Top 10 UK Brands

UPDATE from April 2008 at the bottom of this post.

Data published this week has revealed more organic brands are making inroads to climb rungs on the UK's top brands ladder.

The UK report, jointly compiled by Checkout and market research company Nielsen suggest that consumers are leaning more towards healthy foods. The list of the top 100 brands was compiled based on sales data recorded by Nielsen across over 74,000 grocery stores and supermarkets.

Top of the list again was Coca Cola, although their top position was cemented with strong sales on the 'no sugar' drink Coke Zero.

More interestingly, the fastest growing brand was Innocent Drinks who's healthy, organic smoothie sales have taken the UK by storm. But not only do they provide a great product, they also have a great brand which is slightly quirky. The first time an Innocent smoothie caught my attention was when I was reading the ingredients on the side of the Strawberrys and Bananas 1 litre smoothie packaging. I read all the usual ingredients but didn't expect the word 'pebble' to be included. They were joking of course, but the quirky brand image has no doubt helped them become the UK's fastest growing brand.

And what about the top 10? These are listed below, with each brands annual turnover for 2005.

1. Coca Cola - £942.4m
2. Warburtons - £514.3m
3. Walkers - £424m
4. Hovis - £403.1m
5. Cadbury's Dairy Milk - £361.5m
6. Nescafe - £331.3m
7. Andrex - £326.6m
8. Lucozade - £296.2m
9. Kingsmill - £282.3m
10. Robinson - £277.3m

Innocent Drinks entered at number 63 with £96.3m. For a full list please see AC Nielsen

### Update - Brandz Top 100 Survey, published April 2008. ###

The following list are the top 10 UK brands based on brand value;

1. Vodafone - $36.9m
2. Tesco - $23.2m
3. HSBC - $18.5m
4. Marks and Spencer - $11.6m
5. Barclays - $7.3m
6. Standard Chartered Bank - $6.85m
7. BP - $6.3m
8. Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) - $5.78m
9. Asda - $5.62m
10. Natwest - $4.97m

In terms of the top world brands, the global top 5 brands are as follows (again listed by brand value);

1. Google - $86m
2. General Electric (GE) - $71.3m
3. Microsoft - $70.8m
4. Coca Cola - $58.2m
5. China Mobile - $57.2m

The full list of top brands, broken down by region and other metrics can be found at Brandz.com.

Ice Diving

Do what now?

Whilst on our Tignes ski holiday a mate of mine decided to have a go at diving. But not just just any old diving. Ice diving. And not just any old ice diving. He did a night time ice dive under the frozen lake at Tignes Le Lac.

The bloke is fairly experienced having done over 40 dives previously, but that didn't stop the nerves!

Pull on a dry suit, be well briefed and breathe slowly. Covered in hood, gloves and a full face diving mask and equipped with a torch he submerged himself and began the ice dive. Safety ropes beneath the ice were using to mark escape holes.

Ice diving is a great experience aparently. Having said that I'll just wait for a PADI course and stick to scuba diving in warmer climates. The only drawback for ice diving at night means visibility is limited. Well done Slater!

Yet another Tignes Ski Holiday!

It's that time of year again. The boys have returned from another jolly to Tignes, a year on from the epic ski holiday that made us famous amongst the locals of Tignes le Lavachet.

This year the numbers were cut to just three - but that didn't stop the banter, abuse and 'professional chat'. Yes the boys were once again let loose on a boozy week, free from their oh-so responsible jobs.

As with last years Tignes ski holiday, this was again booked as a late deal through Ski World. Although not as professional as Ski Olympic (it was £100 less) the chalet was nice and the 3 course meal each night filled an energetic stomach.

If last years ski holiday set the standards for drinking, this holiday surpassed last years. Free wine all night with dinner didn't help.....neither did the task of beating the chalets drinking record - 80 litres of wine in one week. It was only rude not to try.

Speaking of records, we were not alone in Chalet Les Martins this year. Accompanied by a another group of 3 and a group of 4, this all blokes chalet gave the 80 litres a good shot (we couldn't be beaten by Auzzies or Kiwi's - leave that to the cricketers). Anyhow back to the records. This year it was alledged that one of our fellow chalet guests holds a Guinness World Record for the Longest Nipple Hair. I say 'alledged' but it did look damn long...

We'll come back to the booze in a second. First let's concentrate on the snow conditions. Prior to setting off we chose Tignes again because it is a snow sure resort. The coach transfer from Lyon is always a good indication of how much snow we are likely to see as you can check the level of snow at Bourg St. Maurice (the final station on the snow train line). There was none. Oh dear.

