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Fidel Castro became president of Cuba, Buddy Holly died in a frozen field in Iowa, Some Like It Hot was a box office success and the first Barbie dolls were sold — but none of these captured the imagination of Britons in 1959 as much as a small, funny-looking car that was to become as emblematic of the decade that followed as the Beatles and Bobby Moore.

The Mini (also known as the Austin Seven or Morris Mini-Minor in its early days) made its first appearance in front of a curious press in April on that year and it never looked back, from starring roles on the big screen (from The Italian Job in 1969 to The Bourne Identity in 2002) to sharing the spotlight with any number of celebs trying to look trendy.

And the Mini is not alone. Each year a brand sums up the zeitgeist — think Lego in 1960, Coca-Cola in 1971, Oxo in 1983, Levi in 1985, Tango in 1992, Guinness in 1999 and Google in 2000 — something that the Marketing Society is celebrating by choosing a brand for each of the past 50 years to mark its fiftieth anniversary.

Even if we may believe that we are more media-savvy today than we were 50 years ago, the power of the brand remains persuasive. Coca-Cola, Lego, Hoover, Oxo and Google have all seeped into everyday vocabulary. But there is more to it than that.

According to Sir Keith Mills, the businessman behind such iconic brands as Air Miles and Nectar: “There is a difference between the brand name or logo and what the brand means — and I think that is one of the big misunderstandings. People talk about name recognition or the design of the brand logo as opposed to really what it stands for — and what it stands for takes a long time to build and a lot of money.

“You can’t create a brand just with great adverts, that’s important but it is more than that, it is about the product, how it is packaged, it’s about the people that produce it, make it, distribute it. It’s about the customer service that goes behind it, it’s a whole combination of things that make up what people in the business call brand attributes.”

Sir Keith, who is deputy chairman of the London 2012 Olympic Games Organising Committee, believes that it takes five things to turn a brand from bronze to gold-medal status. “I think that a great brand needs a personality. I think you can look at brands like Levi or Smirnoff or Nike and they all have what I consider to be personalities.”

Next, a great brand has almost generic status “like asking for a Coke even when you want a Pepsi . . . Then, all great brands need to be great products — they need to deliver what they say on the tin.” Microsoft or easyJet are good examples, he believes. Great brands are also trusted by their customers — Shell or eBay, perhaps.

“Finally — and this is the real acid test — they need to have built a relationship with the consumer where the consumers are advocates of the brand, ie: they go and tell their friends about it. Apple and, probably, M&S are two examples where people will say quite proudly: ‘I got this in M&S or I’ve just got an Apple computer or an iPod.’ ”

And not on his list but equally important, Sir Keith said, the company has to “live” the brand. “So if you walk around the headquarters and talk to the people who work there, they understand what the brand means and are passionate about it and they really believe it — they live it.”

There are some notable brands that do not feature on the Marketing Society’s top 50 list: Kelloggs, Mars, Kit Kat, Marmite and Persil, for instance. The reason is that even though these brands appear to tick all the boxes, they made their greatest impact before 1959, when the list begins, Hugh Burkitt, the chief executive of the Marketing Society, said.

The marketers did not vote for many financial services companies, other than Barclaycard and Direct Line. “Sadly, financial services don’t do very strongly, they have been poor performers over the years. They do not have a great deal of customer loyalty,” Mr Burkitt said.

A cigarette brand is unlikely to be viewed today as a politically correct choice. “The culture around the product can change — Benson & Hedges is very much a product of the Sixties and Seventies,” Sir Keith said.

Mr Burkitt also has a list of attributes that make a great brand. “A great brand is one that has longevity, one that stands apart from its ownership and has its own following — something that is truly owned by the customers and means something to them. In business terms, it has the ability to charge a premium price.”

Yet putting a price on a brand is possibly one of the most tricky things that an accountant can try to do. Sir Keith said: “If you got an accountant and said: ‘Can you value the Levi brand, put a number on it?’ The answer would be: ‘It is very difficult.’ Except that clearly a pair of jeans is worth substantially more with a Levi tag on it than it is as an unknown brand.”

The Marketing Society, as well as asking members and readers of The Times to vote on their favourite brands (see box), has also asked accountants to calculate the most valuable brand “in pounds and pence”.

“It should be very interesting, they will make a calculation based on things like sales value, estimated profitability and the potential longevity of the brand,” Mr Burkitt said.

Although, as Sir Keith said, the brands that we admire most are not necessarily the brands we would invest money in. Some of us might like it hot, but when it comes to our hard-earned cash we want some substance.

* Readers of The Times are being asked to go online and choose from 50 brands which of those is The Most Loved Brand. Members of the Marketing Society will vote for their most admired brands, too. The winners will be announced at the Marketing Society’s annual conference on November 16. Vote for your most loved brand by clicking here

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