TOP 50 BRANDS NIGERIA® 2022

This is an annual presentation of a brand research endeavour, where we measure a corporate brand’s ability to deliver on its promise to the consumers. It is a qualitative, non-financial estimation of value of top corporate brands. That is, customer’s perceptions and how positive or otherwise towards a brand, and how this effect its overall strength. This has also been recognized as the brand’s strength.

Since the brand and its perception continue to influence mind and market shares, organizations have also continue to move their focus from the products and services to the consumers and the promise of value made to them. That is why a company will do everything possible, going extra length to promote, protect, preserve and if need be, defend its brand at all cost. The general perception of a brand has never been this important to a company.

The term brand, which is the way a product, company, or individual is perceived by its audience is much more than just a name, logo or color that identify goods and services of a company. A brand is the recognizable feeling that these assets evoke. The subliminal thought it evokes whenever it’s mentioned or sighted in the midst of others. Brand is not just a financial number as some may want to posit, it’s much more than all that.

Brand today has become a necessary part of our everyday life, from waking moment to going to bed, even the choice of bedding. This is so much more in the light of emergence of concepts of consumer awareness, differentiation, purchase justification and the new world economy, the brand is playing a quintessential role.

What Brand is Not

The brand is not those slick TV ads or dramatically staged presentations during media briefing or activations. Neither is it the neatly curled and tastefully designed experience centers across the country- all those (essentials though) are for marketing and advertisement purposes.

It’s not the name, surprisingly, not even the actual products or services. In the classical sense, some names could be so abstractive, irrelevant to the product or services and lexically meaningless, yet carries immense value and goodwill that attract mass audience.

You can’t hold, hear or touch a brand. Well, because, it is intangible. It lives in the mind. It lives in the minds of everyone who experiences it – employees, investors, the media, and most importantly, the customers.

It’s not an overstatement that every member of staff of a corporate organization, from the Janitors, receptionists, managers to the CEO are stakeholders and play important roles in building the brand by creating positive and lasting impression in the mind of the audience, customers especially. Every major brands out there have their unique patterns and culture that, without seeing the name, you can deduce which company, just by coming in contact with any of its people or anything that represents it, like color, sound, patterns etc.

This has also been replicated in the cyber presence. Though virtual, top brand websites, social media presence or online banners evoke the same feelings as with physical encounters. Homogeneity of feelings across all touch points is one of the outcome.

It’s a combine effort of all these that result to an attractive brand that in turn earn equity

Its a Promise

The brand therefore is a promise of value to consumers. It tells them what to expect from a company’s products or services, and it serves as critical differentiator that separates its offering from those of competitors.

The brand is an encapsulation of all the various elements that made up the company, it’s the products and services, look and feels. It’s the feeling that consumers are made to have whenever they come in contact with any of your assemblages.

It is a collection of perception in the mind of the consumers, the sum total of the entire customer experience. What the customer thinks of the company and what they do- its appearance, both physical or online, language and communication styles, social media engagements, logo, fonts, color, slogan etc. All these reflect on its vision, mission, the kind of customers the company hopes to attract and the value proposition which is what the customer is buying.

The brand encompasses a company’s total package, including people, products, culture, offerings, believes, content etc, all into an experience for the audience. It’s that part of the company that the consumers have come to trust, such that places an organization ahead of its competitors.

It is Who you are

The brand inspires trust and tells consumers what to expect from a product or service and a critical differentiator from others.

In reality, the brand is “a complex mixture of experience, feelings and personality that (ideally) have made your company love your company” – Seth Godin.

“Your brand is derived from who you are, who you want to be and who people perceive you to be”- enterpreneur.com

It is what needs to be done first before advertisement.

Regardless of the huge advert war chest a corporate organization might have; as necessary part of the marketing mix as adverts are, without first taking the energy to build the brand, the result will be short lived at best.

Adverts tell a consumer what to buy, but the brand helps to justify the decision- on how and why they should buy.

Branding is objective and deeper. It defines trajectory, while adverts are subjective and define tactics. Branding is long-term and it is ‘macro’, but advertising is short-term and ‘micro’.

Some Immediate Benefits of Strong Brands to the Owners

As consuming as it seems, the benefits of a properly branded company, products or services reflect in its strength which is measurable by the equity it enjoy in forms of premium prices above others. It’s also the amount of goodwill it earned from being who it is. All these directly reflect on the bottom-line for all to see.

