Brands add value.

Brands cannot exist in any other way than creating value.

Value creation is their metabolic function. Brands are alive.

Their metabolism relies on all six capitals (of a company, of an individual. These six rely on the management of the following assets (asset management):

1. Productive assets: purchased goods that a company or individual uses to add value.
2. Natural resources: shared or purchased natural resources that a company or individual uses to create value. Natural resources form a natural circular value chain. The “waste” produced in “value creation” becomes a natural resource for other people or nature. CO2, a waste product of animals, becomes food for plants.
3. Social asset: the intended usable product of a person or business, preferably exchanged in the marketplace. It can be given away by a charity, creating additional brand value beyond that received when a product is exchanged in the marketplace.
4. Human assets: the value that labor or other individuals bring to the production of a business or individual on a commercial basis. These individuals sell their intellectual capital to a company or individual to create products that belong to that person or company.
5. Intellectual assets: know-how and knowledge of an individual or company that can be used either for its own products or for sale on the market to other producers, individuals or companies.
6. Financial assets: money collected through market activities and used to finance the acquisition of other capital assets.

When the above assets are properly managed, they accumulate in six respective capitals owned by different stakeholders:

1. The company or individual owns the productive capital.
2. Natural capital is unique in that some of it belongs to no one, such as air, and some of it is used by different actors as primary accumulation, such as land, water, minerals, etc.
3. Social capital belongs to an individual or a company.
4. Human capital belongs to an individual or a company that acquires it in the labor market.
5. Intellectual capital belongs to an individual or a company.
6. The owner of the company owns the financial capital of the company. The owner of the individual is that individual himself, unless he is a slave.

The brand value is the cumulative value of all six capitals.

All six capitals explained by the value chain management represent the metabolism of the brand. A brand without added value is a contradiction in terms.

The value can be negative from the point of view of one stakeholder and positive from the point of view of another stakeholder. Consequently, the brand dies with the last stakeholder. Until that point, the added value is added by default. Brands add value with a little help from users. When it comes to brands, the user is a stakeholder, and the stakeholder can only be the user.

The relationship between brand and user is rock’n’roll. Users rock the brand just as the brand rocks the user. Both parties expect to be rocked and rolled with dignity, at least when it comes to rock’n’roll. Brands and people are physical and memetic entities, co-evolved living beings.

Brands cannot exist in any other way than to create value. Brand values and capital market valuation should be based on the results of asset management of all six capitals.

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