Broadcast and retail brands dominate the Africa Brand Index

Brand intelligence company, Ornico, has announced the October 2015 results of the Africa Brand Index. This benchmark, powered by Fuseware technology, ranks over 500 of Africa's top brands in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya.

Broadcast and retail brands dominated the rankings. Supersport takes the top spot for the fourth month in a row. The Expresso Show took second place; Pick n Pay is in third place and Mercedes-Benz South Africa performed very well, rising to fourth place which took them to the Top 5.

The top ten brands in the index are:

"Supersport is currently Africa's most popular and relevant social media brand with a performance percentile of 87% - based on the brand's growth, engagement, response and sentiment on social media," said Mike Wronski, Business Development Manager at Ornico.

"Whether it's rugby, football, tennis or cricket, sport plays a massive role in almost everyone's lives. People have a huge emotional attachment to their favourite sports teams and players. This relevance and Supersport's massive social media presence and interaction are, in part, why the brand continues to lead the rankings," Wronski adds.

He explains that SuperSport maintained popular, well liked, active and responsive accounts across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. SuperSport's social media numbers as of October 2015:

Facebook - SuperSport Film & TV - 3,9 million
Facebook - Supersport Football - 5,2 million
Twitter - SuperSportTV - 1,18 million
Twitter - SuperSport Blitz - 861 000
YouTube - Official SuperSport - 17 666
Instagram - SuperSport - 60 800

"Data and content aside, what also works in SuperSport's favour is that its social accounts create a space where people can comment, share, commiserate and be part of a community that shares in the sports that everyone loves," he says.

Political brands have now also been added to the Africa Brand Index. "Politics play a pivotal role in our economy and in the fates and fortunes of brands, and measuring political brands will offer keen insight into public sentiment about these brands," says Wronski.

The top ten political brands in the index are:

"In short this benchmark has introduced an accurate new social currency for brand managers and their communications agencies to measure the performance of brands on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube," Wronski explains. "The benchmark accurately assesses reach, frequency and sentiment and can be effectively used to see how well brands have performed, for instance, at the conclusion of a campaign," he says.

It enables segmentation by performance, so pundits can investigate which brands have performed best in different sectors like political, media, retail, auto, and so on. A search by geography for the top brands in each of the countries surveyed, namely South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya, can also be performed.

Social media is becoming an increasingly important part of the media mix. The Fuseware/World Wide Worx SA Social Media Landscape 2016 study revealed that over 90% of major brands use Twitter and Facebook. Over half of SA's biggest brands said they intend increasing their social media budgets, focusing on content marketing and multimedia.

The four key criteria to rank brand performance by the Africa Brand Index and their relative weighting in terms of the benchmark are:

1. Growth [an increase or decrease in user numbers] - contributes a 30% in weighting to the Africa Brand Index overall score.
   
2. Engagement [how active brands are on accounts, how active users are on brand accounts] - contributes a 35% in weighting.
   
3. Response [how quickly brands respond to users] - contributes a 20% weighting to the Africa Brand Index.
   
4. Sentiment [how well-liked brands are on the respective social media] - contributes 15% in terms of weighting to the overall score for the Africa Brand Index.