Emirates tops the 2019 YouGov BrandIndex Buzz Rankings in the UAE for the third time

Dubai’s flag-carrier airline continues to hold the top position, reigning as the brand with the most positive Buzz amongst UAE residents

YouGov annual Buzz Rankings 2019 reveal that Emirates is the brand with the most positive Buzz in the UAE, for the third consecutive year. Meanwhile, messaging service giant WhatsApp moves up one place, from third last year to second in the 2019 rankings.

YouGov BrandIndex measures the public’s perception of brands on a daily basis across a range of metrics. The annual Buzz rankings are compiled using Buzz scores from the entire years’ worth of data. Buzz scores measure whether people have heard anything good or bad about a brand during the previous two weeks.

Consumer electronics brands did not have a favourable past year in terms of Buzz scores. While Samsung climbed up to the second position from sixth in the 2018 rankings, this year it has dropped down to third. On the other hand, Apple’s score has been declining year-on-year and after falling from fourth to sixth in 2018, it has further fallen down two positions to eighth in the 2019 rankings.

Likewise, their smartphone brands, Samsung Galaxy and iPhone have noticed a decline in their scores over the past year but remain in the same position in the list, at fifth and seventh, respectively.

Impressive gains are shown for YouTube, which has been strengthening its score consistently and has moved up two places to sixth this year. Carrefour remains in fourth, Emaar has climbed up one spot to ninth, while Google has moved down one place to tenth in the 2019 rankings.

YouGov BrandIndex has also released the ten “most improved” brands of the past year. Netflix is the “most improved” brand of the past year, with a rise of +12.1 points to its Buzz score. New and original content by the brand seems to have resonated with residents, with the Buzz score increasing from +17.9 in 2018 to +30.0 in 2019.

Noon.com and Coca-Cola are the second and third best improvers of 2019, with a change in score of +10.6 and +5.0, respectively. Coca-Cola Zero has also shown improvement (+4.4).

Souq’s rebrand as Amazon.ae seems to have generated a lot of chatter among UAE residents, landing the brand a spot in this year’s list of improvers.

Bluewaters (+4.6), Careem (+4.5), ADNOC (+4.4), Warner Bros. World (+4.3) and Uber (+4.1) are some of the other brands who have recorded great improvement to their Buzz scores, making up the list of top 10 improvers of 2019.

Methodology:

The 590 brands in YouGov BrandIndex were ranked using the Buzz score which asks respondents, “If you've heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?” Scores are net scores, calculated by subtracting the percentage of negative responses from the percentage of positive responses for each brand.

The Buzz Rankings chart shows the brands with the highest average Buzz scores between January 1st and December 31st, 2019. The Buzz Improvers chart ranks the brands with the highest increase in Buzz comparing scores in years 2018 and 2019, to be included in the Buzz Improvers list, the variance must be positive. Scores are representative of the general population.

All Buzz scores listed have been rounded to a single decimal place; however, we have used additional precision to assign ranks.

All brands must be tracked for at least 6 months to be included in the rankings, and must have been tracked for at least 6 months in the prior year’s period (as well as being currently tracked) to appear in the movers tables.