Business Superbrands 2005

New Delhi: The Superbrands India organisation has announced that it has commenced work on its next project, 'business superbrands', which will identify and felicitate the strongest corporate brands in the country. Considered to be the Oscars of branding, the 'superbrand' status is highly sought after amongst the corporates in the 39 countries Superbrands operates in.

The number of business categories for scoring in India is about 101, and the number of brands under them is approximately 750. The distinguished 'business superbrands council' has just been constituted and represents 20 per cent of the GDP of India between the councillors!

Meanwhile, some 17,000 copies of the inaugural Consumer Superbrands of India is currently under print in Hong Kong with 101 brands participating. This book has 224 pages, over 160,000 words and more than 800 pictures in full colour.

The council of members for 'business superbrands' are: Anmol Dar, chairman of the council; Mukesh D. Ambani, chairman and managing director, Reliance Industries; Gurcharan Das, former chief executive officer, Procter & Gamble; R. Gopalakrishnan, executive director, Tata Sons; Naina Lal Kidwai, deputy chief executive officer, of HSBC Capital Markets; K N Memani, former chairman, Ernst & Young; Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and group managing director, Bharti Enterprises; Nandan Nilekani, CEO, president and managing director, Infosys Technologies; Deepak Parekh, chairman, HDFC; M S Ramachandran, chairman, Indian Oil Corporation and Subir Raha, chairman and managing director, Oil and Natural Gas Commission.

A 'business superbrand' is defined as having established the finest reputation in its field. It offers customers significant emotional and/or tangible advantages, over its competitors which customers want, recognise and are confident about investing in.

Launched in 1994, initially as a radio programme, 'superbrands' is a concept developed by the UK-based marketing guru, Marcel Knobil, former chairman of the Superbrands Council, UK, and the founder of Superbrands organisation, which was established to promote excellence in branding. It has been tracking the branding phenomenon for the past 10 years and maintains councils in 39 different countries. Some of these are Australia, France, Germany, Holland, Hong Kong, Italy, Malaysia, Philippines, USA, Singapore, Spain, UAE, Indonesia, Ireland, Egypt, Denmark and India, each of which regularly stage events for the year's best-performing brands.

The brands are judged on the basis of a number of criteria and participation is strictly by invitation and only the very strong brands are awarded 'superbrands' status by the council. These awards are celebrated by a tribute event and also in the form of The Superbrands Book in a sumptuous coffee-table format.

The Superbrands books, explore the history, development and achievements of the strongest brands in each of the 39 countries it currently operates in, highlighting their advertising, marketing and design successes as well as revealing any other interesting and extraordinary findings. To date, over 3,190 brands have participated worldwide in the 52 editions of the Superbrands books released so far.

Superbrands India was established in 2002 and its first activity was to choose the first 101 consumer superbrands of India