By Morenike Taire

As value of luxury brands declines by $7bn as retaining exclusivity continues to be a struggle Louis Vuitton, maker of luxury bags, clothes and jewellery has held the top spot in the luxury ranking for 10 years. Its brand is valued at more than $27.4bn, though luxury brands continue to struggle. The total brand value of the category declined by -6% (by $7.1 billion) to $104.6bn. Only two of the BrandZ Top 10 Luxury Brands showed growth: Chanel (up 15% to nearly $9bn) and top brand Louis Vuitton.

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Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands Ranking is carried out annually by WPP’s marketing and brand consultancy Millward Brown, a leading global research agency specializing in advertising effectiveness, strategic communication, media and brand equity research.

Other luxury fashion brands in the top ten includes Prada, Hermes, Burberry, Gucci, Roles, Cartier and Michael Kors.

According to a Milward Brown spokeswoman, both Chanel and Louis Vuitton are masters at doing things differently. Chanel’s iconic, self-aware and less serious marketing, supported by edgy models provide a different view of femininity.

Louis Vuitton has successfully revitalized its brand by going back to its original LV monogram in a new way, while other brands were leaving the classic canvas for more luxurious leather and fabrics to justify their premium position.

“They have also harmonized their prices across regions – raising prices in Europe and lowering them in China. Although this will impact their financial performance in the short-term, they are protecting the brand by encouraging more in-store consumption and slowing the grey market of goods purchased in Europe to sell in China at a profit.”

This resurgence of exclusivity created an opportunity for more ubiquitous and popularly priced luxury brands like Michael Kors, which operates in over 85 countries with its own locations and in department stores. Michael Kors entered the BrandZ Luxury Top 10 for the first time this year. Tiffany, worth $3.2bn, was the second new entrant.

In the global BrandZ Top100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking, Apple overtook Google to once again become the world’s most valuable brand, increasing its brand value to $247bn, a rise of 67% year on year. Though the AppleWatch has proved extremely popular, it is successful sales of the iPhone 6 that has been the main driver of Apple’s brand value growth.

Google (no.2) also grew, achieving a 9% value increase to reach $173.7bn. Microsoft, now worth $115.5bn, is the new no.3, rising one position with value growth of 28%. Technology is the fastest-growing category – up 24% in the last year, the tech brands in the Top 100 are worth more than $1 trillion, nearly a third of the value of all brands in the ranking.

BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking is now in its tenth year. It is the only study to combine measures of brand equity based on interviews with over three million consumers globally about thousands of global ‘consumer facing’ and business-to-business brands with a rigorous analysis of the financial and business performance of each company (using data from Bloomberg and Kantar Retail) to separate the value that brand plays in driving business and shareholder value.

Consumer perception of a brand is a key input in determining brand value because brands are a combination of business performance, product delivery, clarity of positioning, and leadership. The ranking takes into account regional variations since, even for truly global brands, measures of brand contribution might differ substantially across countries.