD328 billion, or 7.5%.

Thirty-four of the brands that remained on the list lost brand value, with GE experiencing the steepest decline, down 32%. Fifty-seven achieved a higher brand value, among them the nine new entrants and Instagram, whose brand value soared 95%. The new champion Amazon saw its brand value surge 52%. Other high-achievers which enjoyed 50%+ increases in their brand value included Netflix (65%), Salesforce (58%), Adobe (57%) and Uber (51%).

The six brands with the highest increases in value owe their success to the transformation of their business models, Amazon’s success comes its service partners on the Amazon platform, while Haier’s success comes from the successful transformation of its empowered ecosystem brands within Haier’s IoT ecosystem. Netflix has shifted its business from DVD rentals to a video streaming platform. Salesforce has repurposed itself from a software vendor to a cloud-based industrial ecosystem. BrandZ Chairman David Roth said: “We see a new trend of moving away from the delivery of a single product and service toward a disruptive ecosystem. Brands that want to succeed in the future must understand the value this model could potentially unlock and embrace this model willingly. “BrandZ has introduced a new category on its 2019 list – the IoT ecosystem. Haier was the first brand to be placed in this category. Haier’s brand value was assessed against the criterion of “an ecosystem consisting of multiple interrelated companies,” the Shanghai Daily reports.