Emirates, Al Baik and Google are the healthiest brands in MENA in 2019

DUBAI- The latest YouGov BrandIndex rankings reveal that Emirates, Al Baik and Google are the most popular brands in the Middle East. While Emirates tops YouGov BrandIndex’s annual brand health rankings for the UAE for the third year in succession, Al Baik and Google dethrone Almarai and Facebook to top the rankings for Saudi Arabia and Egypt, respectively.

The rankings are based on the Index score from YouGov BrandIndex, which measures overall brand health. The score takes into account consumers’ perception of a brand’s overall quality, value, impression, reputation, satisfaction and whether consumers would recommend the brand to others.

Technology giants WhatsApp and YouTube make an appearance in all three countries. In both UAE and Egypt, WhatsApp has made an improvement. Although in Egypt YouTube has improved its brand health, in the UAE, it has seen a decline in its rank. In Saudi Arabia, both these brands remain in the same spot as last year.

Apple seems to have had a tough year in the region. In Saudi and the UAE, Apple has seen a decline in its rank by one and two places, respectively. Furthermore, in Egypt, Apple’s smartphone brand- iPhone has slipped down three places to ninth this year.

In the UAE, Carrefour has made a great improvement to its brand perception and has jumped ahead six places to become the fourth most popular brand in the country. One of the most interesting movements in the Saudi top 10 rankings is the large strides made by mada over the past year. On top of becoming one of the top 10 brands in the country, the payment network tops YouGov’s most improved brand health list for KSA – increasing its scores by +9.0 over the last 12 months.

Netflix is the most improved brand of 2019 in the UAE, with a change in score of +9.8 and restaurant chain Om Hassan is the most improved brand in Egypt with a change in score of 6.6, moving from an Index score of -5.7 in 2018 to +1.0 in 2019.

Chinese device manufacturer Huawei has witnessed an increase in its overall brand health in all three countries. In the UAE and Saudi, it is the second most improved brand and in Egypt it is placed fourth in the list of top ten improvers of 2019.