John Murphy

John Matthew Murphy (born 1944, Essex) is a British marketing consultant who first described the process of branding. He also pioneered the art of brand valuation, that is, measuring the accounting value of a company's brands as assets, and in so doing, he stimulated the development of branding as an aspect of business. Murphy founded Interbrand, the world’s first branding consultancy, and named many familiar brands. Interbrand and brand valuation In London in 1974, Murphy launched Novamark, a small company specialising in product naming and in trade mark registrations. In the 1970s, the scope of Novamark's consulting work expanded to encompass brand design and strategy. In 1979, when Murphy opened his first overseas office in New York, he adopted the name Interbrand. Among the concepts that Interbrand developed in the 1980s was brand valuation. As Murphy later explained, there was "a huge buying and selling of branded-goods businesses where what was essentially being bought and sold was brands. But nobody knew how to value brands." In 1987, Interbrand announced that it had developed a proprietary methodology for brand evaluation and in 1989 Murphy edited a work on the subject: Brand Valuation – Establishing a true and fair view. In 1993, Murphy decided to sell Interbrand, which by then had a headcount of 600 and a burgeoning international practice, to Omnicom. He stayed on at Omnicom as Interbrand's chairperson till 1996 to help with the transition. Brand names born out of Murphy's efforts during this time include: HobNobs, a biscuit Homebase, a chain of home improvement stores and garden centres Prozac, an antidepressant drug Zeneca, a pharmaceutical company Discovery, a sport utility vehicle Kaliber, a low-alcohol lager Gala Bingo, a chain of bingo clubs