The FreakyTrigger Top 25 Brands: 25: THE RED CROSS
Or the the Red Crescent, or the Red Crystal.
Is this a brand? It’s the logo for an organisation, it has phenomenal global recognition and man alive, its associated with some intense personal experiences.
It’s everywhere, too. Over 150 years, something loosely known as the International Red Cross has grown into a far reaching, if convoluted, arrangement of organisations. A recognised incarnation of the movement now exists in 185 countries, and with it the logo has spread: to hospitals and ambulances of course, but also uniforms, first aid boxes, and a myriad of other cultural references. It’s the ubiquitous symbol of health, of safety. You’re quite likely to see one today, wherever you are in the world.
And it really, really matters. With the weight international law, it bestows the bearer with protection while traversing the most dangerous places in the world to fulfil a mission of unambiguous virtue. Is there really another brand in the world for which that sentence wouldn’t be outrageous hyperbole?
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There. A somewhat solemn start, but certainly a worthwhile entry. If, though, you’re now wondering what on earth could be a more heavyweight brand to follow that one, then here’s a warning:
This list was compiled at a beer festival.
Magnus in Blog 7 /FT /The Brown Wedge • 1 Comment
Top Of The Pops is a brand. 
One of the great – though cynical – goals of marketing is to encourage consumers to waste stuff. Not in the enviro-friendly sense of extra packaging – the brands put that shit on their products when it was fashionable and they’ll take it off as soon as consumers start fussing enough, no problem. No, the idea is to do two things:
Tarmac? What kind of a brand is that, its just the pavement, right? Wrong my friends. Tarmac is a brand and an awe-inspiring dominant one at that. I love brands whose names are synonymous with their main product, it shows an awesome degree of brand dominance when the brand name becomes subsumed into language. But it is also dangerous: when Hoover became the de facto name for vacuum cleaners, they did not maintain brand dominance, and then the name stopped referring to the company at all (with the knock on effect that – say a Hoover Washing Machine also looked pretty suspect*). 
Marketers at Nintendo has credited the popularity of Pokemon to its expert combination of two previous fads – the Tamagotchi and the Beanie Baby. Fair enough, but this isn’t why Pokemon has become so successful as a brand, capturing the imagination of children and adults worldwide. A great brand needs a great brand symbol, and Pokemon’s is Pikachu – in fact without Pikachu as an identification point the game would never have been a success. 
That’s Apple Records. Not Apple Computers. Or indeed Apple Martin-Paltrow. Both a blatant rip-off of Apple records logo etc.
It’s a simple pictogram of London, the circle with the straight-line river running through it. 
There are a lot of great record labels out there. look, Apple as a brand has already appeared in this list. And for a bunch of music fans knocking together a list of memorable and great brands, it is inevitable that a few record labels would show up. That said I wonder if anyone sitting around that fateful table own many K-Tel records. It is a great brand, a memorable one certainly, but not really for any of the right reasons. 