What comes to mind when you think about Spain or Japan?

Just like anything else, our brains tend to associate certain images and attributes with a given country in order to form a unique mental perception.

In a global marketplace, a country’s national image can be one of its most valued assets or a challenging liability. These perceptions help to forge a country’s reputation, and also have a long-lasting impact on future economic potential and the ability to attract new investment.

Introducing Nation Brands

Earlier this week, Brand Finance released its 2018 report in an attempt to place a dollar value on these national perceptions.

While the specific methodology is covered directly in the report, what you need to know is that Brand Finance uses three pillars to calculate a Brand Strength Index score.

The three pillars are:

Goods & Services: Includes factors such as openness to tourism, market size, and trade rules

Society: Includes factors such as quality of life, corporate ethics, corruption, and cultural image

Investment: Includes items such as talent retention, use of technology, R&D, taxation, and regulation

The Brand Index Score is then used to calculate a hypothetical royalty rate, and to forecast revenues to ultimately derive a brand value (post-tax revenues discounted to calculate a net present value).

Which Nation Brands are Most Valuable?

Here are the world’s 15 most valuable nation brands, as ranked in the most recent report.

RANK COUNTRY 2018 BRAND VALUE CHANGE (VS. 2017) #1 United States $25.9 trillion 23% #2 China $12.8 trillion 25% #3 Germany $5.1 trillion 28% #4 United Kingdom $3.8 trillion 20% #5 Japan $3.6 trillion 5% #6 France $3.2 trillion 9% #7 Canada $2.2 trillion 8% #8 Italy $2.2 trillion 9% #9 India $2.2 trillion 5% #10 South Korea $2.0 trillion 8% #11 Australia $1.7 trillion 11% #12 Spain $1.6 trillion 14% #13 Netherlands $1.2 trillion 18% #14 Mexico $1.1 trillion 2% #15 Switzerland $1.1 trillion -4%