The proof in the numbers — What twenty years of converging studies demonstrate

The link between brand strength and economic performance is no longer a communicator's conviction: it is a statistical fact established by bodies of work independent of one another, on differing methodologies, and which converge.

The stock-market proof

For twenty years Kantar has published the BrandZ ranking of the world's most valued brands. The lesson of the 2025 anniversary edition holds in a single sentence: over two decades, including through economic crises, the strongest brands have systematically outperformed the S&P 500 and the MSCI World. The cumulative value of the global Top 100 now reaches 10,700 billion dollars, up 29% year on year. The portfolio of strong brands behaves, in short, like a first-rate financial asset — more resilient in downturns, more dynamic in recoveries.

The proof in the margins

The Boston Consulting Group reaches the same conclusion by another route: according to its Global Brand Report 2025, companies endowed with strong brand equity maintain margins 15 to 20% higher than those of their competitors, including in periods of contracting demand. The brand acts not only on volume; it acts on pricing power — what every industrial-SME executive negotiating across the table from a buyer will recognise as the crux of the matter.

The organisational proof

Gartner's 2026 Brand and Business Strategy Survey, conducted among 425 CMOs and executives, measures the effect inside the company: organisations with a strong brand strategy are twice as likely to exceed their revenue and profitability targets, 3.3 times more likely to exceed their marketing targets — and, more unexpectedly, 1.6 times more likely to see the other functions of the company reach their own targets. The brand radiates: product, customer experience, and even support functions benefit.

The brand radiates: product, customer experience, and even support functions benefit.

The French proof

The 2025 edition of the BrandZ Top 50 France confirms that this mechanism is no Anglo-Saxon preserve: the cumulative value of the top fifty French brands exceeds 506 billion dollars, up 20% in two years, and 84% of that value is generated outside France — a world record. French brands know how to convert heritage, exacting standards and know-how into exportable economic capital. The question of this cahier is precisely this one: why does this mechanism, demonstrated at the summit of the economy, remain so little activated in its depths — where the SMEs and mid-market companies are?