The best global brands of 2026
The best brands are increasingly wise brands.
Interbrand have just released their 2026 guide to the best global brands and in this year's report the big theme they're pitching is that brand is back.
Now...if you are a long-time subscriber of our intelligence reports this realisation will not be news to you.
In light of the ongoing collapse of the customer journey, the proliferation of AI and the changing nature of social media, we've been banging on this old brand drum for some time now.
What Interbrand are suggesting (to a more mainstream, commercial audience) is that a brand's philosophy should ultimately be at the heart of all successful business operations and wisdom should be what guides the brand journey along.
Philosophy...wisdom...hell's bells Interbrand - what kind of witchcraft are you peppering us with here?
Obviously we wholeheartedly agree, but what this means is that successful future brands need to be helmed by deep thinkers....systems thinkers...futures thinkers...people with the capability to humbly see the big picture and connect dots.
We obviously don't mean to be rude or condescending, but if you think there's a lack of competent technical knowledge workers available in the talent pool, there's a nasty surprise waiting if you're now wanting to start hiring people that are genuinely wise.
What is wisdom?
A few years ago we had a wonderful conversation with Tom Lombardo who is the director of the Center for Future Consciousness and retired faculty chair of psychology and philosophy at Rio Salado College in Tempe, Arizona.
He suggested this definition of wisdom, which may help to clarify what kind of skillset is required for this proposed future of brand building:
Wisdom is the continually evolving understanding of and fascination with the big picture of life and what is important, ethical, and meaningful; it includes the desire and ability to apply this understanding to enhance the well-being of life, both for oneself and for others.
From this definition what becomes somewhat awkward in relation to our current definition of commercial intent is that wise individuals are probably not going to be a natural cultural fit for most organisations.
People that understand the value of ethical and moral standards are not going to want to be a part of a mechanism that willingly extracts and exploits at the expense of society and the environment.
So wisdom might be what's needed, but a worldview that has wisdom that the heart of it will produce a very different outcome to the one that most shareholders value now.
Based on this logical, is this the end of brands as we know them?
Are Interbrand making an argument that surreptitiously suggests that we are at the end of a 100-year long era (which started with the invention of public relations in the 1920s) and that future best brands will behave better than they do today?
Top 50 Global Brands
No real astonishing revelations in this Top 50 list (when you consider its source). Everything appears to be as it should (even though clearly many non-Western brands are seemingly being deliberately overlooked here i.e. TikTok is nowhere to be found). Interestingly only two brands in the Top 10 are non-tech brands (Coca Cola and Toyota). How Cisco, Oracle and SAP made it into the Top 20 is beyond rational logic. Accenture is a higher ranking brand than UNIQLO? Seriously?
Previously:
Jon Cherry
Jon Cherry
Jon Cherry
Jon Cherry