Next Monday we'll be in Vegas, baby, for the GlobalShop Conference, the annual retail technology and in-store design extravaganza. We're only there for a day, but in that time we'll be hooking up (erm, meeting and talking with) the marketers who helped put their brands on the map. Some of the bigger retail names include Target, BestBuy, Wal-Mart and hundreds of others.

We'll be attending the Most Valuable Retail Brands Luncheon, where Interbrand's team of branding experts will announce the top brands of the year. I'll be joined by Mediabistro's Laurel Touby, who is going to help me shoot some video and talk to the event attendees.

It isn't often that think about branding in this way — normally we look at a campaign and the agency (or agencies) that made it happen. But this event looks at the top brands overall in terms of strategy, valuation, market perception etc. And that's what we're going to bring you next Monday.

More: "The Top 100 Most Social Brands of 2008"