I recently took a look at Interbrand’s 2008 Best Global Brands is a ranking of the world’s top 100 brands “on the basis of how much they’re likely to earn in the future,” or in other words the ‘brand value.’

Interestingly enough there are three media brands on this list: Disney, MTV and Thomson Reuters. No other media brands appear, because either a) they didn’t rank or b) they were exempted from consideration since Interbrand requires that “the brand must have at least one-third of revenues outside of its country-of-origin.” I’m going to do some more research and try to see which brands got exempted but in the mean time here is a graph displaying the brand value of Disney, MTV and Thomson Reuters. The last brand has been ranked only since 2008.

What is immediately obvious is that Disney’s brand value is far greater than the others. I would consider the following factors as to why this is the case.

• Time: Disney has simply been in the marketplace for longer than the other companies, and its brand has therefore penetraded various generations of consumers.
• Business interests: Disney has movies, theme parks, TV programming, cruise lines and many other businesses that MTV and Thomson are not involved in. Of course Disney’s brand must be strong to work in so many different businesses, but successful business interests would also reinforce and strengthen the brand.
• Prominence: Lastly I think that Disney’s brand is more prominently used than many other media companies. More on this below.

For a lot media companies the parent brand acts as ‘endorser’ while a shows or movie is the ‘driver’ brand which effectively steers the relationship with the consumer. A good example of this would be a network like NBC and the show ER. Viewers are watching NBC, but they are choosing to watch ER.

In other cases like Disney the parent brand maintains a higher degree of prominence, and is more important in managing the relationship with the consumer. I believe that many parents will take their children to see a Disney movie simply because it’s a Disney movie. I also believe that the MTV brand has a similar prominent role in the relationship with its audience, and that this in part is why the MTV brand is on this top 100 list.

When I first saw this Interbrand list, I though it would be interesting to see a ranked list of all media companies and not just Disney, MTV and Thomson Reuters. However now I think it would be better to see a study comparing the weight of media parent brands to the media property brands they manage.