America’s Nike clinches top spot in 100 most admired brands in Africa

America’s Nike has clinched top spot in 100 most admired brands in Africa

In the just-released 10th-anniversary rankings of Brand Africa 100, American sports and fitness giant Nike nailed first position for the second time in a row.

Adidas, Samsung, Coca Cola, Tecno, Apple, MTN, Puma, Gucci and Airtel make the cut of the top 10 fancied brands respectively in the Brand Africa 100: Africa’s Best Brands survey and rankings.

Chris Diaz, who is a trustee of Brand Africa and one of the respected brand experts attributes the strength of global brands over the competition is due to their heavy brand investments and renewed brand strategies.

“The changes in brand rankings was possibly due to the positioning of overall brand satisfaction integrated with innovation and brands that ‘connectioned’ emotionally to consumers.  Brands focusing on consumer and competitive needs with amazing campaigns achieved growth of new consumers and markets.

In the list of most admired finance brands in Africa, Equity Bank, Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), M-PESA came at position 11, 12, 17 respectively. Bidco Africa came 25th position under Most Admired African Brands.

For brands to move up the ranking a survey that is normally conducted among a representative sample of respondents 18 years and older in 27 countries which collectively represent 50% of the continent - covering all economic regions, Diaz opines that there is need to increase investment, have an outstanding customer relationship, be more caring and ensure the marketing and product mix is excellent and engage with their customers.

“Brands need to increase investments as brand recall and equity, with customers, makes a difference. Consumers are demanding more competitive offers, both in value while digital brand engagements, due to the growth of internet penetration has grown in the continent. Online business, social brand communications and strategic long term product innovations are important,” Diaz says.

Overall, African brands had about  14% share of the Top 100 most admired brands in Africa and Diaz reiterates that: “The challenge is for the African brands to grow their brand strategies to win new customers by showing care and high quality of innovation in brand experience especially by targeting the youth.

"The new African brands emerging to compete with global brands showed emotional connection and consistency in quality of services with a strong balance of marketing mix and differentiation in the product and service quality focusing on digital marketing and product innovation.”

Diaz, who has served as a director in chartered Institute of Marketing in the UK further congratulated the top African brands that showed resilience to win the consumers' loyalty heart and minds across the continent.

Brands in Africa have been asked to play an important role in building the image and transforming the continent’s promise into a real change.

 “African brands have an important role in helping to build the image, competitiveness and transforming the continent’s promise into a real change. It’s more about creating more competitive brands to meet the needs of its growing consumer market,’’ says Thebe Ikalafeng, Founder and Chairman of Brand Africa and Brand Leadership.

The 2020 survey was conducted between February and April 2020 with over 15,000 brand mentions and over 2,000 unique brands in a consumer-led survey which seeks to establish brand preferences across Africa.