Rasko
Out of context: Reply #7
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- skt0
"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."
1 Comment from Rasko:
"What a pile of cunt"