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The 100 Most Popular Brands in Africa
Today at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, at an event with industry leaders from across Africa, hosted by the JSE in partnership with GeoPoll, Kantar and Brand Leadership, Brand Africa announced the Top 100 brands in Africa in their 7th annual Brand Africa 100: Africa’s Best Brands report. Nike, MTN, Dangote, Ecobank and BBC were recognized as the most admired brands on the continent. GeoPoll was pleased to partner with Brand Africa and Kantar on this initiative once again, facilitating the mobile-based surveys that gathered data on top brands in Africa from 25 countries throughout the continent.
Since 2011, the Brand Africa 100 has been surveying and ranking the most admired brands spontaneously recalled by African consumers. In a relatively stable Top 100 list this year, the US sports and fitness mega brand, Nike, retains the overall #1 brand in Africa spontaneously recalled by consumers. South African telecoms brand MTN is the #1 African brand spontaneously recalled brand, while surging Ethiopian brand Anbessa Shoes, at #2, swapped positions with Nigerian conglomerate, Dangote, which is the #3 most admired brand of African of origin.
Overall, the 2018/19 Brand Africa 100 list, which is calculated from 15,000 brand mentions, illustrates a very diversified range of brands in Africa and shows year on year consistency, with 80% of the Top 100 brands having been in the Top 100 Most Admired Brands in previous years.
The highest gains are dominated by apparel and luxury brands Vans (+65), FILA (+50) and a resurgent Levi’s (+29). The sports category, led by Nike (#1), remains a strong performer, due to strategic repositioning or expansion in their positioning towards lifestyle high profile endorsements, and partnerships which have freshened and broadened the brands’ appeal, particularly to youthful and young consumers. The biggest faller was Peak Milk, dropping from 33 to 98, possibly due to the dairy industry globally seeing a significant drop in sales of cows’ milk as alternatives are becoming more and more popular amongst consumers. Victoria’s Secret and Indomie dropped 36 and 33 spots respectively.
Because of the transformational and catalytic impact of media and financial services in Africa, Brand Africa has separate questions on the Most Admired Financial Services Brands and Most Admired Media Brands.
Top Media Brands in Africa
In the media sub-survey, DStv (incorporating GoTV, Multichoice and Supersport) has welcomed its brother the SABC onto the Top 10 media list. The media list is led by BBC, which has an extensive history and coverage of Africa through its BBC Worldservice radio and specific African programming. The media list is dominated by Europe (40%), North America (20%) and Asia (20%). A deeper analysis of the media category shows high levels of fragmentation, with many local and regional players – thus in general only global players with extensive African reach and resources dominate the top of the list.
Top Financial Services Brands in Africa
In the Most Admired Financial Services Brands category, Ecobank has ascended to the #1 position as the Most Admired Financial Services Brand, and Safaricom Mpesa retains its pole position among mobile money brands. 60% of the are made in Africa. The presence of multiple mobile money brands on the list, including Safaricom Mpesa (#13), Orange Money (#18), MTN Mobile Money (#19) and Tigo (#23), underscores the impact of not only Mpesa as the catalyst, but mobile as a key enabler for financial access. The Top 25 Most Admired Financial Services Brands list is dominated by South Africa (6), Nigeria (5) and Kenya (2).
About Brand Africa
Brand Africa 100 was developed by pan-African branding and reputation advisory firm, Brand Leadership Group supported by GeoPoll, the leader in mobile-based market research throughout Africa, and strategic analysis and insights by Kantar TNS, the world’s leading data, insights and consulting company.
GeoPoll used their sophisticated mobile survey platform to identify the most admired brands in Africa among a representative sample of African consumers in 25 African countries.
“The scope of the Brand Africa study across such a diverse sample and geographic spread would be impossible to achieve using traditional research methodologies,” says Nicholas Becker, GeoPoll CEO. “Using GeoPoll’s mobile-based research platform and large panel of respondents, we were able to quickly gather more than 15,000 brand mentions from 25 countries in Africa, providing brands with valuable data that will inform their growth. GeoPoll was pleased to partner with Brand Africa once again to gather this vital research across Africa.”
The Brand Africa 100 results will be published in African Business Magazine on sale globally from 25 May 2019 and available online to subscribers on www.africanbusinessmag.com and www.brandafrica.com. For more information about this study or to request a copy of the full results please contact GeoPoll here.