What top brands fear most

We’re normally a little wary of anyone who swaps their ‘s’ with a ‘z’ to look hip, but we’ll give the latest ‘Kantar BrandZ Report’ a pass (sorry, ‘pasz’).

Each year it strips back all the factories, corporate jets, patents, and balance-sheet wizardry to calculate how much each intangible brand contributes to overall market cap.

And this year, it's found the world's top 100 most valuable brands are now collectively worth $13T, up 22% yoy! But while those valuations accelerate, we still see a few big geopolitical icebergs lurking ahead, starting with...

1. The splinternet

Eight of the top ten most valuable brands are US tech giants (plus China's Tencent debuting at #8). The report credits this dominance to brands that deliver “meaningful, different, and salient” AI-driven experiences, but the list also hints at danger ahead:

• Eg, the brand-value for Nvidia (#5) is up 60% yoy, but we've long flagged how this meteoric rise could mask its heavy exposure to US and China export controls. They’ve already cratered the firm’s China market-dominance from ~95% to ~0% (depending how you count all the smuggling), but the real long-term risk might actually be to Nvidia's ‘CUDA’ moat (its dominant programming ecosystem), as China's forced alternatives slowly erode that unassailable developer lock-in.

• Over on the consumer software side, China's Tencent (up 45% yoy) is a reminder the splinternet can also splinter the winners: locked out of many Western markets over various natsec concerns, the giant’s WeChat super-app dominance and rapid AI rollout mean it's still clearly thriving alone behind the Great Firewall.

2. The backlash

McDonald's (#10) recorded the slowest brand growth among the top 10 (6% yoy), while other iconic US brands like Nike (-17%) and Starbucks (-5%) lost ground. Kantar argues brands must stay "meaningful", but we're seeing how that meaning can cut both ways:

• India’s nationalists recently launched US boycott calls in response to Trump's tariffs, pushing 'swadeshi' (buy local) campaigns on WhatsApp and beyond, while...

• The Starbucks share in China (its #2 market) has now sagged from ~34% in 2019 to ~14%! That partly reflects a price war from local rivals appealing to cost-conscious consumers, but social media chatter has also increasingly framed Starbucks as an American luxury. That might be why the US firm just sold 60% of its China ops to a local private equity shop (co-founded by Party princelings, btw).

• As for Nike? It just got dethroned by Spain's Zara as the most valuable apparel brand, as Zara doubles down on its winning formula of AI-fuelled personalisation plus raw speed-to-market. Nike, meanwhile, leans more on retro hits like Jordans.

3. The supply chain

We've long tracked today's supply labyrinths, whether it’s Hormuz energy hitting Asia, or trade wars disrupting the Valley (most US iPhones are already now assembled in India).

But a rare good news story out of Europe is Germany's Siemens, recording 68% brand growth yoy to a #44 ranking (#3 for Germany after SAP and Telekom / T-Mobile). Kantar credits the surge to the firm's repositioning as an AI-driven industrial leader focused on real-world problems — think efficient factories, renewable grids, sustainable buildings.

We’d add Siemens stands to benefit as our world awakens from both a financialisation and digitisation fever-dream, and remembers the value of still making actual stuff. Yet the end of a related third fever-dream (globalisation) poses risks to the $240B firm, both...

• Abroad: China's rare-earths leverage and licensing delays remain a real wild-card for the magnets Siemens uses in wind turbines and industrial motors, while...

• At home: the EU's carbon border tax and supply chain due-diligence might limit the firm’s ability to meet surging AI-driven demand for grid and industrial tech.

Anyway, while we've barely scratched the surface here, it's all to say that sure, the marketing gurus (rightly) celebrate brands that are "meaningful, different, and salient". We’d just note history might end up adding a 4th to that list: geopolitical resilience.