Some of the noticeable benefits of Top Brands are:

Increase Recognition & Differentiation

In the world of ads, where customers are bombarded everywhere, where some can even claim what they are not, a strong visual cue has proved to be of immense benefit and also a strong differentiator. When a customer is able to easily recognize a brand’s color, theme, logo, slogans etc., it strikes a strong chord in the mind and most likely help choice decision. This is because they are already familiar with it and what it stands for. From something simple and minimalistic to something wild and eye-popping, a good brand will always be recognized in a sea of others, particularly when it evokes positive vibes.

Enhances Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty is the natural outcome of a consistently positive experience, satisfaction derived from a company’s products, and the perceived value of a strong brand. This is based on personal experience with a company. Loyal customers who most often become fans, typically accept a product or services as better than that of others. It is natural for consumer to patronize the brands they are loyal to, even paying premium, above competitors.

Brands with loyal following are those that build consistently positive customer experience. A research by Accenture on consumer loyalty shows that 57 percent spend more on brands or providers to which they are loyal. That means 43 percent spend the same or less.

Loyal customers have greater chance of repeated patronage too. They look forward to your next product release and follow you for product updates and new releases. Apple, Nike, Microsoft and some others have enjoy this higher level of loyalty, where customers become ‘fanatically’ attached, such that they would keep vigil, queuing up for days, just to be the first to get the products as its being released into the market. Loyal customer would even give excuses in case of some defects. It’s that good.

So, top brand continuously works on improving the customer experience and anticipates customer needs with its products, by meeting these needs, since its been proven that good customer service and products that work as expected are major motivating factors for them to stay loyal to the brand.

Competitive edge in the market.

The brand is your company’s competitive advantage, simple. Your brand is what differentiates you in the marketplace. When customers recognize and back your brand because of the positive feelings it evokes in them, it helps lend a competitive edge to your company. The more recognition you receive and the more you create brand awareness, the more you will find that your brand elevates and is competitive with other well-known brands. A strong brand will always give a stronger edge over others.

Brand Equity

A most important benefit of building a strong and vibrant brand is the equity, which enables the company to charge a premium on products or services. Much more, brand equity also enables a long-term growth. By leveraging on the value of your brand, it becomes easier and cheaper to add new products or services and people will be more willing to try the new products. This also helps in new market and geography.

Attracts Talent

Strong brands are always an attraction to best of talents. Everybody want to be with the top guy. This also attracts influencers, Content creators, concept builders and right marketers. When a business has effective branding in place, it is hard for people to not notice it. Attracting these kinds of people increases the brand’s creative powerhouse. This kind of collaboration with the right people can go a long way to promote your brand and drive your digital presence which has become most essential for every strong brands. This ultimately helps to reach an even larger audience because people trust the recommendations of their favorite influencers and content creators.

Lower Price Sensitivity

This is when the customer says, ‘I need this, no matter what’

Strong brand offers sufficient justification for buying any product or services at premium prices, regardless of how heavy the cost might weigh on them. It means the product has become a must have, that they give less weight to price. Customers with lower price sensitivity have most likely been satisfied with a product they’ve bought from you or have a positive emotional connection to the brand.

This doesn’t happen overnight, it’s an outcome of years of consistent effort to the point where the customer can trust whatever the company say it is.

Reduce Advertising Cost, Increase Effectiveness

Any advertisement that originates from a strong brand will most likely be a call to action notice to the consumers. Because they knew that they could take your words for it. Again, let’s take another look at Apple for instance, whenever they announce or advertise the releases of a new iPhone, its always met with wide excitement and frenzy across board. When a brand is well established, and the products are reliable, new product releases and promotions will make a strong impact on customers with little efforts and reduced advertisement cost.

So, the effectiveness of your advertisement effort, which is the measure of how likely for customers to purchase your products or services after seeing the adverts is mostly influenced by the strength of the brand.

With a strong brand therefore, you are invariably spending lesser on advertisement, with higher effectiveness and achieve more conversions per advert spending than you would ordinarily.

Brand is Powerful

The brand as it has been posited, is probably the ‘Most Powerful & Versatile Business Tool Ever Invented’. It helps to sustain the company and its products in the long run.

As has been severally advised. It’s the first thing to do at formative stage of a company, before products or services are released.

The brand building process, which is done entirely with the target audience in mind, combine your personality’s ability, weakness and basically helps in answering vital questions of who, what, where, when, competitors, vision and mission etc. This becomes a guide if the vision seems blurry at some points along the way.

