As a follow up to our Mission Intangible Monthly Briefing from 8 July on the value of regional brands, we are pleased to share this story from National Public Radio (Cornish, 31 July) on the new law in New Mexico regarding the labeling of green chiles.

The heart of chile pepper country in southern New Mexico is the tiny village of Hatch, which bills itself the "Chile Capital of the World." A new state law aims to protect this food heritage by preventing foreign peppers from being labeled as New Mexico-grown.

Our program featured Jodie Cohen-Tanugi, Project Manager- International Projects at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, France; and Robert Brandegee, Co-Founder at Little Earth Productions Inc., specializing in both in house boutique Fashion and licensed product for NFL, MLB, NHL. You can purchase a podcast of our 8 July program here.

Justice Potter Stewart’s concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 U.S. 184 (1964) enshrined the qualitative standard “I know it when I see it” into business culture. Now there is a quantitative standard too. For features other than the content of films, that is, as well as other intangibles.

The International Organization for Standards (ISO) has adopted a standard for the valuation of brands - a common term for many of the assets comprising some fraction of the typical ~70% gap between market value and book value. As abstracted from the report in the IAM blog,

ISO 10668 applies to brand valuations commissioned for all purposes, including: accounting and financial reporting; insolvency and liquidation; tax planning and compliance; litigation support and dispute resolution; corporate finance and fund raising; licensing and joint venture negotiation; internal management information and reporting; strategic planning; and brand management. The last of these applications includes brand and marketing budget determination, brand portfolio review, brand architecture analysis and brand extension planning.

ISO 10668 is a meta standard which succinctly specifies the principles to be followed and the types of work to be conducted in any brand valuation. It specifies that when conducting a brand valuation the brand valuer must conduct three types of analysis before passing an opinion on the brand’s value. These are legal, behavioural and financial analysis.

1. Definitions: The first requirement is to define what is meant by brand and which intangible assets should be included in the brand valuation opinion. The brand valuer is required to assess the legal protection afforded to the brand by identifying each of the legal rights that protect it, the legal owner of each relevant legal right and the legal parameters influencing negatively or positively the value of the brand.

2. Behavior: The brand valuer must understand and form an opinion on value drivers; ie,  likely stakeholder behaviour in each of the geographical, product and customer segments in which the subject brand operates.

3. Financial:  [The standard] specifies three alternative brand valuation approaches - the market, cost and income approaches.

The above, which seem to enshrine common practice, may move valuation experts to apply these principles to patents and other intangible assets, and the fact that these practices now have the imprimatur of the ISO may enable the capital markets to accept more readily these indications of value.

To find out if this is the case and to get the latest news from the valuation front, the Society will be hosting three consecutive Mission Intangible Monthly Briefings programs on the subject of intangible asset valuation: markets, value management, and valuation, on Nov 5, Dec 3 and Jan 7. Registration is free. You won't want to miss these!

Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ:PALM) is on the block. E & Y reported that in 2007, only 30% of the value realized in M&A deals was tangible. While a smart phone is a discrete, countable, physical asset, its value is mainly intangible With the above in mind, what are the prospects for Palm?

Using the 3-element accounting-like framework favored by Society member and Member News Committee chair Mary Adams of Intellectual Capital Advisors, those intangibles are as follows:
1. Human capital – the founders, who left the company in 1998 to start Handspring, maker of the Treo, which Palm then purchased for $240 million in 2003
2. Relationship capital – agreements with cellular carriers (Sprint/Nextel initially) through which most cell phones are sold.
3. Structural capital – the business processes, patents, and methods comprising the innovation activities and marketing activities behind the solution

Using the six-element Roman arch model of reputation value as defined in the Society’s book, Mission: Intangible, the two key intangible asset drivers of reputation value for Palm are innovation and quality. Palm’s reputation is abysmal. According to the Steel City Re Corporate Reputation Index, Palm’s reputation ranking in the Computer Hardware and Peripherals sector has not been above the 33rd percentile for the past 16 months. This ~60-member sector, which includes the monotonously #1 ranked Apple, Inc., recently saw Palm drop to the 4th percentile.



Reputation is important because among other things, it confers pricing power. It is not surprising, therefore, that Palm’s two current carriers, Sprint and Verizon, heavily discount Palm’s phones. And even in the face of these discounts, Palm’s global share of smart phones has declined from a peak of 4% in 2004 to only 1.5% in 2009.

Cutting to the chase, Shaw Wu of the Kaufman Brother’s equity research firm opines, according to the Wall Street Journal, that “the company should be worth at least the $600 million to $700 million it has spent on research and marketing…” Valuing a company based on expenses related to innovation and building a brand? That’s intangible asset finance at its best!

Act on your intellectual curiosity!

If the above discussion piques your interest, here are several things you can do right now:

1. Register free of charge for the next IAFS Mission Intangible Monthly Briefing set for Friday 7 May. The conversation will feature Scott Childers from Walt Disney and Bob Rittereiser from Zhi Verden on “Process-driven reputation risk in supply chains”
2. Purchase the book, Mission: Intangible. Managing risk and reputation to create enterprise value, at the IAFS Store (or any online book retailer) 
3. Become a member of the Intangible Asset Finance Society.
4. Join our community on Linked-In.

