Every February for the past three years Iceland has been going brand-crazy. The awards ceremony celebrates excellence in branding.
And true to form, in 2022 “The Best Icelandic Brands” awards have unleashed a level of enthusiasm we at brandr could not have anticipated when we inaugurated the competition.
We have not only received numerous entries, but they were of uniformly good quality,
testifying of high “branding literacy” amongst Icelandic companies. However, before I move
on to the nominees and award-winners, a few words about what we hoped to achieve when
we started the competition in 2019.
It should of no surprise to anyone that, as the Executive Director of Iceland’s leading brand
consultancy, I am a firm believer in the power of brands. And here, I’m not simply referring
to their earning potential. I am referring to the inherent value of good branding, which
resonates beyond the individual company.
I believe that at their best, brands have a social, perhaps even communal role. That this is
not such a far-fetched assumption, think about some of the ways in which we describe
brands. We talk about “responsible brands”, “brands that are a force for good”, “innovative
brands”, “creative brands” and so on.
These brand attributes hint at something that anyone who is brand-aware knows or feels:
brands are more than a flashy logo or a funky name. Brands are not just products of a
sophisticated market environment, they are actually one of the enablers of such an
environment.
Since ancient times (and here you can have a look at my blog-post on the history of
branding, as well as Chapter 4 in his latest book) brands have fostered trust, enabled trade,
channelled creativity, democratised value and performed a host of other useful functions.
Hence, as you can read on our website, at the “Best Icelandic Brands” we celebrate “brands
that excel at strategic brand management… with positioning as the focal point.”
On that I can say is that the featured brands have amply delivered on both brand management and brand positioning.
Given the abundance and quality of submissions for this year’s awards, we really need two
blog posts to cover all the details of the winners and the runners up. And that is exactly
what we will have.
In the next instalment we will cover in greater depth our thinking behind rewarding this
year’s winners: Controlant, Kronan, Blush and Ikea, and, last but not least, the inimitable
hip-hop maestro Herra Hnetusmjör. We will also cover our excellent runners-up.
Here we will say a few words about each company, and our “Best Personal Brand” laureate.
Controlant, our winner in the “Corporate” category, is a brand that has set out to
revolutionise the global pharmaceutical supply chain. With 300+ employees, it has
headquarters in Kopavogur (Iceland’s second largest city) and a service centre in New
Jersey.
Kronan, the grocery store with its smiling orange logo, is the winner of our “Company of 50+
employees” category. Amongst everything their website says they will do for their
customers, there is also something they don’t do: “We don’t tempt you by placing candy by
our cash registers.” Now, how’s that for a brand promise?
Blush is our winner in the “Company of less than 50 employees”. Founded in 2011 it aimed
“to change the market and the negative attitudes that existed towards sex toys”. How far
the company has advanced towards that goal is best evidenced by the fact that in 2021
Blush opened a 860 m 2 warehouse and offices complex in Kopavogur.
In the “International brands” category the winner was IKEA. The company, I am sure, needs
no introduction. IKEA is a striking example of a Nordic brand, analyzed by Fridrik Larsen in
Chapter 2 of his latest book “Sustainable Energy Branding”.
Finally, the “Personal brand” winner is our own Mr. Peanubutter, or Herra Hnetusmjor, as
he is known in Iceland. He has done such an amazing job in creating a brand around his
artistic persona.