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Emirates creating biggest ‘buzz’ among UAE brands

Airline maintains top spot in YouGov’s mid-year brand rankings

Emirates is again the UAE’s most “positively perceived” brand, according to global market research company YouGov.

The airline topped the online portal’s 2016 Mid-Year BestBrand Rankings, which record the opinions of consumers from 26 countries, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The rankings are compiled using the “buzz” score from YouGov’s brand tracker, BrandIndex, which asks visitors to record anything they have heard, positive or negative, about a brand over the previous two weeks through advertising, news or word-of-mouth.

Emirates retains its top spot over 400 brands after displacing Samsung in the 2015 rankings after relaunching its “Hello Tomorrow” global advertising campaign. It also returned to the Saudi Arabia Mid-Year Rankings, placing ninth.

Mobile messaging platform WhatsApp ranked second on the list after opening up its services to businesses in 2016, attracting Dubai Municipality to use the platform to engage its customers. Samsung placed third after the launch of the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge in the Middle East.

Facebook was fourth following a report by YouGov in June that it was the UAE’s most popular social media platform. YouTube in sixth and home-grown property developer Emaar in seventh were the Mid-Year Rankings. YouTube was the only brand to appear in the top 10 Rankings in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Both Apple and iPhone fall down the rankings to fifth and tenth respectively., while Google had the biggest fall from fifth to eighth. After debuting in the Mid-Year rankings last year, Etihad Airways slips to ninth, but new investments in social and digital display advertising to launch its latest global “Flying Reimagined” campaign starring Nicole Kidman could turn it around for the brand as we move into the second half of 2016, according to YouGov.

The Mid-Year Improver Rankings for 2016, which record the brands with the biggest increase in “buzz” for the first six months of the year, saw leisure favorites Global Village and Legoland winning the biggest increase in positive share of voice in first and second place respectively.

Representing gains in digital brand appeal are global ICT provider Huawei and new social media hot shot Snapchat in third and seventh place respectively.

“Digital and social media are becoming increasingly prominent as marketing vehicles to generate positive appeal amongst consumers with the likes of Emirates, Almarai and Etihad Airways fully integrating these elements into major campaigns,” said Scott Booth, head of travel, tourism and leisure research at YouGov.

“Over the past five years, technology brands have been the primary movers in terms of Buzz – Samsung, Apple, Google, Facebook and YouTube have all featured heavily – and at one stage it looked like they would fully dominate the top 10 UAE Rankings. Now we are seeing other businesses begin to capitalise on the effectiveness of these technology brands in heavy digital, multi-channel campaigns to reach core regional audiences efficiently and in vast numbers. This represents a whole new world of positive opportunity for brands with the strategic foresight to capitalise on digital media to engage their customers.”

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