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by Craig Page-Lee (@cpl_ignite) YouGov BrandIndex is a platform that provides a daily measure of the public perception of brands across multiple sectors in real-time. BrandIndex covers a broad range of brands and countries measured in the tables published, but what’s interesting to note is that South Africa is conspicuous by its absence from this list.

A key driver of enlisting to YouGov BrandIndex is that the platform provides regular updates across multiple brand categories and sectors, and enables brand owners to view the performance and health of their brands in relation to their competitor’s brands in almost real-time. The daily updates to the data, accessed through an online platform, ensure that brand owners may track changes in public perception on a regular basis and hopefully react accordingly — for the right reasons and not just to be reactive. BrandIndex also operates at both national and international level, allowing you to track brand perception in just one country, or compare across multiple countries and monitor a global picture.

Developing nations

The investigation into the Top 10 brands in Egypt as listed on YouGov’s BrandIndex makes for interesting reading, even more so when comparing to the same list for a number of other developing nations listed.

Here, too, is a quick overview of the most-comprehensive and globally accepted brand rankings that we generally default to before listing the YouGov BrandIndex ranking. The likes of Forbes — The World’s Most Valuable Brands, Interbrand — Best Global Brands and Millward Brown — BrandZ Top 100 Global Brands spring to mind. It is important to note that, while each of these global ‘ranking systems’ apply a different methodology to their respective reports, the principle remains the same, namely that of identifying ‘most-valuable brands’ across the world.

A snap-shot of these reports revealed the following;

Forbes — The World’s Most Valuable Brands, 2016

  1. Apple
  2. Google
  3. Microsoft
  4. Coca-Cola
  5. Facebook

As noted in Forbes — The World’s Most Valuable Brands ranking 2016, and probably as anticipated, we see that technology brands occupy 17 of the Top 100 positions, with Apple being listed as the world’s most-valuable brand, Facebook as the biggest climber (by value) and IBM listed as the biggest faller (by value)2.

Interbrand’s Best Global Brands Report4 provides a similar review of most-valuable brands in the world, but the specific Best Brand by Country report is what interests me as it looks specifically at the indigenous brands of a particular country. I’ve compared the reports for India and Brazil, and the results provide for interesting reading, what with conglomerate holding companies taking the top two positons and a telco taking the third position in India, while, in Brazil, financial services companies take the top two positions and a beer brand takes the third position.

Interbrand — Best Indian Brands, 20155

  1. Tata Group: conglomerate holding company with some of the 30 publicly listed businesses it owns operating across the steel, automotive, consultancy services, power, chemicals, global beverages, teleservices and telecommunications sectors3
  2. Reliance Industries Ltd: conglomerate holding company owning businesses across energy, petrochemicals, textiles, natural resources, retail and telecommunications sectors3
  3. Airtel: largest provider of mobile telephony and second-largest provider of fixed telephony in India3

While we see conglomerate holding companies filling two of the top three positions and a telco brand filling the third position of Interbrand — Best Indian Brands4, the only other brands that I’m aware of in the Top 20 are State bank of India (#5), Infosys (#7), Mahindra (#10), Bajaj (#13) and Maruti Suzuki (#14).

Interbrand — Best Brazilian Brands, 20156

  1. Itau: the largest non-state bank in Brazil, with a major presence throughout Latin America. It is the result of a merger in 2009 between Unibanco, a Brazilian bank, and Banco Itaú, the second-largest Brazilian private-banking group3
  2. Bradesco: one of the biggest banking and financial services companies in Brazil. Bradesco was the largest private bank in Brazil until Banco Itaú and Unibanco merged in 20093
  3. Skol: the most-popular beer brand in Brazil was initially created to become a global beer brand in the mid-1960s, when brewers from UK, Canada, Belgium and Sweden formed a new company called Skol International. While Carlsburg holds the licence to brew and market the beer worldwide, AB InBev holds the licence for South America3

While we see financial services companies filling two of the top three positions and a beer brand filling the third position of Interbrand — Best Brazilian Brands6, the only brand that I am aware of in the Top 20 is Havaianas which is actually ranked as 20th most-valuable Brazilian brand 2015.

As with Interbrand, Kantar Millward Brown also has a set of country-specific reports affiliated to its BrandZ Top 100 Global Brands report. These reports also focus upon the indigenous brands of a particular country. I unfortunately didn’t find any Brazilian reference, but did find the 2016 BrandZ India Top 50 Brands7 report, which I have touched upon below.

