10 Brands That Changed the World:

"They don't merely influence our spending habits, they determine who we are".

Cursed is anyone who has a brand define who they are.

Jeepers.

Don't agree with a lot of those listed.

Where's Coca Cola? Where's Ford? Where's Google (including its wholly owned subsidiary, YouTube)? Where's the BBC? Where's IKEA?

Instead we get:

Starbucks - gimme a break. All they did was copy the café culture that the rest of the world already had. Starbucks stores are going belly up everywhere except America, because the rest of the world already had a café culture. Plus their coffee is shit. You can get a better cup of coffee at a local takeaway food joint than at Starbucks.

HBO - maybe, but as HBO is not available anywhere outside the US, they can hardly be classed as "world changing". True, they do produce some damn good shows, but then again so has the BBC since it first launched its TV service. The BBC was a global radio news network before TV was invented. Add to that all the work they did for the Resistance movements in Nazi occupied Europe. That reason alone makes the BBC w-a-y more "world changing" than producing The Sopranos, or Game Of Thrones.

Walmart - really? It may have changed American retail, but it's impact is diddley squat in the rest of the world.

GAP - huh? Never heard of them, that's how much they changed the world.

I can only deduce from that list that the author:

A) Is someone who doesn't realise that the "world" consists of a lot more than the bit of land in between Canada and Mexico;
B) Was paid by some of the brands to be listed;
C) Is an idiot;
D) All of the above.

Given that the article appears on a site called Adweek, I strongly suspect that B might be correct, or at the least he works for an ad company that has the listed companies as clients.

Oops, I should've added Microsoft to the list of companies I mentioned above as real "world-changers".