Having effortlessly transitioned into acting, Fouzia's debut film swiftly captured global acclaim, earning accolades at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival
Emirates, Almarai and Google are the healthiest brands in the Middle East while Dubai-based carrier maintained its top UAE ranking for the fourth consecutive year in 2020, according to YouGov’s 2020 Best Brand Rankings index for Mena region released on Wednesday.
The index measures a brand’s overall health by taking the average impression, quality, value, satisfaction, recommendation, and reputation.
Despite the flight restrictions in place, perceptions of leading carrier brands have remained strong in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Emirates remains the top-ranked brand in the UAE scoring 59.9 points (with a marginal decline in its year-on-year brand health score), while Saudia has made a notable improvement to its brand perception, climbing up three places to come third in Saudi Arabia’s list of top 10 brands (47.5).
Technology giants Google, WhatsApp and YouTube made an appearance in the top 10 brands list of all three countries. YouTube has made a significant improvement to its brand perception among UAE residents and has jumped ahead three places to become the third most popular brand in the country (49.3). Google (47.4) and WhatsApp (50.4) on the other hand, did not register any change to their brand perception over the past year.
In Saudi Arabia, YouTube (43.4), WhatsApp (41.7) and Google’s (41.7) year-on-year brand health scores did not witness much change. Although in Egypt, all three brands noted a decline in their scores.
Within the region, Dettol had a very strong year amidst the pandemic in terms of brand health. In the UAE, Dettol made a new entry in tenth (score) with a significant 5.6-point uplift in its score. In Egypt and Saudi Arabia, it has moved up one and two places in the rankings, to seventh (38.4) and eighth (41.1), respectively.
Carrefour has consolidated its position in both UAE and Egypt. In the UAE, it remains in fourth this year scoring 48.6 (with an improved year-on-year score), and in Egypt, it has made an impressive new entry into the list in the sixth position (42.5).
Samsung has re-entered Saudi’s top ten list in tenth (39.6), while Dream Park and National Bank of Egypt are new entrants in Egypt’s list of top 10 brands- placed in eighth (37.6) and ninth (37.4) respectively.
The rankings also show the brands which have improved the most over the past 12 months. Majid Al Futtaim is the most improved brand in the UAE, with a change in score of +11.0. It also appears in Saudi’s list of improved in the second place, with an enhancement of +6.2 to its score.
In KSA and Egypt, STC Saudi Telecom and KFC are the most improved brands, with a change in score of +8.4 and +9.4, respectively.
E-commerce giant noon.com appears in the improvers list of all three countries, displaying the strength of the regional e-commerce ecosystem during the challenging past year. In both UAE and Saudi Arabia, noon.com is the third most improved brand, while in Egypt it ranks eighth (5.5) in the list of improvers.
The improvers list of Mena this year has a dominance of food and beverage brands, highlighting the role of familiar consumer brands in comforting residents during the ongoing health crisis.
“Global brands performed strongly across the Mena region as they usually do but this year, the continued growth of local and regional brands has been much more evident. In all three Mena markets, we see local or regional brands performing strongly in the improvers rankings with the UAE-based Majid Al Futtaim, and e-retailers noon.com both featuring in multiple improvers table in Mena,” said Scott Booth, Head of Data Products and Services Mena at YouGov.
-waheedabbas@khaleejtimes.com
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