The "value of brands": Pioneering standard from Austria celebrates its tenth anniversary

  

To this day, ÖNORM A 6800 is an internationally recognized reference work. The current COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates once more that well-managed brands weather a crisis better and can recover faster. This does not come as a surprise to KR DI Dr. Gerhard Hrebicek, MBA, member of the Presidential Council of Austrian Standards International and chair of working group AG 251 03 "Brand and patent valuation": "In difficult times, well-established brands fare better at two levels: first, with consumers as they create identity and provide orientation and second, the capital market that enterprises particularly rely on now is confident that strong brands return to success in business faster after a crisis. Therefore, companies actively managing their brands should perform better not only after a crisis but also while it is still ongoing."

Austrian standard becomes an international benchmark

ÖNORM A 6800 as well as ÖNORM A 6801 were mainly developed for the target group of domestic small and medium-sized enterprises. While smaller companies, in particular, have a very strong brand DNA, they deploy it insufficiently as yet. "Austria is an SME country. Our objective for ÖNORM A 6800 is to give them as well as clusters or regions the opportunity to evaluate their own brand and the underlying brand management in a verifiable way without the help of external consultants. The standard is drafted in a practice-oriented way and provided with examples. The brand value established is a more and more important asset that ensures comparabilty nationally as well as internationally," emphasizes DDr. Elisabeth Stampfl-Blaha, Managing Director of Austrian Standards International.

The future of brands: the key trend 

For ten years already ÖNORM A 6800 has remained unchanged and still serves as a benchmark also at the international level. Thus, this standard is frequently referenced in the international standard ISO 20671 published in March 2019. Gerhard Hrebicek, who also chairs the competent ISO working group, highlights a trend that began at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic and has multiplied its speed within a few months: "Brands with business models that have already arrived in the digital world are in a noticeably better starting position in the crisis. Driven by COVID-19, this level of digitization will even increase in importance much faster in future. Especially SMEs need to transfer their brand world along with their business models to the digital world so that they can better withstand shocks, such as a pandemic," Hrebicek explains the key success factor for brands so that they may even emerge as winners from the strenuous times of COVID-19.

This was precisely a key theme of the Brand Global Summit that took place as a hybrid event with a live stream in Vienna in late September. The Vienna-based European Brand Institute (EBI), a partner of UNIDO, is Europe's leading institute for the evaluation of intangible assets. Its activities mainly focus on the value of brands and patents. By continuously engaging in research and taking part in international standardization of brand and patent evaluation, EBI contributes to the sustainable development of brands and patents as measurable enterprise assets in Europe and world-wide. EBI and its brand evaluation company are the only players world-wide that are certified in accordance with ISO 20671, 10668:2010 and ÖNORM A 6800 to ensure that evaluations are in line with generally accepted principles and standards.