Kevin Harrington // marketing // blog

Aston Martin DB9

I spent a chunk of the weekend trying to explain what ‘cool’ means to Charlie, my 5 year old son. Then today I tripped across the Superbrands Coolbrands 2007/2008. I think I’ll not show him this list just now as it won’t make things any easier!

Well done though to a Aston Martin – topping the table against high tech and new brands.

The top 10 cool brands are:

1. Aston Martin
2. iPod
3. YouTube
4. Bang & Olufsen
5. Google
6. Sony PlayStation
7. Apple
8. Agent Provocateur
9. Nintendo
10. Virgin Atlantic

Click here for the full list of cool brands.

Superbrands have also published their list of the top 500 Superbrands for this year. Topped by Microsoft, Coca Cola, Google, BBC and BP you can see the list by clicking here.

Children In Need

It takes long enough for a charity to develop a trusted brand name. Protecting it can be even harder.

This BBC Children In Need collection box, seen in a fish and chip shop in Reading is labelled 2006 (last year) and uses the BBC Children In Need logo.

On closer inspection it appears that the funds are being collected for some local toddler group. There is a label on the top that has been added.

Misrepresentation or what?

What a marvellous idea: winners speeches limited to five words. This is the rule at the Webby Awards. Read about it here: BBC NEWS Technology BBC celebrates three Webby awards

BBC and BBC News were picking up awards as you would expect. One of the BBC five word speeches, referring to the plight of kidnapped BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston was, “Alan, we’re thinking of you.”

The Webbys honour the best websites of the year in more than 100 categories. The winners were chosen from nearly 8,000 entries from 60 different countries.

From the winners my favourite was David Bowie for his ground breaking use of the net with his fans.