East Anglia's corporate icons had mixed fortunes in this year's league of Britain's 500 favourite brands - with Colman's and Kettle Foods rising up the league while Norwich Union and Lotus lost favour with consumers.

The annual Superbrands survey ranked Google as UK consumers' favourite brand, ahead of Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz and the BBC at the top of the list.

Soft drinks maker Robinsons, which has a factory in Norwich, was the highest-ranking East Anglian brand, rising from 53rd last year to 45th in the 2008 list, which was the result of ratings by industry experts and a YouGov poll of 2,200 consumers.

Colman's of Norwich rose from the 311th favourite brand last year to 295th this year.

Kettle Chips maker Kettle Foods made its debut in this year's Superbrands list as the nation's 467th favourite brand. But Lotus and soup maker Campbell's dropped out of the top 500. Norwich Union fell from 455 last year to 485 this year.

Brand expert Simon Middleton, commented: "There were no real surprises in the performance of the Norfolk brands. While it was a shame to see Lotus fall out of the table, I hope next year they will make a well-deserved return following the launch of their new 2+2 coupe, codenamed Project Eagle. Food brand Campbell's predictably falls out of the table, echoing the disappearance of the name from the UK market earlier this year."

Mr Middleton said Colman's rise in the league table this year "demonstrated the ability of this traditional brand to adapt and evolve".

But he added: "As the UK's leading insurer, it was disappointing to see Norwich Union drop 30 places. Bad publicity for the industry around flood claims and the rising cost of motoring may go some way to explaining this. But this is also a brand in transition following the company's decision to move to the less parochial 'Aviva' name. For the moment, a lot of their brand energies are being split between the two names, so it may still be a number of years before we see them move ahead of Prudential, Scottish Widows and Direct Line who all feature higher up the table this year."

None of the ``big four supermarkets - Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and Morrisons - made it into the top 100.

Asda dropped 253 places, Tesco 230 and Sainsbury's 194 places.

Premium food brands performed better, with Marks & Spencer making the top 20 and Waitrose taking 179th place.

Fast food retailers also suffered significant falls, with Burger King dropping 317 places and McDonald's falling 235 places.

Source: Eastern Daily Press