The new Interbrand ranking of ‘top brands’ is a gloriously inane bit of nonsense, really. They set out to find what they want to see, close their eyes to evidence of every business driver that has a rational explanation, and then ‘see’ evidence of branding in the resulting absence of proof. ‘Better’ brands don’t sell or make more, and they don’t suffer less in bad economic times.

Worse, there’s no forward-looking decision that businesses can make based on this silly rating system: well, unless that decision is to hire a branding firm to do more of whatever it is they do!

I’m surprised we don’t ask more from this type of announcement, though I suspect that most execs note it and move on.

I’ve written about it at some length on my blog, DIM BULB (http://dimbulb.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/09/your-branding-i.html), as well as in my new book, BRANDING ONLY WORKS ON CATTLE (http://www.amazon.com/Branding-Only-Works-Cattle-competitors/dp/0446178012/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1222082786&sr=8-1).

Even if we replaced the sun with a black hole nothing would change except that we would live in the darkness.

PS. Mini black holes are quantum objects that need quantum gravity to be described exactly. As we don’t know how to quantize gravity we cannot predict if these will form. To be more exact classical gravity (general relativity) predicts that this probability is totally negligible.