2009 Sunday Times Top Brands winners

Over and above aligning the research with the latest brand thinking, more “exotic and modern” categories were also included for this year's award.

“Religious groupings dominated social networks while Facebook was announced as the winning digital network followed by MXit and My Space,” explains Neil Higgs, director for innovation and development at TNS Research Surveys, which was commissioned by Avusa Media to conduct the research.

“Sports clothing was easily won by Nike while Levi's comfortably took the top spot for general clothing category. Rayban came in first place for sunglasses followed by Police and Dolce and Gabbana. Michel Herbelin was the consumer's favourite watch brand.”

Shifts in winners

Shifts in winners included FNB edging out last year's winner, Absa, to claim the top spot for retail banks in the business-to-consumer category and smaller air carrier British Airways ousting South African Airways to claim first place for airlines in the business-to-business category.

Other surprises on the night saw the smaller Apple Mac computer brand leap from seventh position to second place in the business-to-business category, showing that brand size doesn't mean the brand is necessarily better, and contesting HP, the category winner.

“Smaller brands holding their own amongst the more heavyweight contenders this year is a result of us commissioning TNS Research Surveys to provide a new and innovative research model that would let loved brands whether big or small stand out,” said Enver Groenewald, Avusa Media GM: advertising revenue and strategic communications.

“The results also indicate that smaller competitors that decided not to cut their marketing and advertising budgets during these tough economic times have reaped the rewards and might be gaining some market share.”

Grand Prix

For the Grand Prix categories of consumers top brands, Pick n Pay stole the show by winning two out of the four awards despite Coca-Cola once again winning overall favourite brand, followed by Vodacom and then Koo and Nike tied in third position. The leading South African supermarket jumped four spots from fifth position to first place for the company doing the most to uplift the community and claimed first prize as the company doing the most to promote environmentally-friendly behaviour.

The only award that might not have been that unexpected was the announcement that Nelson Mandela was named the favourite South African personality for both consumers and business people. Consumers chose political rivals as the next favourite SA personalities after Mandela, with Jacob Zuma as the second most popular person, followed by Helen Zille in third position.

“This is possibly an indication of how important this year's elections were for the South African public,” points out Groenewald.

Interviews

To get the results for the awards a combination of face-to-face and telephonic interviews were conducted with 3500 adults and 400 business people to make up 3900 in total.

To create the results for the 2009 Top Brands Awards, individuals were asked to say which brands they used regularly and then to rate all the brands they knew on a points-out-of-ten basis. From this, TNS Research Surveys looked at how big a brand was in terms of users. Then it calculated a new measure - informally termed ‘Brand Clout' - that looked at how much better a brand was rated than average amongst its users and then amongst its non-users.

This told TNS Research Sureys if a brand's users were much happier than the users of other brands, and if a brand was more aspirational amongst its non-users than average. By combining these measures, they allowed not only big brands to shine but also smaller brands that are much loved or desired.

Grand Prix categories

Business-to-consumer national

Business to Consumer metropolitan consumer

Business-to-business

For more, go to www.thetimes.co.za/specialreports/topbrands/.