John Murphy (branding consultant)

John Matthew Murphy, born 1946 in Essex, 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, one of the first (and still one of the leading) branding consultancies, and named many familiar brands. Brunel University admitted him to the honorary degree of Doctor of Social Sciences in 2001.

In London in 1974, Murphy launched Novamark, a small company specialising in product naming and in trade mark registrations. Brand names born of his efforts include:

In the 1970s, the scope of Novamark's consulting work expanded to encompass, for example, brand design and brand strategy in what we now know as "branding" – a concept that was new at the time. So when Murphy opened his first overseas office, in New York City (1979), he adopted a new name for the company: Interbrand. Among the innovative services 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 seminal 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.

As he relinquished hands-on management of Interbrand, Murphy turned his hand to building brands himself. Pondering why it was so difficult to buy English beers and ales abroad, he realised it was because many brewers' primary marketing thrust was through the pubs they controlled in their local territories, rather than through their brands. People in England tend to drink the local ales and beers served in their local pub. In 1996, Murphy established St. Peter's, a small artisan brewery in Bungay, Suffolk, from scratch, with an international brand to suit – and without a substantial chain of controlled pub outlets.

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