Measuring what matters for future success

What is the FutureBrand Index and how can you use it?

We are increasingly concerned with the beliefs and behaviours of the companies behind the products and services we depend on. Arguably, global perception of these companies makes a difference to their future reputation and value – they inform our decisions about what to buy, invest in and where to work.

Yet we still reduce our understanding of organizational strength to financial value.

In 2014, we set out to broaden this understanding to include how far a company is seen to address broader emotional and societal needs and wants – from fostering trust to driving innovation and being indispensable to our lives – and re-rank the 100 largest companies by market capitalisation as an alternative ‘Index’ of future success.

Our research demonstrated that financial value and past performance are no guarantees of future brand strength. It also demonstrated that organizations with the strongest perceptions by our measures have a quantifiable competitive advantage and are more ‘future proof’ than their peers. This was designed to help organizational leaders of the world’s best performing companies understand which levers to pull for future success.

This year we go even further.

In addition to offering year on year trends, in depth perception data and success drivers by sector, the 2015 FutureBrand Index sets out the hypothesis that the first fifteen years of a century gives us the future. If the organizations emerging by 1915 went on to dominate the last century by taming the world around us, those emerging in 2015 will dominate the next hundred years by unlocking human potential.