Emirates, Almarai And Google Dominate YouGov’s 2020 Best Brand Rankings In MENA

YouGov’s 2020 Best Brand Rankingsin MENA reveal that Emirates, Almarai and Google are the healthiest brands in the Middle East. While Emirates tops the rankings in the UAE for the fourth year in succession, Almarai and Google are the top-ranked brands in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, respectively.

The rankings were based on the Index score from YouGov BrandIndex, which is a measure of overall brand health calculated by taking the average of Impression, Quality, Value, Satisfaction, Recommend and Reputation¹.

Despite the flight restrictions in place, perceptions of leading carrier brands have remained strong in the UAE and KSA. Emirates remains the top-ranked brand in the UAEscoring 59.9 points(with a marginal decline in its year-on-year brand health score), while Saudiahas madea notable improvement to its brand perception, climbing up three places to come third in KSA’s list of top 10 brands (47.5).

Technology giants Google, WhatsApp and YouTube make 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 KSA, YouTube (43.4), WhatsApp (41.7) and Google’s (41.7)year-on-year brand health scoresdid 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 KSA, 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 inthe 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 theUAE, 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 ecommerce ecosystem during the challenging past year. In both UAE and KSA, 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 & Beverage brands, highlighting the role of familiar consumer brands in comforting residents during the ongoing health crisis.

Tech companies dominate the global best brand rankings

YouGov also released this year’s annual global best brands rankings with Google taking the top spot. Tech brands dominate the top of the list with the search and advertising giant followed by WhatsApp, YouTube, Samsung and Amazon.

With Netflix and Facebook in sixth and seventh respectively, the only non-tech-related brands in the top ten are Singaporean ecommerce platform Shopee (eighth), Swedish retailer IKEA (ninth) and US sportswear titan Nike (tenth).

YouGov BrandIndex conducts 8 million interviews across the world every year who answer questions about a company’s quality, value and their level of satisfaction with the brand, among other measures. YouGov BrandIndex operates in over 40 countries across the globe, covering markets in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Australasia.

For this year’s global list, YouGov used data from 33 markets – data from countries that cover three sectors or fewer were not counted in the top 10.

Digital brands dominate the global ranking and with good reason. By their very nature the likes of Google, YouTube, and WhatsApp are available in most places on Earth to anyone with internet access. However, while much of the list has only been around for the last couple of decades, classic brands IKEA and Nike that have been around a good while longer also make the list.

Commenting on the research, Scott Booth, Head of Data Products and Services MENA at YouGov said, “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. In Saudi the domination of Saudi-born brands in best brand rankings and the success of multiple Saudi brands making an entry in the top 10 improvers is a noteworthy development.’