Tesla’s brand value dropped from over $60 billion in early 2024 to $43 billion in 2025, according to Brand Auditors’ analysis. The company’s cars didn’t suddenly become worse. Their factories didn’t burn down. What changed was something invisible on balance sheets but devastatingly real in market impact: brand perception. Meanwhile, Brand Finance has ranked UnitedHealthcare the world’s most valuable healthcare services brand for nine consecutive years, with brand value reaching $47.6 billion in 2024 – not because they offer fundamentally different insurance, but because of how their brand operates in customers’ minds.

The assets that matter most are the ones accountants can’t easily quantify. Trust. Recognition. Emotional connection. The willingness of customers to pay premium prices for your name on the label. According to Brand Finance’s 2024 GIFT study, 79% of global intangible asset value isn’t disclosed on balance sheets. That’s trillions of dollars of real business value that traditional accounting simply doesn’t capture.

This creates a measurement problem with serious strategic consequences. You can’t improve what you don’t measure. And you can’t protect assets you can’t see.

Intangible Asset Gap

Since the International Accounting Standards Board adopted IAS 38 in April 2001, total global intangible asset value has grown from $20 trillion to $79 trillion, according to Brand Finance’s December 2024 analysis. The standard itself hasn’t been substantially revised. This means the gap between disclosed financial statements and actual company value has widened to the point where balance sheets are increasingly irrelevant for evaluating the most innovative companies.

The limitation is fundamental: internally generated intangible assets – the brand you’ve built, the reputation you’ve earned, the trust you’ve cultivated – can’t be disclosed on balance sheets under current rules. Only acquired intangible assets qualify. So if you buy a brand, you can report its value. If you build one, you can’t.

This accounting constraint doesn’t mean brand value can’t be measured. It means most businesses haven’t developed the internal capability to measure it. A comprehensive marketing audit addresses this gap, quantifying what traditional financial analysis misses.

Brand Equity Measurement – Key Components to Audit

Brand equity isn’t a single metric. It’s a composite of several distinct dimensions, each requiring different measurement approaches:

• Brand awareness measures how readily consumers recognise and recall your brand. This splits into aided awareness (do you recognise this name when shown it?) and unaided awareness (when thinking of this category, which brands come to mind?). High unaided awareness indicates your brand occupies mental territory that competitors haven’t claimed.

• Brand loyalty assesses repeat purchase behaviour and resistance to competitive offers. Loyal customers aren’t just recurring revenue – they’re lower acquisition costs and organic advocacy. Metrics include repurchase frequency, customer lifetime value, and willingness to recommend.

• Perceived quality captures how customers rate your offerings against alternatives. This perception often matters more than objective quality measurements because it drives purchasing decisions. The gap between perceived and actual quality – in either direction – reveals important strategic information.

• Brand associations are the mental connections customers make with your brand. These can be functional (reliable, innovative), emotional (trustworthy, exciting), or symbolic (prestigious, rebellious). Understanding which associations dominate – and whether they align with your strategy – determines whether your brand positioning is working.

Measurement Approaches That Actually Work

Behavio Labs notes that 95% of purchasing decisions occur in the subconscious mind. This makes traditional survey methods – asking people directly why they buy – unreliable. Effective brand measurement combines multiple approaches to capture both conscious and unconscious brand perception.

• Share of Search has emerged as a leading indicator of market share. According to Ainoa Agency’s 2025 Brand Audit Guide and Marketing Week research, this metric measures how often people search for your brand compared to competitors in your category. It provides more responsive insights than traditional market research because search behaviour reflects current interest, not recalled past behaviour.

• Net Promoter Score (NPS) remains useful despite criticism, particularly as a tracking metric over time. Apple’s NPS of 68 in 2024 reflects genuine customer advocacy that translates to market performance. The score itself matters less than understanding why promoters promote and detractors detract.

• Brand symbol testing evaluates which visual and verbal elements create the strongest mental connections. Behavio Labs’ methodology examines how well customers associate specific symbols with your brand (recognition), whether they associate them only with you (uniqueness), their relevance to purchase decisions, and the emotions they trigger.

• Price premium analysis is perhaps the most concrete measure of brand value. What percentage more will customers pay for your product versus a generic alternative with identical functional attributes? This premium represents the dollar value of your brand name. Eton Venture Services identifies this as a core component of brand valuation methodology.

Consistency Audit

Brand equity erodes through inconsistency. Every touchpoint where experience doesn’t match expectation chips away at accumulated brand value. A brand audit examines consistency across multiple dimensions:

• Visual identity consistency. Is your logo, colour palette, and visual language applied consistently across physical and digital touchpoints? Inconsistencies signal organisational dysfunction and undermine the professional impression that builds trust.

• Messaging alignment. Do different departments, channels, and campaigns tell the same brand story? Contradictory messages create confusion that weakens brand positioning.

• Experience delivery. Does customer experience match brand promise? The gap between what marketing claims and what operations deliver is where brand trust goes to die.

• Internal alignment. Do employees understand and embody the brand? Customer-facing staff who can’t articulate what the brand stands for can’t deliver experiences that reinforce it.

Competitive Context

Brand equity is relative. Your brand’s strength matters only in comparison to alternatives. A comprehensive audit places your brand metrics in competitive context:

How does your awareness compare to competitors? Where does your perceived quality rank? What associations do competitors own that you don’t – and vice versa? Which competitors are gaining ground in share of search, and what’s driving that shift?

This competitive mapping reveals both vulnerabilities and opportunities. Positions that competitors haven’t claimed represent potential differentiation. Positions they’re abandoning might be available to capture. Understanding the competitive brand landscape is as important as understanding your own brand metrics.

Translating Measurement to Action

Brand measurement only matters if it drives decisions. The audit deliverable isn’t a report – it’s a strategic roadmap. Key questions the measurement should answer:

Where are we losing equity, and why? Low loyalty scores combined with high awareness suggests a promise-delivery gap. Low awareness with high loyalty among existing customers suggests a distribution or marketing reach problem. Each pattern implies different interventions.

Which brand assets are most valuable? Not all brand elements contribute equally to purchase decisions. Understanding which logos, taglines, colours, or messaging most strongly drive customer behaviour helps prioritise protection and investment.

What’s the financial impact? Brand Finance, Interbrand, and Kantar BrandZ frameworks translate equity metrics into dollar values, making it possible to calculate ROI on brand-building investments. Marketing spend that increases brand equity by measurable amounts can be evaluated against other capital allocation options.

Making the Invisible Visible

The International Accounting Standards Board added an intangible assets project to their research agenda in December 2020 and is finally reconsidering IAS 38, potentially allowing companies to disclose internally generated brand value. This reflects growing recognition that the most valuable assets in modern business don’t appear on traditional financial statements.

But you don’t need accounting standards to change to start measuring what matters. The methodologies exist. The frameworks are proven. The only question is whether your organisation has the discipline to treat brand equity as the strategic asset it is – measuring it rigorously, protecting it systematically, and investing in it deliberately.

Tesla lost $17 billion in brand value in a year without losing a single factory. UnitedHealthcare built $47 billion in brand value selling essentially the same product as competitors. The invisible assets determine which companies win. The question is whether you know what yours are worth.

Understanding your intangible brand assets requires systematic measurement and competitive analysis. Explore our Marketing Audit or book a consultation to discover the true value of your brand.