I’m in Buenos Aires, at El Ojo de Iberoamérica, Argentina’s largest creative festival. Argentina is fast emerging as one of the hottest creativity centers in our industry. Why would a creative conference invite a planner/brand economist to speak to hundreds of creative people? Aren’t creative conferences about celebrating work? But my talk focused on a celebrating the newly revealed value they bring to business.

Let me explain.

In my new book, ‘The Brand Bubble’ we discovered that the markets think that brands are worth more than the consumers who buy them. We examined 14 years of data from BrandAsset Valuator, the world's largest continuously updated study of brands. We’ve invested over $ 115 million dollars and each year we interview over 500,000 consumers in 44 countries. We’ve tracked consumer perceptions of over 40,000 brands since1993.

Main Street offers a different view than Wall Street: While brand value increased 80% in three decades, brand awareness declined 20% -- brand quality eroded by 24% -- trust in brands declined by a staggering 50%. And 85% of brands were either stagnant or declining in brand differentiation.

The numbers tell a story that creativity (or lack thereof) was the differential in brand performance. The over-valued brands were predictable and repetitive, whereas the outperforming brands were thrilling consumers by offering a continuous stream of ideas and innovation. And the more creative a given brand became, the greater energy, pricing power, loyalty and increased contribution of brand value to the company, which in turn had a direct and quantifiable impact on stock price.

We modeled a portfolio of the 50 top energy-gaining brands each quarter over a five-year period and they cumulatively beat the S & P 500 by almost 30%. Energized Differentiation is our measure of the consumer perception of motion, momentum and direction in a brand. The more creative a brand becomes, the more energy it creates.

The only problem is that unlike a Damien Hirst auction, this creative energy is in short supply.

In fact, the numbers of brands that consumers feel are truly creative actually declined by 36%. This means a smaller portfolio of brands now account for a greater share of the value created. The Brand Bubble is then not caused not by the highest value brands been necessarily overvalued, but rather the preponderance of dusty and formulaic brands that dot our supermarkets, department stores and malls.

Now consider that Millward Brown Optimor estimates that brand value is on average thirty percent of the total value of The S&P 500. This would tell us that brands are now the primary means of leverage that CEO’s are using in promising future earnings to shareholders. But how many CEO’s are ‘Brand Manager in Chief’ ? Marketing is too often left without a seat in the corporate boardroom and this is a big mistake, according to the lethargy-induced buying public.

If consumers feel most brands are overvalued, then creativity is actually a means to discount the risk on those rising brand values. Or in other words, you might do better trusting your art director than your investment banker.

The Argentina creative community, aka the risk takers — have now become risk managers. Logical, yes?

John Gerzema, Author, ‘The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How To Avoid It. See thebrandbubble.com