Social media is booming in South Africa. It has been found that South Africans spend 70% of their week consuming content on social media platforms. This figure is only set to increase in the coming year. The Africa Brand Index (ABI) looks at the most successful brands in Africa. In this article, we discuss which South African industries have featured most prominently in the last couple of years on this index.
Different industries featuring on Social Media
B2C brands are top of mind
The top-twenty brands in one of the recent ABIs is made up of business-to-consumer (B2C) brands. These are brands which consumers come into contact with on a daily basis, for example restaurants, well-known foods and motor vehicles. Because consumers engage with these brands so often, these products are top of mind for these individuals. Thus, it is only natural that B2C brands would feature highly on the ABI.
The media industry comes out tops
Twelve out of the top 20 most recognised brands come from the media industry. These are:
- SuperSport
- Expresso Show
- MTN South Africa
- DStv South Africa
- tv
- Jacaranda FM
- SABC3
- Capitec Bank
- kykNET
- Mzansi Magic
- East Coast Radio
- Vuzu TV
The reason for this is two-fold:
- Firstly, the culture of watching television or listening to the radio is strongly entrenched in South Africa. For example, on average 20.45% of South Africans listen to the radio between one and two hours per day (equating to the daily commute to work). On average 25.94 spend the same amount of time watching television.
- At the same time, the media brands – especially Supersport – pump out a variety of content that is suited to the variety of social media channels that they have a presence on. (Read our article – entitled What Type of Content to Post on Social Media – to discover the methodology behind creating the right type of content for the correct social media platform.)