People feel more positively towards Aldi, the European budget supermarket, than Coles and Woolworths, according to a global brand sentiment index launched for the first time in Australia today.
The report also shows Netflix is way out in front of established Pay TV provider Foxtel in the Pay TV category.
In both cases the challengers have been putting pressure on their more established rivals since arriving Down Under and BrandIndex, a real-time brand sentiment ranking, shows how positively consumers feel about those brands, giving brands a day-by-day trendline of their brand health.
BrandIndex was launched in Australia six months ago by UK monitoring firm YouGov and it is releasing its first quarterly index rankings today. It arrives at brand index scores by monitoring consumer responses from a panel of 70,000 Australians on a daily basis.
It is tracking 250 brands locally and measures 16 metrics broken down into three core areas: media, brand health and purchase intent, which means marketers can track consumer sentiment around the brand from awareness through to buying decisions and be more responsive to changes in sentiment around their brand.
The 16 metrics include ad awareness, word of mouth exposure, value and quality perceptions, purchase intent and how likely people are to recommend a brand.
“The gap we're filling is instant data. Most brands are using some form of tracking that is a benchmark or dip in the market every month or quarter, but ours is real-time. It allows marketers to optimise investment,” Sej Patel, YouGov country manager for Australia and New Zealand says.
For instance, during its recent crisis Volkswagen could see where its metrics were impacted and what kind of investment it needed to make to turn it around and then track any uptick from communications or messaging.
BrandIndex asks consumers if they have recently heard anything positive or negative about a brand and comes up with a composite score which it refers to as 'buzz'. A higher buzz score indicates a more positive consumer sentiment towards a brand. See below for a breakdown of the five brands with the highest buzz scores in each category.
BrandIndex: Top 10 Brands 2015: Australia (Based on Buzz)
| 28.2 | |
| YouTube | 26.3 |
| Aldi | 25.8 |
| Apple | 25 |
| Coles | 24 |
| Bunnings | 22.9 |
| Netflix | 22.6 |
| Samsung | 22.3 |
| Kmart | 21 |
| 20.8 |
** This is quarterly ranking during Oct15 - Dec15**
YouGov also looks at individual categories, for instance retail and insurance. Click the link to download the table.
Download the file here: YouGov Jan 2016 BrandIndex
Looking at brand value, in October last year Apple and Google again nabbed the top spots in Interbrand's annual report of the world's most valuable brands. It found tech players now make up about a third of the consultancy firm's top 100 companies, a marked difference from five years ago when soft drink giant Coke headed the list.
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop me a line at rosiebaker@yaffa.com.au
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