Singapore’s Top 100 Brands: Nike and Coca-Cola on the rise

SINGAPORE'S TOP 100 BRANDS

This year’s Top 100 Brands in Singapore looks pretty similar to last year’s, with eight of the top 10 remining the same. Samsung, Apple and local stalwart brand NTUC Fairprice stayed in the top three spots, while Nestle and Canon dropped four positions each down to 12th and 14th respectively.

They were replaced in the top 10 by Nike and Visa. Nike rose seven places to eighth this year, having had huge resonance globally over the past year thanks to its powerful ad campaigns featuring Colin Kaepernick and Serena Williams. While it’s always been popular in Singapore, this may have contributed to its impressive performance in 2019. Visa jumped up one spot to slot in at 10th, rounding out the top of the list.

Lower down but arguably more impressive is Coca-Cola’s hike to 18th from 34th in 2018, despite the rising trend of more health-conscious Singaporean consumers and direct government intervention to tackle sugary food and drink. Coca-Cola has taken these issues head on, engaging directly with the government and committing to lowering the sugar in its products, as well as selling new low-or-no sugar drinks.

It seems Singaporeans have looked favourably on this advocacy, and bestowed similar approval on Heineken, which becomes the only beer brand to enter the top 100 at 69th, going up 38 places. Heineken released its new 0% alcohol beer in Singapore in March, earning much attention and plaudits. The brand is significantly ahead of local rival Tiger (111th), which also rose 32 spots this year, and has kept its sense of humour in its advertising.

Another notable leap is the continued rising stock of local supermarket Cold Storage. While not quite replicating its meteoric 76-place jump to 38th in 2018, the brand has remained focused on improving its in-store experience and providing a wider range of better quality products, which is likely responsible for Cold Storage rising another 11 places this year to 27th. In contrasting fortune, rival bulk-buy store Giant dropped 28 places to 74th.

Other prominent falls in the 2019 list include BMW going down 30 places to 77th, and local low-cost airline Scoot, which fell 26 places to 52nd, surprising as the airline is owned by Singapore Airlines and has steadily grown its presence among its rival carriers.

But perhaps most eyebrow-raising is Netflix sinking a whopping 79 places out of the top 100 entirely to 135th. The streaming service has been under significant pressure from rivals, both local and international, and continues to be perceived as more expensive and not having the breadth of content that it does outside Asia. That these feelings were so strong among Singaporeans is very surprising.

Another big slide in the tech services space is local ecommerce player Lazada, which crashed out of the top 100 by dropping 35 places to 109th. It is fair to suggest this is informed by the consumer outcry over Lazada’s decision to integrate online grocer RedMar­t—an increasingly integral service in Singaporean lives—into the Lazada app, in an attempt to get RedMart consumers to become Lazada users. This backfired, with many consumers angry about the poorly executed integration and subsequent user experience.