Mxit Brand Index: 31 December 2013

Top 40 South African brands on Mxit on 31 December 2013

Analysis: Samsung adds 139,034 subscribers as the brand aims to take top position. Hansa and Shoprite debut on the Mxit Brand Index, while PEP storms nine places up the ranking. Telkom Mobile claims top mobile brand position as December delivers massive growth, proving successful campaigns for top Mxit brands.

Samsung and PEP are clear winners on the December Mxit Brand Index. Samsung's campaigns netted 139,034 new subscribers to the popular app, while PEP's airtime campaign, in conjunction with MTN, is the biggest story for December, as PEP climbed from 25th to 16th position, adding a whopping 94,402 new subscribers to their app.

Debuting on the December Mxit Brand Index are both Hansa and Shoprite, showing impressive numbers. Successful campaigns delivered 91,097 new subscribers to the Hansa app - a spectacular 88% growth in their Mxit community. Shoprite's three campaigns during December grew their subscriber base by a massive 60% as 71,260 users added the app to their contacts.

Telkom Mobile has been steadily climbing the ranks over the past few months. Their latest assault, sponsorship of the popular Farm Wars game app, has netted Telkom Mobile the sought-after ranking of top mobile brand on Mxit.

Through sponsoring the Farm Wars app, Telkom Mobile banners were displayed, allowing game players to add the Telkom Mobile app to their contacts while they played. This is a strategy that the brand has used successfully before with the Tune-it app. Brands take note!

The top performing brands in December ran significant campaigns ranging from banners, app sponsorship and splash screen advertising, with giveaways, polls and competitions used to incentivise users to add their apps. The table below shows the growth by subscriber acquisition compared to the percentage the subscriber base has grown over the December period:

December's Top 40 Brands - The star performers:

Brands to watch

e.tv published their new branded app on 18 November. December campaigns drew 118,966 new subscribers to the app, giving them a total of 126,331 subscribers. This means the brand is only 30,000 subscribers short of featuring on the Mxit Brand Index, and with such phenomenal growth in such a short time, it is likely they will feature in the early part of 2014.

Nando's new app was published on 27 November and their promotional campaigns went live on 15 December. By 31 December, the Nando's app showed 95,350 subscribers - at that pace, Nando's is set to storm up the Mxit Brand Index imminently.

LegalWise has been significantly growing their community - and while they have not cracked a place in the top 40 yet, thanks to their December advertising campaigns netting them 15,266 new subscribers, they are poised to make a debut on the Mxit Brand Index soon if they maintain this momentum. Only 6,753 subscribers separate LegalWise and WomanOnline, at position 40. Watch this space!

What is the Mxit Brand Index?

The Mxit Brand Index is a measure of consumer affinity expressed by the number of Mxit users that subscribe to each brand on the social network. Mxit has a monthly active user base of 6.5-million in South Africa.

How is it compiled?

A list of all apps on Mxit is compiled, and each one is ranked according to the total number of subscribers. By subscribing to an app, a Mxit user has chosen to add the app to his contact list, can access content published by the app, and has opted in to receive direct messages from the app.

Listing rules

• A brand has to exist as a commercial consumer brand outside of the Mxit ecosystem in order to be in consideration for the Index.
• Apps have to be in a published state on the date that the list is compiled. No beta, unpublished or suspended apps are considered.
• Where a brand has sub-brands that appear on the list, only the highest listing will be included in the index.
• The Index lists brands. If the name of the app is different to the name of the brand, the name of the brand will be used for the index (e.g. app= love cricket, but will appear as Cricket SA on the Index.)
• No NGOs or NPOs are included.

Additional criteria

When evaluating the top brands in the Mxit ecosystem of apps, games, content and communities, we apply the following criteria:
• Working app with updated information
• No services-based apps and games such as MxPx, Judgeme, Battletrivia, Wikipedia, Hello Doctor, etc.
• No individual celebrities such as Romy Titus, Riaad Moosa, etc.
• No chat rooms