TOP 50 BRANDS NIGERIA® 2022.

So, every year, we present a report on the 50 top brands in the country for the year. These are brands that have mastered the art and become clear leaders beyond their product or services categories. Their names are now synonymous to their product. They have achieved the status of strong brands.

The brands that made this year’s annual brand evaluation are those that recognize that responding to customer needs is good business. Accurately anticipating these and propounding right proposition is even better business. They are those that have succeeded in capturing compelling ideas that stand out from the competition. They are great consumer brands that touch hearts and activate minds by appealing to both emotional and functional benefits. They build resilience in the face of prevailing circumstances. They remain unrelenting on their promise to the consumers.

They have been able to create strong and positive perception of their company, its products or services in the minds of the customers by combining important elements that make a brand. All these have helped them to effectively differentiate themselves from their competitors and build a loyal customer base.

Their uniqueness is definitely having huge impact on the bottom-line. It is giving them a competitive advantage over others and helping to acquire and retain customers at a much lower cost. All vital considerations that differentiate them from competitors.

Their positive outlook and proper conceptualization of consumer’s needs, which have resulted into strong brands and also increased the chances of customers choosing them over competitors. They attract more customers at lower cost per acquisition, who are happy to even pay a little more and will buy a little more often.

Their effective brand strategy has given them a major edge in an increasingly competitive market. This has ultimately become their individual competitive advantage, a framework that takes into consideration their business’s unique value, the customers they serve, and the competition they face.

The goodwill benefits of their brand have been the major driver of premium they earned from widely acceptable products and services, and made them clear leaders among competitors

For something that important and central to any organization, there is also the need for periodic evaluation and ranking.

The annual TOP 50 BRANDS NIGERIA evaluation and ranking has become like a report card with which corporate brands have a third party independent assessment of their brand, vis-à-vis others across the corporate Nigeria.

BRAND STRENGHT MEASUREMENT (BSM)

In achieving the annual top brand evaluation and ratings, we use the Brand Strength Measurement (BSM).

BSM is a model that measures a brand’s ability to deliver on its promise to the consumers from the consumers’ point of view. It is a qualitative, non-financial brand evaluation tool that also tests consumer’s knowledge, acceptability and support for the major brands. Its places brands on consumer’s perception, quality and leadership scales and selects the 50 with the highest accumulation, using factors that affect a brand outcome and performance.

The seven key variables in the BSM model are:

(TOM) survey

The first step on the 7 rung BSM ladder (variables) is the Top of the Mind (TOM) survey. This is a test of people’s awareness, knowledge or affinity with corporate brands in the country.

Top of the Mind brands are the most remembered or recalled brand names. They are the ones that get customers excited and make them participate in their marketing, which earned the brand an increasing mind share over the years.

Here we asked respondents to mention 10 brands they know or can easily recall.

For a brand to stand a chance in the BSM evaluation, it must necessarily have a substantial mention in the TOM survey.

Online Engagements

The second in order of importance is the online engagement.

As we all know, the online platform has become as important as the physical presence, if not more in our modern world, where everything is now going virtual. It is now indispensable for all businesses, regardless of size. Various researches have shown that it is now a common practice for consumers to check a business out before making buying decisions. It also provides easier platform for better engagement and customer services.

Here we review the top brand’s internet activities based on their website quality, search engine optimizations, Google mention and tone of it, news mention and social media engagements.

Quality-

This is a test of certain elements that enhance consumer’s confidence in a company and its brand, its products and services. Such things that enhance buying confidence, such as quality assurance and regulatory certification, trademarks and other elements that boost consumers’ confidence.

Others Variables are:

Innovation- This is a test of product/service delivery, innovation in customer services, marketing or in the media activities.

Category Leadership- Here we are able to classify brands according to their industrial categorisation and rate their market share, vis-à-vis the competitors’.

National Spread: A brand necessarily should be operational or have presence in at least half of the states of the federation or four of the 6 geo-political zones, to be evaluated as a top brand in Nigeria.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): CSR is one of those vital parts of a corporate brand that easily endears it to the community. This helps consumers to see the brand beyond just its product and service offering (the business), but part of the community and popular culture, hence earning increasing affinity.

All these are aggregated into the BSM model to arrive at the top brands for the year.

Exclusions

It is important to note that this annual brand evaluation excludes public (governmental), political, religion and NGO brands. We also shy away from tobacco and betting brands for moral and health reasons.