I recently attended the presentation of Top Latin American Brands by the talented Sir Marten Sorrell, Chief Executive of WPP, and the team of Millward Brown. Through an algorithm of their own they have come up with a way of identifying the top brands in the world. They do this by using very careful metrics and a unique methodology of taking publicly available financials, combined with Kantar’s Worldpanel data and unrivaled consumer research from the BrandZ database. They put all the data through the Millward Brown optimizer and they arrive at their end result.  So, in a few more words, the 2 most important elements are Brand Contribution and Brand Valuation.

Brand Contribution: each brand is given a score depending on the extent the brand plays in driving consumer’s purchase decisions. The higher the Brand Contribution score, the closer the bond between the brand and its consumers and the greater importance the brand plays in driving profits. Brand valuation: calculates the financial value then identifies the role the brand has in creating value.

Their end result, the study, published by BrandZ, is the first they have done on the Latin American market and the result is very interesting.  Sir Marten was inspired to look into Latin America after reading Luis Alberto Morenos’s editorial in the Financial Times “Welcome to the Latin American Decade”

The video, posted below, is a must see for Latin-American enthusiasts like me who are always trying to explain to the rest of the world that this really is our decade.  The video contains all the macro data that makes talking about countries in the south exciting. Argentina, for example is the greatest producer of beef in the world; Colombia, the largest manufacturer of undergarments, Chile, world’s second largest producer of salmon; Mexico, the largest Spanish speaking country in the world and the 13th largest economy, forecast to be the 7th largest by 2020; Brazil, is the world’s largest exporter of sugar, coffee, orange juice, soya, beef, tobacco, and chicken. These to name just a very few of the amazing attributes of Latin America.

My only criticism of this study is the fact that as part of their formula, in order to qualify you have to be a publicly traded company.  In Latin America, at this point,  most of the successful companies are not publicly traded. In part because they are family owned and operated and in part because the market is now just stable enough for companies to want to enter the stock exchange.  This means that companies such as Globo and Havaianas from Brazil, President from the Domincan Republic, Odebrecht or Acelor Mittal from Brazil or Movistar from Mexico and the new digital gaming powerhouse Mentez from Colombia would not qualify. But can we imagine a Latin America without them? So perhaps  the study should be called “Top Latin American  publicly Traded Brands instead”, or  they  at WPP and Millward Brown should  look into the reality of our markets and come up with a formula that is inclusive  of private companies.

The video below is of the top 50 brands they have identified.