I always look forward to this survey as often there are some big movers and even bigger surprises when it comes to who has come up Tops.

The overall favourite Brands in the Country are:

-Coca-Cola
-SAB
-Nike
-Vodacom
-Pick ‘n Pay
-Eskom
-Nokia
-MTN
-Toyota
-BMW

It is interesting that while we have had the worst possible service from Eskom in the last year they are still 6^th overall, their reputation online was clearly poor, with consumer protest sites like eskomsucks being launched, this site is no. 5 on Google when you search on “Eskom”.

I am not surprised at Coca-Cola’s first place position, they continue to reinvent and embrace the opportunities that advertising brings in new media. Their “Brrrr” campaign earlier in the year was an example of this, the communication crossed all channels including mobile in a large way. Although they could have worked on the optimisation of this campaign online (Brrrr ranks no.1 for the myvideo site), so that the search engines would pick up the Brand site first.

Google is the top Brand in the world and says alot that it doesn’t feature in the Top 10 for South Africa. But I am willing to bet that next year it will make an entrance on the list with the company actually establishing a local presence in South Africa and localising content and its’ applications.

When I looked at process used by Markinor, I see that there is still a dimension of measurement that is not being included and that is what consumers are recording online about Brands. Face-to-face and telephonic interviews are great but often too spontaneous and not always accurate. A real measurement of Brand sentiment is when people feel strongly enough about a Brand to take a video showcasing the product; write a blog posting of how amazing the service that they received was or entering a complaint on a consumer portal. Even worse, feeling so strongly that they take the time to build, launch and maintain a site that completely damages a Brands reputation.

Online mention tracking should also form part of the overall Brand Relationship Score to really determine a 360 degree view of what the consumer sentiment is.

One of the tools that can be used for this is saidWot, the Markinor Team would do well to consider using this reputation management and Brand tracking tool as part of the process for their next survey.