Devil's Advocate

Ian Moore

Marketing's annual survey into brand popularity is taking plenty of hits, but my confidence in its fidelity was somewhat shaken when I spotted the 'fact' that Wigan Athletic are apparently England's fourth-most unpopular footie brand...

When I delved a little deeper into the methodology, some light at least shone upon the conundrum - online respondents are provided with lists from which to click their most-loved and most-hated brands. Maybe that's how 40 people managed to come up with unfashionably sounding Wigan as the team to loathe? One wonders where the respondents came from, and whether they knew before the survey that the round-ball game is alive and kicking in this quarter of darkest Lancashire.

Not surprisingly, nevertheless, Man U, Chelsea and Arsenal pipped the Pie Eaters to the post, but it was refreshing at least to see the plucky northern upstarts breaking into the dominance of the usual big four suspects.

Their performance, however, cast a bit of a shadow over my conviction that the rest of the survey could be taken seriously, a feeling not alleviated by Mothercare coming in as second-most disliked High St store, and Lewis Hamilton just missing pole as most-loved man.

The real flaw in the survey - or rather the hyperbole surrounding its 'results' - is that brands' individual category scores were rather presumptuously carried forward as if they were overall ratings. Just because McDonald's got a panning in its own little pond ('Eating Out'), and the highest most-hated score in any category of 27.2% (what would you chose, when pressed?), that doesn't mean the chain can be designated top of the flops when it comes to the big briny sea in which all British brands hopefully bob. Hence my warning at the outset about a pinch of the salty stuff.