January 18th, 2015, YouGov
Samsung has been crowned the UAE’s Best Brand for 2014 according to YouGov’s Annual BrandIndex Buzz Rankings.
The global electronics powerhouse managed to outshine home-grown superbrand Emirates and internet giant Google to claim the highest brand Buzz score of 52.3 over the last 12 months.
Watch this short video to discover the UAE's Best Brands in 2014
BrandIndex tracks over 400 brands across multiple sectors in the UAE, and is the first and only daily measure of brand perception among the public in the Middle East. Rankings are created using BrandIndex’s Buzz score, which is calculated by asking respondents, if they have ‘heard anything positive or negative about a brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word-of-mouth’.
2014 saw Samsung launch a number of new products in the UAE, including the Galaxy Note 4 (featuring Arabic Writing Recognition, which instantly digitizes Arabic hand written text). That, together with Samsung Experience Zones in Deira and Abu Dhabi and a ‘Super-Selfie’ bill board campaign showcasing the public’s Samsung selfies down the Sheikh Zayed Road, no doubt helped to create positive noise amongst consumers throughout the year.
A number of other mega brands made a positive impact on UAE residents last year including global heavy weights Apple (score: 41.0) and Facebook (score: 38.8), and homegrown real estate giant Emaar (score: 35.4), all claiming their place in the top 10 Annual BrandIndex Rankings for the first time in 2014.
iPhone took the UAE by storm climbing three places in the Annual BrandIndex Buzz Rankings with a score of 38.6. The hotly anticipated release of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, reported to have sold out in just two hours at Emax Electronics in the UAE, was very well received.
Settling into the top 10 for two years running, Carrefour and Dubai Mall are the only non-movers in 2014 at positions five and eight respectively. Majid Al Futtaim’s Carrefour, which scored 39.4, appealed to UAE consumers’ charitable side joining forces with Pampers-UNICEF ‘1 pack = 1 vaccine’ campaign, which saw their customers break the one million vaccine target set for the six month campaign. The largest mall in retail history, Dubai Mall achieved status as the most checked-in UAE location on Facebook and scored 36.3.
The noisy global mega brands pushed Saudi Arabian household favourite Almarai down five places in the Annual BrandIndex Buzz Rankings since 2013. Nevertheless its decline in Buzz (2013 score: 48.0 versus 2014 score: 35.6) is slight and it remains a significantly popular brand in the UAE, keeping it in the top 10.
At the close of 2014, the notable shift in positive noise in favour of the larger internet and electronics brands has continued since YouGov’s last reported Buzz scores in the Mid-Year BrandIndex Buzz Rankings. It will be interesting to see how the next six months unfold. Will the household names stand a chance against the increasing prominence of the technology based powerhouses? Needless to say YouGov’s BrandIndex will be tracking daily.
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BrandIndex tracks over 400 brands in the UAE. We could be tracking your brand already with over five years' historical data on most brands.