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When I first heard of the new ‘cycle super highways’ that run into central London from the suburbs, my first reaction was to compare and contrast the achievements of our newt loving former mayor Ken Livingstone with those of the incumbent Boris Johnson.

In the red corner we have Ken. A bit foul-mouthed, a bit bossy. But he introduced the first major stand against the hegemony of the automobile by any major city in the world: The Congestion  Charge. It needed sharp political instincts to bulldoze it through, a commitment of hundreds of millions of pounds in new technology and the willingness to upset large swathes of the electorate.

There was another world first in the Oyster card, a ground-breaking automated transport ticket with the potential to become an electronic currency holder.

In the blue corner we have Boris. And what is his big achievement to date? Well he got some paint and coloured long stretches of London’s roads an azurey sort of blue. Why blue? “For high levels of visibility, to provide a consistent look and feel, and to distinguish them from the green lanes of the London Cycling Network,” says Transport for London.

But then I realised that I had completely missed the point. The correct name for these cycle lanes is ‘Barclays Cycle Superhighways’. And no, they are not a revolution in transport. They are a revolution in branding. They are a marketing putsch, an extraordinary corporate coup d’etat staged by Barclays.

That may sound a little rich for what is just a cycle lane, but consider this. The hundreds of miles of proposed cycle super highways wont be painted in any old blue. They will be in near 100 per cent cyan. It’s a colour otherwise known as Barclays blue. In other words, large stretches of one of the world’s greatest cities will be swathed in corporate livery. Barclay’s corporate livery.

Barclay’s has branded the very ground beneath our feet, it has turned our streets into an advertisement, albeit one that measures 225 kilometres (the combined length of the 15 proposed cycle routes) by 1.5 metres (the width of the routes). It has turned the landscape into a brandscape.

The idea that the streets of London should be coloured Barclay blue may not to be everybody’s taste, but you have to admire their daring, their imagination and the scale of their ambition .

Last week ad agency BBH announced that it had resigned the Levis account it has held since 1982. You could tell it was a significant moment because it was so widely reported, not least in the FT which described the split as ‘End of an era in Levi’s advertising’. For nearly three decades BBH’s work for Levi’s has been without rival, equal or parallel. Other campaigns have lasted longer. Think Andrex puppies, think Tony the Tiger.

Other campaigns have perhaps sparkled nearly as brightly for a moment or two -think of all those great ads for Tango and its different flavours, or Fallon’s work for Sony and Cadbury’s.

Last week when the French were knocked out of the world cup, there was murmuring amongst French intellectuals that the players, many of whom have worked in England, had caught the Anglo-Saxon bug of the cult of the individual. That explained why they were apparently unable to play as a team.

Another area where Anglo-Saxons excel is brands and branding. The French are also-rans in this discipline. Or so I thought until I visited Paris a couple of weeks ago.

So there we were, strolling down the Champs Elysee, en famille, when my eye was caught by some elegant blue neon lettering. ‘200 Ans et plus’ it read. Intrigued I investigated the shop which turned out to be Peugeot’s flagship showroom and brand show case.

Then on the next window I saw this.

Its always nice to get some feedback on the work we have produced, and it doesn’t get much better than this.  Have a read of this quote from Simon Askew, the fresh food buyer at Harvey Nichols about our work for Inishturkbeg

‘It is important that food not only tastes fantastic but also looks fantastic if it is packaged . Our  customers naturally will shop with their eyes.  The packaging design of Inishturkbeg is for me an exceptional piece of work that manages to cleverly evoke not only a sense of the quality of the product inside, but also of the beauty of the enviroment from which it is sourced.’

Not bad, even if we do say so ourselves!

Greenpeace activists hoist a flag after climbing on to a balcony at BP headquarters in London.

Full disclosure here: I’m a journalist’s daughter. Actually, I’m a columnist’s daughter, so there goes the impartiality. And yes, this blog post comes straight on the heels of some paternal prose. But I can’t help but think that it’s about time Coley Porter Bell weighed in on the BP brand in the face of the Deepwater disaster.

BP’s rebrand ten years ago has been held up as one of our industry’s biggest success stories: a tired, uninspiring oil company making the leap into the shiny future of renewable energy, going ‘beyond petroleum’. Employees embraced the new ethos, the bottom line flourished, and the company’s reputation as a leader in corporate sustainability efforts was cemented in the public consciousness. BP was sitting pretty.

And then in April, disaster struck.

To be clear: this is a disaster, no doubt about it. The victims of the oil rig explosion are not only the eleven people who lost their lives, but their families, the population of the Gulf Coast, and countless species of animals in the area. We have no idea how the situation will play out, or how much damage will ultimately be done. It’s scary stuff - the sort of fiasco that can relegate a company to the black hole of contempt in people’s minds. And while the BP brand will take a hit, ultimately I believe it will make it through. There are two reasons for that.

First, BP’s longstanding and considerable investment in brand-building will have helped to futureproof them against public relations disasters just like this one. Compared to energy companies with less inspiring brands (ahem, Shell and Exxon), BP seems like the good guy. Instinctively, we tend to believe they’ll right this wrong, and continue on their virtuous path. That’s what it means to have captured the hearts and minds of consumers.

