South African Media ratings from Ask Afrika's Icon Brands survey

"Media is typically fine-tuned for specific audience footprints and mandates, these are brands that still earned a significant amount of affinity, the media we cannot live without," says Maria Petousis, TGI Director at Ask Afrika.

Media research

Metro FM (with audience of 6.6 million) shows relevance across all demographics, with the exception of white listeners and Lesedi and Ukhozi FM also came up as strong radio brands. Ukhozi FM has the highest listenership in South Africa, reaching over 7.5 million listeners (measured as having listened in the last 7 days), which is significant globally, if one compares this with the top stations in terms of audience size and the size of the total population. In the UK, BBC Radio 2 has 15.5 million listeners and BBC Radio 1 has 10.8 million listeners. In the US, the most popular radio talk show (The Rush Limbaugh Show) attracts over 13 million listeners every week.

SABC 1 shows relevance across all demographic groups, once again with the exception of white viewers and SABC 3 was also rated highly in the survey. Sunday Times was the most relevant newspaper across the demographic, with the exception of coloured readers, and Daily Sun scored highly across all groups. No one magazine brand was found to be iconic. Google showed the most relevance amongst all the groups accessing the internet, with Gumtree also doing well. Facebook was voted as the best social networking brand and Twitter was the runner-up.

Social media growing in relevance

The survey showed that 80% of Ask Afrika ICON Brands are active on social media and are growing consumer loyalty online. The winning brands typically have official pages on most major platforms and where the brand does not have a page or platform, the winning company does.

"Social media is growing in relevance in South Africa and Icon Brand winners optimise social media platforms to connect and engage with consumers," concludes Petousis.