Mxit Brand Index: 31 August 2013

Top Mobile brand: Cell C
Top banking brand: FNB
Top financial services brand: 1life
Top sporting brand: Nike Football
Top media brand: SuperSport
Top retail brand: Spar

Mxit has done some intensive discussions around what constitutes a brand for the reporting of the monthly Mxit Brand Index and a number of changes have been introduced, which see some new entries being included for the first time. The questions that were asked, and answered, were:

What is the Mxit Brand Index?

The Mxit Brand Index is a measure of consumer affinity expressed by the number of Mxit users that subscribe to each brand on the social network. Mxit has a monthly active user base of 6.5-million in South Africa.

How is it compiled?

Mxit draws up a list of all apps/pages on Mxit, and rank them according to total number of subscribers. By subscribing to an app, a Mxit user has chosen to add the app to his contact list, can access content published by the app, and has opted in to receive direct messages from the app.

Listing rules

• A brand has to exist as a commercial consumer brand outside of the Mxit ecosystem in order to be in consideration for the Index.
• Apps have to be in a published state on the date that the list is compiled. No beta, unpublished or suspended apps are considered.
• Where a brand has sub-brands that appear on the list, only the highest listing will be included in the index.
• The Index lists brands. If the name of the app is different to the name of the brand, the name of the brand will be used for the index (e.g. app= love cricket, but will appear as Cricket SA on the Index.)
• No NGOs or NPOs are included.

Additional Criteria

When evaluating the top brands in the Mxit ecosystem of apps, games, content and communities, the following criteria was applied:
• Working app with updated information
• Real world brand that exists outside of the Mxit ecosystem
• No services based apps and games such as MxPx, Judgeme, Moonbase, Battletrivia, Wikipedia, Hello Doctor, etc.
• No individual celebrities such as Romy Titus, Riaad Moosa, etc.
• No chat rooms

Analysis: 8ta (Telkom Mobile), Coca-Cola and KFC campaigns deliver the numbers

There were three big movers this month, and the numbers reflect the brands' campaign activity on Mxit during August. 8ta (Telkom Mobile) and Coca-Cola ran extensive campaigns, which resulted in each brand adding over 100,000 unique subscribers to their respective apps, moving 8ta (Telkom Mobile) to 9th place, and bringing Coca-Cola onto the Mxit Brand Index as a new entry at position 27.

KFC's campaign kicked off on 30 August, and in the last two days of the month, KFC added over 25,000 unique subscribers to its app. While it now appears in 23rd place, as opposed to 22nd in July, this is still an increase, as there are now five new inclusions on this month's brand index report, ahead of KFC, meaning their relative change is three positions.

Kotex's campaign activity in June means that it now enters the brand index at position 40.