The Superbrands organisation is an independent authority and arbiter on branding. A council of 14 individuals who are well qualified to judge which are the nation’s strongest ebrands – including lastminute.com co-founder Brent Hoberman and Friends Reunited CEO Michael Murphy – picked OUT-LAW as a brand that has elevated itself above all others in its field.
The online service from Pinsent Masons is profiled alongside 45 of the UK's other leading online brands in a book launched at an event at Embassy, London last night.
The accolade comes shortly after Pinsent Masons acquired the domain name outlaw.com in a US$25,000 deal that protects and consolidates the OUT-LAW brand and will simply redirect internet traffic to www.out-law.com. The domain name out-law.com was purchased in late 1999 for CAN$5,000.
With more than 28,000 subscribers and 6,000 pages of content, OUT-LAW.COM is now believed to be one of the largest and most popular law firm websites in the world. OUT-LAW is also short-listed for the award of Best Business-to-Business Service in the Revolution Awards, part of Revolution Magazine, the digital marketing publication. The winner will be announced tomorrow night.
Struan Robertson, Editor of OUT-LAW and a Senior Associate with Pinsent Masons, said: "OUT-LAW has been a huge commercial success for Pinsent Masons. It is our global calling card for IT and e-commerce legal information and issues impacting technology businesses. OUT-LAW has helped position Pinsent Masons as one of the UK's leading IT legal advisors."
Each brand featured in the book qualified to do so based on the ranking of the council. The book includes full case studies on 46 of the 300 qualifying eSuperbrands. Among them are Google, eBay.co.uk, bbc.co.uk, Firebox, Faceparty and 192.com. The full 300 appear in a comprehensive index within the book. More than 3,000 brands were initially considered.
Commenting on the launch of eSuperbrands a spokesman at the Superbrands organisation said, “eSuperbrands is fascinating as it explores a diverse range of brands, from different industries and of difference sizes. The interesting thing is the success and strategy employed by the mix of traditional brands, that we have known and loved for years, with other younger pure e-brands that have been developed more recently. With the proliferation of websites both reputation and brand image are becoming ever more important in aiding consumer choice. Those brands featured in the eSuperbrands publication are a suitable benchmark of those that truly deliver.”
