Top ten most valuable brands

Their logos are everywhere. But branding is more than just a hip logo like Nike's swoosh or Shell's shell. It is more than the name of the company.

Forbes explains it is the intangible perceptions people have about the product. "Put simply, your 'brand' is what your prospect thinks of when he or she hears your brand name," Forbes reported. "It's everything the public thinks it knows about your name brand offering — both factual (e.g. It comes in a robin's-egg-blue box) and emotional (e.g. It's romantic). Your brand name exists objectively; people can see it. It's fixed. But your brand exists only in someone's mind."

And yet, theses intangible perceptions have a value — some are worth billions of dollars. Every year Interbrand ranks brands by looking at how much profit companies make off the strength of their brand. Interbrand looks at many factors — such as the brand's future strength and how much the brand creates demands — to come up with a dollar value of the brand.

Here are Interbrand's latest rankings of the top 10 global brands.

Other links:

See a poster with the top 100 brands as chosen by Interbrand.

Tech brands dominate top global brands list