Its kind of like the anti-IPA Awards. All the big brands that dominate their market, not depsite, but apparently because of an inherent focus away from big ad spending.
In the Uk its the Pret a Manger effect. Big brands that do such a good job of building brand they do not need to spend much if anything on advertising.
In Prets case it simply because they do such a good job in the old fashioned brand building space - people, products, service, environment.
In all the hullabaloo about M&S discovering advertising last year (and boy did they discover it) there are still a large number of very BIG brands that eschew advertising in favour of other brand building approaches. They tend to be discount players like Ryanair and Aldi - who see BIG advertising as inconsistent with their brand. Hell, Aldi don't even have a marketing department let alone any ads.
Tesco is another notable example. Big Brand, small media budget.
In the US the poster boy for this kind of ad-light brand building approach is Starbucks. See 2006 spend data in the US here...
