Top brands use Brands & Branding to tell their success stories

In fact, 54 of the Top Ten rated brands from 34 categories surveyed in the latest Ipsos-Markinor Sunday Times Top Brands Survey (published August 17) will appear in the soon to be published encyclopaedia.

Further proving the point that Brands & Branding is the choice of winners, no less than 31 of these are in the top three positions per category. In all, over 170 Top Brands finalists have featured in the 14 editions of Brands & Branding to date, many participating on a regular basis as they update their stories year by year on their journey to the top.

Huletts, for instance, has featured 13 times in the book and in this year's Top Brands Survey rose to 2nd position, after Tastic, in the Foods Kept on the Shelf category. Other top brands Absa, Standard Bank, Toyota and Bokomo have appeared in 12 editions; Coca-Cola, Vodacom and Gabriel 11; MTN, Nissan, SABC, Volkswagen, Discovery health and DStv 10; and BP, KFC, Nashua, Phillips, Sappi, Telkom, Shell and LiquiFruit in nine editions.

At the Grand Prix awards level, eight out of Ipsos-Markinor's Top 10 have, not surprisingly, appeared in the book, with nearly all participating this year.

The Encyclopaedia of Brands & Branding in South Africa is published annually by Affinity Publishing and has, over its 15 year history, established a reputation for delivering the most comprehensive content and providing a platform for thought leaders to assert their views and share insights on brand development.

“If there was a category for the Top 10 ‘Best Read and Subscribed to Branding Books' we would be up there receiving our award,” says Ken Preston of Affinity Publishing.

While Brands & Branding relies on Ipsos-Markinor and other research contributors to survey and identify South Africa's leading brands, its articles are written by local and international thought leaders. Topics to come under the spotlight this year include building an organisation of people who believe in the brand, multi-sensory marketing, branding in Japan, semiotics in marketing and advertising, and brands and trust in the ‘green' era, among others. Extracts from the wide-ranging content of each edition are presented on www.brandsandbranding.co.za.

In the 13th edition published in 2007, the annual introduced research on ‘brand trust', the Brands & Branding/Ipsos-Markinor Brand Trust Index, which provides a list of 100 most trusted brands across a number of categories. This year the research spans 23 brand categories.

“The first edition came out in 1993 and Brands & Branding has moved centre stage since then. We have documented the growth and success of nearly all South Africa's leading brands and offer our congratulations to this year's winners. Considering the many thousands of competing brands, to make it into the top 10 of their categories is an outstanding achievement.”