10 iconic brands that didn’t exist when we started and 10 brands we’ve outlived

Casper from insight engineers sent us this excellent review – and we rushed it into our site because we felt it was a very clever way of getting across a 10th anniversary. It’s also makes for good reading – enjoy it and give us your comments please. Editor

Casper writes .. This week saw us enter our tenth year of trading as insight engineers.

To mark the occasion, here are 10 iconic brands that didn’t exist when we started and 10 brands we’ve outlived, plus our thoughts on each of these brands:

New Iconic Brands (chronological order):

1. Facebook – Fast becoming the Marmite of social networking sites, you cannot overestimate the impact this brand has had on all our everyday lives
2. Firefox – The first to challenge Microsoft’s IE behemoth. Along with Google Chrome, made a one-horse race into a viable three way contest
3. World of Warcraft – OK, I’m a geek, but certainly the hottest property in PC gaming, often imitated, never equalled
4. YouTube – 48 hours of video uploaded every minute of every day, over 3 billion hits per day. Just wow!
5. Twitter – Different audience and approach to Facebook, same territory. (This line=140 characters long by the way – see what I did there?)
6. The iPhone – Cupertino based, but designed out of Chingford. God bless you Sir Jony!
7. The Fiat 500 – Fuelling our passion for retro design and following the Mini and VW Beetle as car of choice for the younger, female driver. (Actually, I’m a bloke and I’d like one. Black though, not pink, right?)
8. The O2 – Taking the white elephant of the Millennium Dome and turning it into the UK’s premier concert venue
9. Lady Gaga – Yes, she’s a brand. She’s also the first to really get Social Media and put it to work. (26.5M Twitter followers and counting). Add that to the meat dress, and she’s a culturally iconic brand
10. Everything Everywhere – Gets in the list for the brand name alone. Certainly better reflects the aspirations of a Telco than either ‘Orange’ or ‘T-Mobile’

Fallen by the wayside (ordered by date of death):

1. Concorde – Standing on the school playing field to hear the ‘crack’ of the sound barrier being broken. Hard to imagine crossing the Atlantic that fast for a long time to come
2. Wimbledon FC – MK who?
3. MG Rover – Just couldn’t compete with the ‘faster, better’ mantra of the competition from overseas
4. Lehman Brothers – First to the wall in the post-crash feeding frenzy
5. MFI – Still exists online, but the bricks and mortar version couldn’t keep pace with the new entrants like Ikea. Lost relevance, seemed comparatively old-fashioned, and those sales….well they seemed to last forever
6. Woolworths – Ah, the sugar rush of the pick ‘n’ mix. How I miss you. (I think I can still get you online, but it’s not the same)
7. Oddbins – Raising the rent and the inexorable rise of the supermarkets eventually trumped their expert knowledge and friendly service
8. Borders – Well I browsed your books to see what I’d like, but I bought them on Amazon. I felt a bit dirty doing it, but you didn’t seem to catch on
9. The News of the World – You live by the sword, you die by the sword
10. Ceefax – Dude, two words – Inter-net!

I wonder what this list will look like in another decade? A continuing trend of less ‘bricks’ more ‘clicks’?

Love to hear if your top 10’s would have included any different iconic brands.