Planet Business - Hype of the year

Boots: It promises so much for so little - an elixir of youth for just €23.50.

Boots No 7 Protect and Perfect lotion was just another anti- ageing lotion before an otherwise sceptical BBC television Horizon programme sparked a buying frenzy in March by claiming it - and it alone - appeared actually to work. Boots took a break from thrashing out the finer details of its private equity takeover by promptly dispatching 200,000 bottles of the line-smoothing "serum" to its stores, while wrinkle-conscious consumers refusing to age another second promptly logged on to eBay, spending up to €150 a go. Boots couldn't have shifted any more of the bottles than if they had been encrusted in Swarovski crystals, personally endorsed by JK Rowling and Kate Moss and displayed next to a "3 for 2" offer on iPhones.

Marketing disaster of the year  - Oxo

Back when brand managers weren't called brand managers, Campbell Soup Company enlisted the services of Lynda Bellingham to sell Oxo as a magic substance that unites the family around the table and erases all memory of tantrums and strops with a mere whiff. But Oxo was not quite so unifying in January, when Channel 4's Celebrity Big Brother gave us "Oxogate".

Some eight million viewers witnessed a row about humble stock cubes descend into a racist attack in which Indian actress Shilpa Shetty was told she should "go back to the slums".

The spectacle yielded a record number of complaints, sparked a diplomatic incident between Britain and India, and for Campbell Soup UK's new owners, Premier Foods, threatened to destroy decades of warm, cosy advertising overnight.

Resignation of the year - John Browne, former chief executive, BP

Some exits are gracious, others undignified, others just sad. The highest-profile casualty of the credit crunch, Stan O'Neal, retired from Merrill Lynch with a golden goodbye of $160 million.

It took no less than an expression of "full confidence" from George Bush for World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz to pack his things after he promoted his girlfriend. At the BBC, Peter Fincham eventually fell on his sword after "Crowngate".

But the most dispiriting resignation of the year was that of John Browne, chief executive of oil giant BP, whose career took a nosedive in May after he lied in court about how he met his lover. Why was this important? Because his lover was a man, and as Browne's sympathisers pointed out, being openly gay is not an option when negotiating major oil deals in countries not known for their tolerance of homosexuality.