Mxit Brand Index: 30 September 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

Analysis: Idols enters the Mxit Brand Index, and big numbers for brands with active campaigns

With all the media attention the programme has been receiving, it's no surprise that Idols SA lists for the first time on the Mxit Brand Index, at position number 29. It is expected that Idols SA will achieve an even higher ranking as the competition draws near to the finale - especially as Mxit offers the cheapest way to vote for contestants.

A number of big campaigns ran on Mxit during September, resulting in numerous brands moving up on the index report. Coca-Cola, FNB, Direct Axis, Woman Online, and KFC continued to grow their mobile communities.

The biggest community growth came from Coca-Cola, who added 84,909 subscribers and jumped from position 28 to position 24; and Woman Online, whose campaign delivered 45,335 new subscribers - a massive 43% growth in their mobile community. Direct Axis showed a 26% growth with 61,274 new subscribers and FNB's campaign delivered a 9% growth. KFC remained at position 23, but added 21,580 subscribers through the promotion of their road trip adventure game.

Mxit's Brand Index reveals the top 40 brands in South Africa on the Mxit platform. When defining what constitutes a brand, several factors are considered to answer basic questions. 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?

We draw 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 No beta, unpublished or suspended apps are considered.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, we applied the following criteria:
• 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