Commbank goes against the flow to become Australia’s most valuable brand
Commonwealth Bank has been crowned Australia’s most valuable brand for the second year running, a distinction CMO Jo Boundy puts down to “some of the big bets” the banking giant has made recently in its marketing efforts.
The biggest of the Big Four topped the 2025 Kantar Brandz Top 40 Most Valuable Australian Brands, with a brand value of AU$47.74 million. It sits ahead of Australian software unicorn Canva, ANZ, Woolworths, and Telstra in the list.
The index has been quantifying the value of the world’s most powerful brands since 2006.
As Kantar explained: “Brand value depends on consumer perceptions, as well as a company’s ability to translate that equity into shareholder value.”
(L-R): Canva CMO Zach Kitschke; Jo Boundy, CMO of Commbank; Kantar’s Carolyn Reid
Commbank’s brand value has risen by 44% in the past two years, according to the index.
In that time, the bank has made many sideways marketing choices, such as launching a glossy print magazine during the sharp decline of the medium, and betting away some of its advertising budget on a free-to-air TV show.
As Boundy said on Wednesday afternoon at a conference in Sydney announcing the list, both banks and marketing teams are used to taking more calculated risks.
“It’s funny because as a bank, we’re told we’re often in the business of risk,” she told conference attendees.
“We’ve probably done a few things in the past few years that, maybe traditionally, a bank may not have done.”
One of these was to launch Brighter in May 2023, a glossy print magazine that blends inspirational profiles and features with light business advice, money-saving tips, and cheap recipes – all with a budget-conscious bend.
“Two years ago, we took a pretty bold bet, and we took some of our traditional advertising dollars and decided to spend them in ways where we could communicate quite differently, both with our customers and with the Australian public.”
Boundy recalled “the faces of a number of people at Commbank” when she told them “we’re going into pre-production” for a print mag.
“But there was method to the madness there. We started with a magazine because it meant that we could create long-form content that we could then take, and could analyse, and amplify across many different channels.”
The genesis of this was customer insight data that told them Australians felt quite overwhelmed when it came to managing their own money.
“There wasn’t a lot of information out there that was easy or compelling,” Boundy said.
“And, often, when they found information about money, it was really targeted at a more affluent audience. And keep in mind, this was in 2022 when we started going into this space. Inflation was at a 32-year high. We’ve all just lived through this real cost of living struggle.
“So, what we wanted to do was make something that was really relevant to Australians: that was accessible, that was easily engaging, that they could take home, and that was practical.”
Issue 13 of Brighter just came out, with soccer star Mary Fowler on the cover (a nice reminder of another top bet for Commbank: sponsoring the Matildas ahead of their 2024 ascent to a social phenomenon). The success of the magazine emboldened Boundy and her team to take an even bigger swing.
The recent issue
“We made a TV show,” she said. The Brighter Side was an eight-part series that aired on Channel 10, in partnership with Paramount. Like the magazine, the show mixes practical money tips with case studies, side hustle ideas, budget-friendly meals, and future financial planning.
As Boundy points out, it was a bold swing. “Who would watch a TV show from a bank?”, she joked, but it’s an obvious question. It turns out, over two million Australians watched across the season, enough to see a second series greenlit.
However, pulling free-to-air viewing audiences wasn’t the objective, Boundy said.
“The objective was actually creating the content for many other channels that we own. We’ve had over 10 million Aussies engage with the content in other channels.
“We have 176 snippets of incredibly rich content that we own, and we splice and dice and use regularly.
“And we did all of that for the cost of making two TV commercials. We went, ‘We’re actually not going to make those two TV commercials. We’re actually going to do something entirely different to respond to the data and the insights and the changes in the landscape’.”
Most valued brands of 2025. [Click to enlarge]
Boundy credited Commbank’s brand value to “not resting on laurels”.
“It’s about being innovative – but innovative beyond category,” she explained. “Not actually innovating within a banking space. But, truly looking at how we can think differently and challenge ourselves. And ultimately doing that all in service of the customer.
“That’s the genesis of some of the big bets that we’ve made in the last few years that have propelled us up that chart.”
Kantar’s methodology takes earnings reported by the brand owner, strips them of revenue generated through both tangible assets (buildings, stock) as well as intangibles like software licenses, and patents — anything that can’t be directly attributed to the brand itself.
This leaves the brand’s financial value, which is then multiplied based on the brand’s perceived ability to generate earnings in the future — using a method Kantar likens to the calculation used by financial analysts to determine the market value of stocks.
This delivers the intangible value created by the branded business: its financial value. From here, the company explained, it uses a “unique survey-based brand equity model, which measures how meaningful, different and salient a brand is”.
This shows a brand’s “influence on consumer behaviour to grow demand and penetration” — which “further quantifies a brand’s ability to charge more and deliver higher margins”.
Top 40 most valuable Australian brands 2025. [Click to enlarge]
It’s an exhaustive process. Banks featured highly on this year’s list. The financial services sector at large has increased in brand value over the past two years, which Kantar credits to stock market growth and the impact of a series of flooding and fire disasters.
The Big Four national banks: CommBank, ANZ, Westpac, and National Australia Bank, dominate the listings in terms of brand value, while collectively, banks, insurers, payment brands, and superannuation firms make up 16 of the top 40 brands – and 47% of the list’s total value.
Despite going against the grain with her recent marketing moves, Boundy argued that innovation is never the goal when pushing these off-the-wall ideas.
“I love that CBA is known for innovation,” she said. “But I think at the heart of it, for us, the goal is around customer experience. It’s ‘how can we do things smarter or faster or better for the customer?’ We look at all the data and the insights to find out where the pain points are, and how to solve those pain points.
“That goes right through the organisation, and the marketing team. When we’re trying to figure out our best bold bets to make for both customers and community – that’s the starting point.”
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It’s pretty awesome that during a cost of living crisis banks are making enough money to invest in layer upon layer of middle management to come up with all of these cool ways to add value that no customer ever asked for.
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