The Superbrands Council have announced the results of their annual survey into the UK’s top brands and it contains a few surprises and makes us ask how they conducted the survey. With much fanfare and with the noise of trumpets in the background here is the 2008 top ten:
- Microsoft
- Mercedes-Benz
- BBC
- British Airways
- Royal Doulton
- BMW
- Bosch
- Nike
- Sony
Now there are some of the ‘usual suspects’ in the list. Brands like; BBC, Nike and Sony are all big, high value household names that deserve their place in the list through years of careful, and often innovative work. Can you remember another occasion when a simple advert for an LCD TV became a significant cultural event, as in the case with the recent Bravia campaign.
But the brand top ten does contain a few unusual entries. Royal Doulton, British Airways and Microsoft are the first that seem to jar a little and even the number one spot is taken by a brand that raises quite a few questions here at Rocket HQ.
When was the last time you went out with the express intention to buy Royal Doulton products, I’m not even sure where or how I’d buy Royal Doulton? Does anyone even know what the logo looks like? It’s been many years since the media ever reported anything positive in connection with British Airways, and despite some of the worst PR in living memory they still take a top five place.
Google and Microsoft are also slightly strange choices. Whilst undeniably big brands and both household names. They don’t at first appear to be brands that the great British Public would take to their hearts. Do most people run Microsoft software on their home PC’s because of a love of the brand, or because that’s what the laptop came with and they have no idea a choice was available? Similarly, do most people use Google because it’s the most well known or because they have made a conscious choice to do so?
]]>We were looking at our Google rankings, and were very pleased to see that we’re scoring very well for the word “rocket” – higher in fact than NASA (who should know a thing or two about rockets!).
On Google.co.uk, we’re currently at position number 8 in the world for “rocket“, out of just shy of 10 million web pages. This is particularly good news because getting listed for very generic terms such as this (particularly with multiple meanings – think lettuce, and steam trains as well as spacecraft) is one of the hardest search engine optimisation feats to achieve.
Of course the main benefit of this is for clients (and potential clients) who will find us much more easily when searching – but it is nice to know that Google likes the coding and content we put up – something we also apply to clients’ sites. As we’re in the process of redesigning our own site, we want to be especially careful not to undo all the good work we’ve done so far.
We’re also doing quite well on rckt (number 1), rocket science (number 5), mashup website (number 4), sheffield design agency (number 3).*
* All correct at the time of writing – but these things do vary over time…
>
]]>