Thomson brand is rubbish say experts

Well, kind of.

Enormous interest in our story yesterday about Thomson-First Choice not being particularly enthusiastic about the Superbrands programme.

Within an hour or so of our story going out, Stephen Cheliotis, chief executive of the Centre of Brand Analysis, which runs the judging process for the Superbrands 500 list, was on the phone.

Cheliotis was keen to point out - as a PR rep had done repeatedly earlier in the day - that there is absolutely no connection between those who pay to be "members" of the Superbrands programme and those who appear on the list.

Fair enough. We had that in our original story anyway.

So then we got onto talking about the judging process for this year's Superbrands 500.

As we noted previously in our , a list of around 1,350 brands is selected by the TCBA from numerous sources. The list is then put in front of an Expert Council of luminaries from media, marketing, ad agencies etc, which decides on a list of the best 750 brands.

The 750 are then put to a public vote of around 2,500 people, which decides the top 500.

So it turns out that Thomson was a lowly 964th in the 2008 expert list and didn't even make the public vote. The experts clearly think of Thomas Cook in a much better light.

First Choice was in 1,039th position.

This means that the all-conquering Thomas Cook was 892 places higher - in the final list - than Thomson. Crikey.

The whole thing gets even more bizarre when Cheliotis revealed that Thomson managed to get in the 2007 top 500 list in 161st.

Some might call this a rather tragic fall from grace (hilarious, Thomas Cook would probably say).

Others will be looking to the Expert Council for an explanation as to why a company which featured in a reasonably high position one year can not even be considered worthy of the top 750 the next.

Cheliotis told us the make-up of the council changes every year, which will account for differences of opinion, of course.

There is "invariably some volatility" in the list, Cheliotis adds. Indeed...

Anyway, we suspect Thomson-First Choice won't be too distraught at missing out this year, as their comments indicated yesterday, but will be keen to see where they feature in the pre-public vote next year.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: superbrand superbrands thomson first choice

The Superbrands thing [Sigh]

So plenty of coverage everywhere about the release of the latest Superbrands survey of top brands in the UK.

Google tops the list for the first time, ahead of Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz and the BBC.

In the travel-hospitality world, British Airways comes out on top (5th), with Hilton (20th), Eurostar (47th) and Virgin Atlantic (70th) all featuring in the top 100.

Thomas Cook has made a great PR play today with its top billing amongst tour operators and agencies in 72nd position, beating Kuoni (340th), Sandals (355th), Expedia (401st) and Lastminute.com (476th).

And this is where all this branding stuff gets murky and silly.

It was only last year that Expedia was named the coolest travel brand in the, er, Superbrands' Coolbrands list.

So, one question:

Is it better to be a 'cool' brand or a 'super' brand?

Anyway, back to the Superbrands list. Well done to Thomas Cook (which, according to marketing boss Simon Carter is "head and shoulders" above its competitors). But is it REALLY 46 places behind the Royal Albert Hall, for example?

Take this one step further and you could also ask the following question:

If the Royal Albert Hall is 46 places ahead of Thomas Cook, how on earth can Thomas Cook be at least 428 places higher than Thomson, its biggest and bitter rival and, let's face it, a fairly big travel brand in its own right.

[Thomson actually doesn't figure anywhere in the list of 500 brands]

And THAT is the problem with branding lists - not that Thomson doesn't feature, but that the results are so random when all evidence to the contrary (sales, adspend, offline and online presence, word-of-mouth and history) indicates that a company such as Thomson should at least have a higher ranking than Maltesers, Stannah Stairlifts and Nicorette!

There are plenty of people who have strong views about Superbrands et al - the comments button is dying to hear from you...

* The Superbrands selection criteria can be found on its website.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: superbrand