18 February 2009 /
Brand valuation: all smoke and mirrors?
by Ben Knapp at 7:00 am 18 February 2009
Filed under: Art, Branding, Luxury, Press
'Black swans are always emerging from everywhere.'
‘It’s a sobering time for number crunchers. From quantitative risk analysis to credit ratings, many financial statistics have revealed more artistic license than resemblance to reality,’ says an editorial in the Financial Times of 30 January 2009. And you can add brand valuation to that list, too. All this number crunching whether it’s risk analysis, GDP projections or brand valuation is part of an attempt to measure areas of activity which are for the most part inherently unquantifiable. The assumption is that people and the organisations they manage, act only out of rational calculation; it’s a natural extension of the economic theories of the Chicago School. These figures are a major part of denial of risk.
At another level they are like a comfort blanket for a child, which makes it feel safe, secure and stable. But all of us know deep down that life isn’t like that. Brand valuation and the other statistical analyses with which it is associated are supposed to be an aid to predicting the future, when as has recently been made clear yet again, the future stubbornly refuses to be predicted. All you can really predict about the future is you don’t know what will happen. Black swans are always emerging from everywhere. Read more…