We picked up a copy of CoolBrands 2005 at London Gatwick airport yesterday – wrapped with our copy of Dazed & Confused (crafty way to get some instant cred, no?). The book is pretty slick and thorough with over 188 pages of cool brands that an expert panel have picked.
As a momento / document for future historians, the book is neat and looks great. However, personally I think there are two major problems with the book. Firstly, in a book called ‘Coolbrands’ some of the brands aren’t as cutting edge as they should be. The problem here lies with the fact that the brands are judged financially, it seems, so we get older brands like Budvar that, to be honest, have been on the scene for quite a while now but they just have begun to make some real dollars so they now register on the survey. Some of the fresh, new brands really reflecting our new era of brand-consumer interaction fail to appear (e.g. Skype, MySpace). That’s a shame.
My other issue is that there is no transparency about the brands
selection and the brands the judges work at or for. Hmm, telecom
company O2 is in there – and O2’s Head of PR is on the judging panel
too. Oh and the Times is in the book, and two of the judges work at the
Times. Oh – and this is the same for Proud Galleries and Diesel. And
some of the brands feature very heavily in the ads in the magazines
that some of the other editors work for. And didn’t the Naked agency
once produce work on Orange? Should we look at the client list of all
the judges from ad agencies?
OK, ok – you could argue that if you put together some cool people in a
room to choose some cool brands that they’ll choose the cool companies
they work for. But my point here is that we’re in this age of brand
transparency and brand participation and the SuperBrands group has
created a book that fails to reflect this in both the brands they
choose to feature in CoolBrands and the way they make their selection.
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Thanks Piers.
I thought I should point out that no Council member can vote for brands that they work for or that are competitive to them, so the Times journalists could not vote for any media brands for example so your key point is in this instance incorrect.
We also do not look at budget when selecting brands, I do not even know what Budvar’s revenue or advertising budget is and do not have the inclination to find out either. Cool is not discovered through advertising (our research with YouGo proves this) but word of mouth. Yes some of the brands do advertise as brand tend to do and are quite large. Mainstream does not automatically mean uncool (again our research proves this). That said I must say I have never ever seen an ad for many of the brands in the book. Do you recall a major campaign of VV Rouleaux or The Wapping Project or Madame V?
The other thing to point out is that cool is subjective, I don’t think for one minute that everyone will agree with our selection. Not a problem! However robust the selection this will be the case. The point is we are sharing some insights and knowledge into some brands that have performed well versus competitors on the cool stakes…..and by doing so are fueling the debate for consumers and industry people alike to consider.
Finally you cannot submit an entry into the survey, we consider brands on merit and conduct extensive research into the population of brands that could be considered. No brand makes an application.
I hope this helps to clarify but otherwise please do visit our site http://www.superbrands.org
All the best,
Steve Cheliotis
Superbrands
November 8th, 2005 at 10:46 am
Steve, great to see some discussion and participation from Superbrands. Any thoughts on the Skype & MySpace question Piers brought up?
Cheers,
h
November 8th, 2005 at 5:48 pm
Thanks for that Steve. What you negelect to mention is that only brands that pay your ‘membership fee’ get included in the book, whether they are nominated or not. Coool.
November 15th, 2005 at 12:45 pm