How Marketing owes its language to the Wild West and other short stories

Staking a claim - I thought this may have had something to do with the time when the colonists in the USA rode as far as they could in a great race to claim their own piece of land. This was shown in the film Far and Away with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, but after a half hour search on t'internet I gave up looking for any definition, ost his may not be the gospel truth. From what I can remember, they had to drive a stake (a wooden pole) into the area that they wanted to claim, which then entitled the person to mine or farm or do whatever he wanted to do to that piece of land. The only useful piece of information is this.

Branding - the art of pressing red hot metal stamps or brands on to a cow's or hrose's flesh. The " branding" was to designate whose cattle was whose on the vast grassy plain of America. The brands showed ownership.

The beast without a brand or mark was known to be a maverick, another defintion is one who doesn't abide by the rules, or being independent in thinking or actions. The French translation is excentrique (I guess this may mean "out of the circle")

Carrying on from the Interbrand Survey from last week, the 2005 best global brands show that the top ten brands are Coca-Cola, Microsoft, IBM, GE, Intel, Nokia, Disney, McDonalds, Toyota, Marlboro.

But more suprising is the list of the five big winners on the Interbrand list ( I feel like JK & Joel from Radio 1 - no silly jokes, please) - Ebay with a 21% increase; HSBC with a 20% increase ; 19% increase from Samsung; not surprisingly with Apple with their 16%rise from 2004's brand value and finally UBS with another 16%.

More on the short stories to come