Big and Small Brands shine at 2009 Sunday Times Top Brands Awards

Posted on 27. Aug, 2009 by admin in Avusa Media News

Click here to view photos from this event

Both big and small brands shone at the well-revered Sunday Times Top Brands Awards for 2009, which was held at a stylishly chic ceremony in Johannesburg at Lexus Fourways on August 20. Some of the fascinating shifts in winners of the awards included First National Bank edging out last year’s winner, ABSA, to claim the top spot for retail banks in the business-to-consumer category and smaller air carrier British Airways ousting South African Airways to claim first place for airlines in the business-to-business category.

Other surprises on the night saw the smaller Apple Mac computer brand leap from seventh position to second place in the business-to-business category proving that brand size doesn’t mean the brand is necessarily better. Hotly contesting HP, the winner in this category.

Smaller brands holding their own amongst the more heavyweight contenders is a result of Avusa Media commissioning TNS Research Surveys to provide a new research model that would go beyond looking at the sole variable of brand size and dig deeper to discover what truly makes a brand strong.

For the grand prix categories of consumers top brands, Pick ‘n Pay stole the show by winning two out of the four awards despite Coca-Cola once again winning overall favourite brand followed by Vodacom and then Koo and Nike tied in third position. The leading South African supermarket jumped four spots from fifth position to first place for the company doing the most to uplift the community and claimed first prize as the company doing the most to promote environmentally-friendly behaviour.

The only award that might not have been that unexpected was the announcement that Nelson Mandela was named the favourite South African personality for both consumers and business people. But what was interesting about this category was that consumers chose political rivals as the next favourite SA personalities after Mandela with Jacob Zuma as the second most popular person followed by Helen Zille in third position. Avusa Media were also pleased that Sunday Times once again grabbed the top spot for South Africa’s most popular weekly newspaper.

More exotic and modern categories were also included for this year’s award. The new categories included social and digital networks and new exciting brand categories such as sunglasses, watches and fashion.

Religious groupings dominated social networks while Facebook was announced as the winning digital network followed by MXit and My Space. Sports clothing was easily won by Nike while Levi’s comfortably took the top spot for general clothing category. Rayban came in first place for sunglasses followed by Police and Dolce and Gabbana. Michel Herbelin was the consumer’s favourite watch brand.

For all the results please see tables below.