Most valuable Dutch brands?

Shell is the most valuable Dutch brand with a marketvalue of 18,6 billion dollar. Worldwide Shell takes the thirtieth position of the BrandFinance Global 500 (a list of the 500 most valuable brands).

Dutch List
The BrandFinance Global 500 also has a Dutch list of most valuable brands, which counts 50 brands. Heineken saw it's brand value increase with over 30 percent to 11,108 billion dollar, which provides them with the second position. ING, which had a difficult time during the financial crisis, grew with 23 percent (to 8,7 billion dollar), while competitors such as Delta Lloyd and Aegon lost a part of their brand value. 

The list of the twenty most value brands of the Nederlands 
(brand value in billions dollars)

1 Shell 18,605 
2 Heineken 11,108 
3 Philips 9,033 
4 ING 8,703 
5 Rabobank 7,423 
6 Randstad 5,446 
7 Dove 4,517 
8 Aegon 3,874 
9 TNT 3,534 
10 Amstel 3,263 
11 Lipton 2,669 
12 KPN 2,011 
13 Rexona 1,752 
14 Unilever 1,730 
15 Knorr 1,402 
16 Axe/Lynx 1,395 
17 BAM 1,214 
18 Delta Lloyd 1,161 
19 Albert Heijn 1,117 
20 Wolters Kluwer 1,114

Worldwide list
In the worldwide toplist the U.S. dominates with 13 of the 20 top positions. Google is the most valuable brand (44.3 billion dollar), followed by Microsoft (42,8 billion) and Walmart (36,2).

1 Google 44,294
2 Microsoft 42,905
3 Walmart 36,220
4 IBM 36,220
5 Vodafone 30,674
6 Bank of America 30,619
7 GE 30,504
8 Apple 29,543
9 WELLS FARGO 28,944
10 AT&T 28,944
11 HSBC 27,632
12 Verizon 27,293
13 HP 26,756
14 Toyota 26,152
15 Santander 26,150
16 Coca-Cola 25,807
17 McDonald's 21,842
18 Samsung 21,511
19 Tesco 21,129
20 Mercedes-Benz 20,798

For the complete list you can visit www.brandirectory.com. 


Source: Adformatie, branddirectory.com 

Research about referring expressions (interview with projectleader Emiel Krahmer)

For the same course which I am writing this blog we had to interview a professor of the university. Therefore, we have interviewed professor Email Krahmer. He currently works with this team on the Vici project, which studies human speech production, combining computational modeling and empirical studies. The aim of the project is referring expressions, they try to bridge the gap between psycholinguistics and computational linguistics. The project is an initiative of the Tilburg University and the NOW (Nederalndse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek).

source: www.bridging.uvt.nl/overview

Consider this simple scene to the right and suppose you want to point one of these persons to an addressee.

There are many ways in which you could do this, but most speakers have no difficulty in quickly deciding which information to include and how to realize this information verbally and non-verbally via referring expressions like “the man in a suit,” “the woman” and “the younger-looking man”. How do speakers do this?

If you are interested in the answer, you must definitely watch the interview with Emiel Krahmer. 

If you are interested in more information about the Vici project, you can visit the project website.