Superbrands is back. Again. With another shit-filled annual compendium of hoo haa, I give you the 2018 UK Superbrands top 20.

The Superbrands organisation describes its list as the “definitive benchmark for brands who’ve set the agenda, outwitted the competition and built enviable reputations”. OK then, if you say so. From where I am standing this year’s list makes just as little sense as all its equally ridiculous predecessors, but that will not stop naïve journalists covering the thing with the kind of reverence and analysis it so clearly does not merit.

I’ve been trying for more than a decade to point out the utter, utter, utter pointlessness of Superbrands. I’ve talked about everything from the ridiculous sample to the bonkers methodology and the strangely mercurial results that seem to bounce all over the shop from year to year – almost as if the whole Superbrands system was built on a highly unreliable, random set of data points.

But I have failed. Abysmally. Like a bad case of the clap that inevitably engulfs your genitals every year, or that old single sock with the hole that you swear you threw away but reappears at the bottom of your laundry basket, or that horrendous kebab that you inhaled at 4am and continue to taste three days later, Superbrands just keeps coming back.

That is despite the fact that the only thing super about it is the massive flashing headache that it gives me and every other self-respecting marketer when the results emerge, and bemused journos try to explain why an airport beats toilet paper for the nation’s consumer affections.

Superbrands’ wonky methodology rates BP as more super than Burberry, and Shell a better brand than John Lewis.
I think the genius of Superbrands is in the list itself. Put anything into a top 20 or a top 10 and journalists from near and far are hypnotically drawn to the results, finding it impossible not to open their laptops and start writing plausible nonsense to explain why a beans manufacturer has beaten a German automotive brand to eighth place in this year’s table.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.marketingweek.com