Millward Brown — 2016 BrandZ India Top 50 Brands7

  1. HDFC Bank: HDFC Bank (Housing Development Finance Corporation) is an Indian banking and financial services company headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. It is the largest bank in India by market capitalisation as of February 20163
  2. Airtel:largest provider of mobile telephony and second-largest provider of fixed telephony in India3
  3. State Bank of India: an Indian multinational, public-sector banking and financial services company. It is a government-owned corporation with its headquarters in Mumbai, Maharashtra and is the largest banking and financial services company in India by assets3

There is an interesting comparison between the country-specific Interbrand report5 and the Kantar Millward Brown report7 as Airtel3 is the only common brand across both reports, coming in at #2 in the Kantar Millward Brown report. Instead of conglomerate groups making up the top-two positions, as in the Interbrand report5, the Kantar Millward Brown report lists two financial services companies in the top-three positions.

Now, getting back to the YouGov’s BrandIndex1 and covering Mid-Year Rankings: Egypt Top Buzz, we see a very interesting mix across the Top 10 Brands and, unsurprisingly, technology brands make up five of the top-ten positions and FMCG/food manufacturers make up another three. A lifestyle property group and a financial services institution make up the remaining two:

Mid-year Rankings: BrandIndex Top 10 — Egypt

  1. Facebook
  2. Google
  3. YouTube
  4. Memaar Al Morshedy: a real-estate developer in Egypt that was founded in 1983
  5. Galaxy: a brand of milk chocolate, made and marketed by Mars, Incorporated
  6. National Bank of Egypt: the oldest and largest bank in Egypt, with 338 branches across the country
  7. iPhone
  8. Almarai: the largest vertically integrated dairy company in the world
  9. Samsung
  10. Kit Kat: a chocolate-covered wafer biscuit bar confection created by Rowntree’s of York, England. Now produced globally by Nestlé, which acquired Rowntree in 1988

Looking at the BrandIndex Mid-year rankings for India and Brazil, we again see that tech brands lead the charge, with seven out of the top-ten brands in India, and five out of the top-ten brands in Brazil, being tech-led/social media-led brands.

Mid-year Rankings: BrandIndex Top 5 — India9

  1. WhatsApp
  2. Google
  3. Facebook
  4. YouTube
  5. State Bank of India

Mid-year Rankings: BrandIndex Top 5 — Brazil10

  1. O Boticario — the biggest Brazilian cosmetic company3
  2. Netflix
  3. Natura — a Brazilian manufacturer and marketer of beauty products, household, and personal care, skin care, solar filters, cosmetics, perfume and hair care products3
  4. Google
  5. Colgate

In closing, it is obvious that the YouGov’s BrandIndex ranking approach is something that would be more appealing to marketers who manage mass-market consumer-facing brands, due to the frequency and almost real-time sentiment measuring capability.

Understanding the dynamics of brand performance in such real-time may help a brand on the edge of disaster turn itself around, or push a brand on the brink of stardom into that stratosphere. The power of these important brand-measurement and -ranking methodologies cannot be over-emphasised, as they help not only marketers at street level but provide the insights that global brand teams need to manage and shape the future of their respective brands.

References

  1. www.BrandIndex.com — YouGov BrandIndex ranking
  2. www.Forbes.com — Forbes The World’s Most Valuable Brands 2016
  3. www.Wikipedia.com — all brands associated per heading
  4. www.Interbrand.com — Interbrand Best Global Brands
  5. www.Interbrand.com — Interbrand Best Indian Brands 2015
  6. www.Interbrand.com — Interbrand Best Brazilian Brands 2015
  7. www.MillwardBrown.com — Kantar Millward Brown BrandZ Top 100 Global Brands
  8. www.MillwardBrown.com — 2016 BrandZ India Top 50 Brands
  9. www. BrandIndex.com — Mid-year Ranking: BrandIndex Top 10 India
  10. www. BrandIndex.com — Mid-year Ranking: BrandIndex Top 10 Brazil

 

Craig Page-Lee 2016Craig Page-Lee (@cpl_ignite) is the former group managing director of Posterscope South Africa and is now an independent consultant servicing the broader brand, marketing and communications industry. His monthly column on MarkLives, “Beyond Borders”, focuses upon doing business in various African markets. Craig is always available for a coffee catch-up and chat (email craig at d-cifr dot com).

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