There is an organization that measures such things. And, in fact, they place a dollar value to those brands as well. Anyway, the latest list is out and the winner is:
Apple
In a study released Monday by Millward Brown, a market-research arm of London advertising giant WPP, Apple AAPL +0.50% was listed as the world’s most valuable brand, with an estimated value of more than $153 billion.
And how do they determine this list?
…calculations are based on an analysis of financial data combined with “consumer measures of brand equity.”
They use how well consumers feel they are served by the corporation.
In so far as companies are “greedy” and “capitalists”, they can’t succeed unless they build and sell something that people want. And the most successful of those corporations are exactly those corporations that do the best job at making the best products.