Prophet Adds Renowned Brand Valuation Approach to Services; Developer Roger Sinclair to Consult Exclusively With Prophet Clients

June 4, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO (June 4, 2009) – The globally respected BrandMetrics brand valuation model, developed by South African marketing academic Roger Sinclair, PhD, has been added to the suite of brand strategy and marketing accountability services offered by Prophet, via a transaction that closed earlier this week.

Prophet (www.prophet.com) is a global consultancy based in San Francisco. It partners with its clients to create market leadership and enduring business impact. 

In conjunction with Prophet’s launch of brand valuation offer, Sinclair has been named an Academic Partner, and will consult exclusively with the consultancy’s clients. His methodology has been used for over 350 brand valuations in a variety of business sectors, including insurance and financial services. It also has been used to benchmark marketing achievement, evaluate relative marketing expenditure levels, and calculate return of marketing investment.

“Marketing accountability is an increasingly pressing issue for businesses around the world, and marketing investments designed to support brand building are the pieces of the investment pie that are most under siege,” said Michael Dunn, Chief Executive Officer of Prophet.

“The addition of Sinclair’s proprietary brand valuation model, combined with the thinking of the noted academician who conceived it, bolsters our already significant strengths in brand strategy and marketing effectiveness,” he added.  

Sinclair developed his brand valuation model as part of his doctoral research at Witwatersrand (Wits) University, Johannesburg, where he was a professor and headed the marketing department. He retired in 2005, but remains an honorary professor, teaching brand management at the post-graduate level.

The methodology incorporates both financial and marketing components, making it a sensitive measure of marketing activity, and a reliable means of calculating the worth of intangible assets.

“Having a robust brand valuation offering will allow us to tackle the holy grail of the marketing accountability puzzle, which is to help derive a defensible expected financial return metric for proposed brand-building investments of all stripes,” said Dunn.

“It will also further enhance our ability to help senior management understand a brand's value in a way that enables more effective brand management decisions, investment trade-offs, financial accounting and potential asset purchases or sales,” he said.

Further information on Prophet’s views on brand valuation is available at http://www.prophet.com/insights/authors/sinclair.html.

Media contact:

Sally Saville Hodge

312.666.6662

shodge@hodgeschindler.com