Jim Malackowski, Chairman of Ocean Tomo, is a friend and colleague of mine. He’s an intellectual property expert. The Ocean Tomo website shows a chart that compares the components of market value for the S&P between 1975 and 2010. Over this period, tangible assets have shrunk from an incredible 83% to just 20%.
One assumes that the proportional value of IP assets has soared as the value of tangibles has declined. That may be what the math suggests, but brand IP is not nearly given the respect these numbers suggest they deserve. Call it brand ownership, perhaps, but it is absentee ownership for most brands. Brands should be occupying the corner office. Instead most brands languish in a dreary corporate warehouse of IP assets.