Second, BP has done more than simply building a brand, they’ve built a culture. The open, honest, optimism that’s core to their brand has come through in their response to the oil spill. Sure, there were some hiccups at the start, but ultimately, they’ve raised their game. BP leadership is truly living their brand, reinforcing their positioning with every press conference, every shared internal document, every apology. The BP brand, it seems, is more than just a cheery logo.

We’ll have to wait and see how this all nets out, but this blogger’s money is on a triumphant BP brand re-emerging. Eventually.

I’ve never been a fan of PMT.

I can also, without doubt, say my family and friends share this opinion, when month after month it tantrums its way around the kitchen, into the biscuit tin and sulks its way into a dark corner of the house, having slammed all doors in its path.

So it’s a little shocking that I find myself wanting to write about it now - really excited and preparing to be pretty gushing (sorry) over a subject I’d otherwise rather not mention.

This radical change in me has been brought about by discovering an Aussie brand called Moxie. Whilst browsing my parents local Waitrose (a better sort of Waitrose apparently), shopping for the necessities in life, I came across this fab looking brand, a beautiful vision amongst all those other horrendous sanitary products with purple and teal wings etc etc.

I’m not embarrassed to say I squealed (a bit) at the shelf when I realized for the same sum of money I could buy my tampons in a pretty little tin which would match my handbag. Well, I do work in design. Never before has a san pro brand ever moved me to check them out on the internet, so I was equally delighted to find their website also lives up to their philosophy of ‘living beautifully’. I’m actually looking forward the next one (mood swings depending).

I was strolling home through Paddington station the other day when my eye was caught and my gob was well and truly smacked by a colourful little six sheet: ‘VJJ. What do you call yours?’ it read.

What? I looked again, Yes it really was talking about vaginas. And just in case there were any lingering doubts in my mind, there, running along the bottom (of the poster) was a web site address: www.loveyourvagina.com.

What was it?  Porn?  But surely that would say ‘lovesomeoneelse’svagina.com’.  Besides the graphics were too wholesome. A ‘joke’?  Not funny.  A public health message? Perhaps.  It just wasn’t clear.  But I was intrigued, so when I got home I logged on to find that the site sells ‘mooncups’ – a new, or rather very, very old form of sanitary protection for women.

So you could argue that it did its job. But I believe this concept is an enormous leap for the average woman to make … even the web site says “I bet you winced when you saw it”, personally I winced when I saw the advertising because it seeks to overly trivialise what could potentially be an interesting move on from tampons.

The homepage was a brilliant and utterly fascinating feature, that is built on the same insight as the ad campaign. It asked visitors to let them know what they call their vaginas. Extraordinarily, there are more than 2,000 different words and phrases used and no clear ‘winner’ among them.

Now you might say that it merely reflects the interests of our society. After all the eskimos reputedly have 40 words for snow. I call my son’s genitals his ‘willy’. But the fact that we have no consensus around what to call to female genitalia suggests that this is an issue that we are afraid to get to grips with. So the insight is good, perhaps the execution is a little trivial or dare I say “easy”.

It’s often a criticism that this kind of communication is developed by men, because the insights seem misplaced or patronising. This at least is a good attempt at being straight talking and open about sanpro but it still smacks of being sensationalised by men in a bid to woo award juries, rather than connect with women.

But what of the Mooncup itself? According to the site, the average woman uses 12,000 sanitary products in her life which can be replaced by one Mooncup.  So there’s clearly a major environmental benefit. And don’t forget issues surrounding toxic shock syndrome. So on a rational level an external sanpro product seems a good idea.

But attitudes to sanpro are culturally ingrained. We don’t want to see it, hear about it, talk about it or be reminded of it. The conventional tampon which literally internalises the issue is an apt metaphor for our cultural approach.

I have to say I share that approach. While the ads attempt to be a clever way of highlighting an incredibly sensitive topic in an engaging and controversial way, the product itself is just too strident. Reusing and repeatedly cleaning one of these things is just too much of an adjustment for me to make. Most of us are simply not ready to become earth mothers revelling in our menstrual juices.

And whilst this can be seen as being brave, creative and controversial with an arresting tone of voice, is this really what is required to sell women on an entirely new approach to sanitary protection? I don’t think so.

The travesty of Mooncup is that it’s a really nice idea, but it requires advertising that re-educates women, rather than attempts to titillate with concepts like ‘noo-noo’, ‘gina’, ‘home entertainment centre’ or what ever else you want to call it.

I read today that Marco Pierre White is now brand ambassador for Bernard Matthews to help promote the health benefits of turkey.

I couldn’t help but think what a sell-out MPW has become. Of course, he’s achieved pretty much everything there is to achieve in terms of culinary accolades so why not cash in? But surely, he still has restaurants and this kind of endorsement can’t be good for brand Marco.

Chiquita bananas have launched a campaign based on their iconic blue stickers. DJ Neff has designed a huge range of fun characters, using the iconic colours and shape of the little blue sticker. They’re still instantly recognisable as Chiquita even when on their own - a brilliant example of brand equity. But what makes this a truly ‘2010′ project is that they’ve pushed the creative idea even further, linking it into interactive games on the brand’s website. Check out an interview with DJ Neff here.