Needless to say the first couple of days in Tignes was not the best skiing, although the piste bashers did their best to sure up the slopes. Then, as predicted, the clouds moved in and the snow fell non-stop from Monday afternoon all the way through to Tuesday morning. Our first run down to Tignes Les Brevieres was very deep powder, and most enjoyable run of the week. Sorted for the rest of the holiday!

As it happens we also planned a couple of fancy dress nights out - well, it would be rude not too as it was Burn's Night on the 25th January and Australia Day on the 26th. So we came prepared.

Each morning (even at the airport) we started breakfast with a Bloody Mary, and the morning of the 25th was no different - except we wore kilts and Jimmy hats to breakfast. In fact we skiied in Jimmy hats and kilts all day. Great stuff. I must point out we didn't ski in just kilts - falling over into snow wearing nothing but your kilt could be very cold on you crown jewels. Instead we skiied with the kilts over the salopettes - which leads into the story of the holiday....

Up to the Thursday the week had been relatively uneventful on the slopes. The second lift we took was the Aiguille Percee and at the top my kilt somehow got caught on the chair! As the others skiied off I tried to wriggle free and ended up ripping the kilt and tripping the safety bar before being dragged off the mountain. If that wasn't bad enough I had to wear the kilt like a nappy the rest of the day! Shameless.

One of our party (who will remain nameless) was given a 'deep tissue' massage mid-morning on the Thursday. He was so 'relaxed' apparently that he had to abuse himself and then sleep for the rest of the day! The masseuse was called Robbie.

Onto the weeks nightly entertainment. Following copious amounts of wine over dinner we headed out into Tignes le Lac. This year Angelbar and Yeti bar were top dogs, but Le Brasero again takes the plaudits for Apres-Ski bar of the Year 2007. Thanks again Nic and Karen!

As with one of our previous ski holidays, Roehampton University ski club were on their annual trip, which was always nice for banter and drinking sessions. Shame about the projectile vomit photo though eh?!

Drink of the week has to be the Mint Aero, discovered and served in Jam Bar. Vodka, Kahlua, Creme de Menthe and topped up with milk. Delightful.

Joke of the Week (and told to various strangers on ski lifts);

It's bin day at the Close and number 26 has forgot to put his bin out so the bin man knocks at the door and a Chinese man answers.

Binman: "Where's your bin mate?"
Chineseman: "I been on toywet.."
Binman: "No, no. Where's you wheelie bin?"
Chineseman: "Orr, you got me, I wheelie been avin wank"

Chuckle. The best wheelie bin joke ever. And so another Tignes ski holiday comes to an end. Bring on next year!

Keyword Suggestion Tools

Maybe internet users have finally had enough of the tortoise-like Overture keyword tool. Maybe the Google Keyword Suggestion tool was too vague. Or maybe it's the week for releasing new, free keyword suggestion tools for search marketers and online search managers to analyse and ponder over.

Here's a quick overview of the free keyword suggestion tools on the market;

Overture Keyword Assistant - UK.overture.com

Probably the most well known tool around. Unfortunately due to the high volume of usage this tool moves as slow as a slug. Although fairly useful the data provided is only relevant to the number of searches conducted on the Yahoo! engine. It also has 'singular' and 'plural' issues in that it may provide volumes for 'cheap flight' but not 'cheap flights'.


Google AdWords Keyword Tool - https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal

Google's tool is more widely used for Paid Search (PPC) campaigns, but is useful to inform keyword selections for an organic search campaign. This tool will provide rough search volumes, and even search trends but will not provide exact figures on the number of searches conducted on Google.

Like the Overture keyword suggestion tool, the Google Keyword Tool can be used across many different markets and languages. It can even analyse the keywords used across a particular site.

Wordtracker - http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

This was a new tool unveiled by Wordtracker earlier this week. Wordtracker are famous for having a paid-for keyword suggestion tool, so it was nice to see them provide a free tool.

Similar to the Overture keyword suggestion tool in terms of layout, Wordtracker uses a specific formula to track the estimated daily search volume of keywords. More information on their methodology can be found here.

KeywordDiscovery (Trellian) - http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

Last but not least KeywordDiscovery have launched their free version of a keyword suggestion tool this week. The main Trellian tool is popular across the pond and this tool is possibly my favourite of the three.

KeywordDiscovery generates the top 100 keywords from data collected from across 180 search engines worldwide, providing a more global slant on its results.

The main Trellian keyword suggestion tool also organises keywords into industry specific categories - very useful but requires a subscription.