Koo Baked Beans was the number one overall winner in this year’s Ask Afrika Icon Brands awards. This is the first time it reached top position, having come third in 2010. Hullets Sugar came second, All Gold Tomato sauce third, Coca Cola fourth, and McCain Frozen Chips and Potato Products fifth.
The Ask Afrika Icon Brands are quintessentially South African and demonstrate brand relevance across the evolving consumer spectrum, irrespective of demographics, age, gender, race, culture, language, income, education, and individual style. The Ask Afrika Icon Brands survey is the largest benchmark of its kind in South Africa with 19 industry sectors, 164 product categories, and thousands of brands included in the measurement.
“The Ask Afrika Icon Brands™ survey holds value in understanding which brands are getting it right and also can provide marketers wishing to target the entire population with the requisite tools to track trends and to gain greater insight into the South African consumer mind-set and behaviour. However, the survey also provides insights into a diversity of product categories that are targeted at only a portion of the South African demographic,” says Sarina de Beer, managing director of Ask Afrika.
De Beer, MD at Ask Afrika quoted global brand consultant, Scott Davis, as saying, “These great brands have a few things in common, they take a stand and commit to living up to it. They serve a higher order purpose that unites the entire ecosystem from employers, to suppliers, to customers. Great brands remain relevant, they create a personal relationship with their consumers and they become great story tellers, they invite the customer into a conversation and allow the customer to participate on his/her terms”.
Ask Afrika said the South African retail environment is becoming increasingly challenging, and that consumers spent 12.8% of their income on food and non-alcoholic beverages. Add to this housing, water and electricity, and nearly 50% of the household budget is already spent. This has resulted in loyalty to brands continuing its downward trajectory, and increased willingness by consumers to try new brands.
Still, the group managed to identify 28 Icon Brands.
Huletts Sugar has been in the top three since 2010, with the exception of 2011 and 2012, All Gold had been in first place for four years. The top five brands showed consistent good performance across time, enabling them to extend accolades to township markets as well.
Although the top 10 list remains similar to last year (when there were 31 Ask Afrika Icon Brands™ that met the threshold), this year there are seven new comers that can celebrate Ask Afrika Icon Brand™ status, see the brands above with yellow dots. The food product category dominates the top 10 list, but in 2015, surprising newcomers are Bostik in seventh place up from 14th position in 2014, as well as Mugg & Bean in 10th position, having achieved 11th place last year.
This year 164 product category winners were celebrated and 37 brands were classified as Ask Afrika Platinum Brands. As can be expected, not all of the 164 product category winners have Iconic status given the vast differences in socio-economic levels and therefore the means to access certain products. Ask Afrika Platinum Brands are the brands of tomorrow and have a total Icon score above the required threshold, but are not used across the entire population. The top five Ask Afrika Platinum Brands are Debonairs Home Delivery, Tastic, Gauteng – Carnival City Casino, Shoprite, and Colgate Manual Toothbrushes.
Drinks were the leading industry category this year. This was followed by Restaurants and Fast Foods, and then Foods.
The Ask Afrika Icon Brands™ survey uses a nationally representative random sample, 15 690 consumers were surveyed, representing over 23.3 million adult South African consumers. An enumerated area sampling design was employed and the universe includes all communities with more than 8,000 inhabitants 15 years old and above. The data was weighted using the Statistics South Africa’s population mid-year estimates and audited by respected independent experts BDO and Dr Ariana Neethling.