Followers of Mission:Intangible know the mantra—reputations result from the perceptions stakeholders form about how a company manages its intangible assets. Superior reputations pay off with (i) stronger pricing power, (ii) lower operating costs, (iii) greater earnings multiples, (iv) lower beta, and (v) lower credit costs. Brands are the promises embedded in reputations. Trademarks are communications instruments that evoke brands.

David Ruder, an executive with RPX Corporation who chairs the Society’s Trademark Assets Committee, is an authority on trademarks, brands, reputation and value. In anticipation of a full article a forthcoming issue of Intellectual Asset Management Magazine, David writes about the benefits of reanimation:

In the recent financial downturn many companies have experienced extreme financial distress and some have even gone bankrupt. Because of the financial distress, many of these companies discontinued product or service lines and in the process stopped using the brands associated with the product or service lines. While some of these failed or distressed companies, product lines, or service lines may have been discontinued with little or no attention, there are many that have been high profile. Brands such as HUMMER, CIRCUIT CITY, and SHARPER IMAGE all had billions of dollars of revenues in their lifetimes, but were in serious danger of being permanently retired, never to be heard from again.

However, there are many investors, entrepreneurs, and operating companies that understand the value of brands; even the ones that look like they are dying or dead. Through the process of brand revival, many discontinued or retired brands are being brought back to life as viable and thriving businesses that consumers enjoy. Brand revival takes hard work and investment, but when done properly it can be a rewarding endeavor for those that choose to pursue the strategy.

Unfortunately, there is a small group of commentators that have cast aspersions against revived brands. They call these brands “zombie” brands (or sometimes “ghost” brands) and contend that because the revived brand is not the original, it is somehow not real. They believe that a brand that is revived by an owner other than the original owner is not authentic and can, at times, even be deceptive to consumers.

What these commentators fail to see, however, is that a revived brand is just as real as any other brand. Consumers that choose to buy products or services because of a brand will do so whether the brand is revived or not. Just like all brands, a revived brand requires product development, advertising, and marketing efforts. Brands are assets that require ongoing investment and management.

There are brands out there that can be called zombies, however. They are not ones that are available on any product or service, however. These are the brands that are discontinued yet still exist on trademark registers, corporate balance sheets, and “whatever happened to?” websites. Many of these brands have a great deal of value because consumers still remember them and may have strong positive feelings about the brands. Some business managers, however, just let these brands sit unused and often do so deliberately so that consumers are forced to choose one brand over another.

Once the economy returns to full strength in the coming years there should be many examples of brands that have been revived and grow with a strong economy. These brands will not be zombies but the realization of potential identified by savvy business managers. The commentators that deride these revived brands as zombies would rather that the brands they considered dead would just stay dead. These commentators do not understand brand value.

Intrigued? On behalf of the Society, David invites you to help his committee develop best practice standards for trademark asset management. For more information on membership, click here.

Stefan Stern writes on management for the Financial Times. In yesterday’s issue, he reviewed the concept of “employer brand.” According to the consultancy Business in People, (BiP), the employer brand “encapsulates how your workforce behaves, the impression employees create while carrying out their work, how well they are managed and led, whether or not they feel engaged, and so on.” It is an intangible asset that attracts and retains employees.

In the language of the Intangible Asset Finance Society, “employer brand” translates to “business processes and reputation.” And as the call out in the FT article affirms, “when it comes to retaining good people or attracting new ones, your image and reputation count.”

So far so good. Stern writes that Hiscox Ltd (LON:HSX), an insurance firm, realized a 30% increase in EBITDA last year. The firm’s CEO engages BiP. Proof that a good reputation arising from good human resources business processes fosters above average returns. And we have no argument with the conclusion.

Stern then writes that BT Group plc  (NYSE:BT), the telecommunications conglomerate, failed to honor its commitment to attend a recruiting fair leaving an indelible stain on their reputation. And their stock price is down 30% over the past year. BT's attitude to people, he notes, is very different than Hiscox's and by implication explains the differences in economic performance. 

We can not independently test the contrasting reputations with the Steel City Re Corporate Reputation Index since it currently does not extend to companies trading on non-US exchanges, and we do not dispute the economic results. But we would like to verify the implied relationship since it is a core area of interest to the Society.

Fortunately, Stern’s newspaper, the FT publishes a sentiment index through its affiliate, Newssift. The FT Newssift sentiment data that offer rough measures of reputation as reflected in the business press, do not support Stern’s argument.

As shown below, for the twelve month period between 2 Sep 2008 and 2 Sep 2009, articles in the business press covering Hiscox were positive 43% of the time, and negative 23% of the time; articles covering BT were positive 49% of the time and negative 18% of the time. By this metric, BT has a superior reputation.



We have invited Stern to comment.