Introducing The Brand Hall of Fame

Many within the advertising industry just returned from the south of France to celebrate notable campaigns at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. As I considered that 70-year-old event, which focuses primarily on the art of advertising communications, I thought about additional ways for branding and marketing practitioners to benefit from honoring marketing excellence and business performance. We must do more to preserve the learnings and celebrate the builders of brands that have defined over a century of commerce and culture.

Surprisingly, a Brand Hall of Fame does not exist. There are many awards and recognition events to honor campaigns, agencies, business leaders, and notable contributors to the crafts of advertising and marketing. Still, there isn’t a forum to honor companies that have transcended transactions and become cultural icons.  

Until now. 

The newly announced Brand Hall of Fame is a celebration of the stories, values, and emotional connections that select brands have forged with customers and pioneered new ways to increase revenue through relevance. Some brands have left an indelible mark on our collective consciousness via value propositions, innovations, service delivery, customer experience, employee experience, and a host of other factors that allow them to disrupt and dominate their industries. By enshrining iconic companies from across North America since the dawn of the 20th century, we have created a space to pay homage to visionaries who dared to think differently and challenge the status quo. Their success and stories serve as inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs and brand leaders, reminding us that with bold ideas, unwavering commitment, actionable insights, and a relentless commitment to a defined target audience, we too can create brands that inspire across generations.

I am on the Brand Hall of Fame Selection Committee. Together with twelve peers, we are pioneering a new way to evaluate and celebrate North America’s greatest brands of all time. We’re a multi-disciplinary group comprised of industry veterans with client and agency experience, from academia and research, specializing in Creative, media, strategy, and more. We have formalized a methodology that blends art (subjective) and science (objective), relying on primary research involving over a billion data points, and our individual experiences, to identify a few dozen brands worthy of being considered one of the five inaugural inductees into the Hall’s first class. Hundreds more are worthy of being evaluated, and we’ll invite many more in the coming years as finalists for this ultimate honor. 

This year’s inductee class will be announced during The Gathering Summit Oct 23-25 in Banff Alberta. I invite you to join us - www.cultgathering.com. All who attend will hear first-hand from the honorees, as well as learn from dozens of others who are aspiring to build brands worthy of the Hall of Fame someday. 

To learn more about the Brand Hall of Fame, the selection process, and the celebration gala, visit www.brandhalloffame.org.