Just before Christmas I was stumbling along Regent Street in a haze of bright lights, expensive prices and carrier bags when I espied a little piece of what might be my own personal paradise: a Marmite pop-up shop!

The store was selling a range of Marmite related objets d’arts like t-shirts, Andy Warholesque pictures, aprons, bags, boxes and jigsaws. Of course Marmite itself was available in a range of sizes and formats. 

As a lover of the sticky black stuff I was bowled over by this store and intrigued about the idea of pop-up stores in general. Clearly the pop-up is not a new idea but this was my first such store, was in a very prestigious location and was attracting a lot of interest from passers by. What a fantastic way to promote a brand: massive exposure, huge footfall, strong word of mouth. To add to it all the store had its own Twitter feed so that true devotees could keep track of the high jinks going on at the store on the move.

With all the closed units on high streets due to the current downturn what a great way for brands to get out there and promote themselves, without taking the hit of a full store lease. Love it or hate it, that Marmite sure is clever.

Having recently been to Poland on business with one of our financial services clients, I observed that there appears to be a greater variety of brands on the high streets and in the shopping malls there than in UK. Upon my return to Britain I decided to quickly check if there was any grain of truth in it…

I have used the number of brands in major shopping malls in Poland and UK as proxy for the variety of brands on the high street. It looks as though the largest shopping mall in Kraków has almost 60% more brands than the largest shopping mall in London. This might be somewhat skewed by the fact that the calibre and stature of brands at Westfield in London is substantially higher, subsequently requiring more space and visibility.

In order to correct for the ‘premiumness’ of Westfield I looked at one of the largest, and very democratic, shopping centres in Europe – MetroCentre in Newcastle / Gateshead. It turned out that it had approximately only ten more brands than the Kraków mall on a total square footage nearly twice as big.

This is by no means conclusive evidence that there is a greater variety of brands on the Polish high street, but it seems to begin telling a consistent story. Therefore, I decided to risk a series of hypotheses which might start to explain this phenomenon. Here they are in no particular order of plausibility:

Hypothesis 1: brands disappear as industry players consolidate in a mature market economy.

Hypothesis 2: consumers in Poland expect and demand greater variety after the austerity of the socialist years, where there were only few, state-sponsored brands available.

Hypothesis 3: UK is a country with greater social capital than Poland (as understood by Fukuyama), therefore, people ‘congregate’ more around socially vetted (trusted) brands.

Hypothesis 4: UK citizens and Polish citizens are different when it comes to their preferred risk levels (which could be explained through Hofstede’s Uncertainty Avoidance Index). This might lead the former to being more cautious on when it comes to brand choices and inversely may drive the latter towards being more adventurous with what brands they buy.

Hypothesis 5: the spread of modern marketing thinking, techniques and process has led to less haphazard product and brand launches in the UK when compared with Poland.

Do follow me on my quest to find out:

• a) whether the original observation holds true,
• b) if it does, which of the hypotheses gets hammered down in the relentless process of elimination and which withstands the scrutiny…

Superbrands, Cool Brands, Mega Brands - why not a list of the “Quiet Brands”? Isn’t it time that the brands that don’t grab all the headlines and make the noise got their 15 minutes of fame?

So in my list of the best Quiet Brands there will be no room for the luvvies’ brands with  have media appeal and appeal to media types. The usual suspects of Apple, Nike, Innocent and Gu will all fall by the wayside. Instead I nominate -

Greggs the Bakers – not just for students but a no-nonsense chain of great tasting, great value bakery and sandwich products which has made sure but steady progress across the nation

Primark – love it or loathe it, it’s rapidly becoming the most seen carrier bag on a high street near you

Lakeland – The housewife’s secret source of everything for the kitchen; the modern “Tupperware” without the parties

Suggestions on a (virtual) postcard please!