By Tom Webster, Partnerships Manager - 21.06.2018
Our Strategy Director and Co-Founder, Dan Monheit was recently asked his perspective on Australian brands, as part of Campaign Asia Pacific’s report on Asia’s Top 1000 Brands.
Following the report, three separate articles were published last week by Campaign on Australia’s top mobile-friendly brands, top local brands and top 100 brands for 2018, with Dan’s quotes included in each.
You can read the full articles written by Babar Khan Javed at the above links but below are Dan’s answers to the questions posed in each article.
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Nielsen’s research shows that the most mobile-friendly brands in Australia today are Samsung, Apple, and Google. Do you agree? If so, what are they doing right?
If the modern definition of a brand is what it does, rather than what it says, then Google, Apple and Samsung are certainly leaders in mobile — and it’s not hard to see why. All three have committed themselves deeply to excelling in this space, through relentless innovation in both hardware and software.
This commitment has ensured that they stay at the bleeding edge of the most important device in the lives of today’s consumers. Between them, they’re essentially writing the playbook that the rest of the industry is desperately trying to follow.
Apple paved the way for many of the revolutionary gestures that we now take for granted, including the swipe, the ‘pinch to zoom’ and the long press. Apple also first brought the concept of the digital ecosystem to life, through the iPhone, iTunes and the App Store.
Google has been a huge contributor to the ever-improving world of mobile interface design, even creating its own design language in 2014. ‘Material Design’, as it came to be known, popularised the ‘card based’ design system we now see across millions of mobile apps and websites. Beyond this, the search giant has done more than anyone else in the world to enhance the mobile web experience, by forcing tens of millions of other brands to improve their own mobile browsing experience or risk being de-prioritised in Google search results.
And while Samsung can’t lay claim to the same level of innovation as Apple and Google, they have done an incredible job of pushing the boundaries of hardware, especially with their flagship Galaxy series. In doing so, they’ve also made a huge contribution to reducing the price of smartphones, accelerating their spread across society and the globe.
So it’s no surprise, and certainly no accident, that these three brands are considered the most mobile-friendly in 2018. The real question is whether they can maintain the rate of innovation to stay ahead of the pack, or if they’ve just set the table for the next great disruptor to come along and feast at.
Campaign Asia-Pacific’s Asia’s Top 1000 Brands survey for 2018 research points to Woolworths, Qantas and Coles as the most popular local brands in Australia. What’s behind these brands’ appeal to local people, and what are they doing that other local brands, or brands from elsewhere, are not doing?
Woolworths, Qantas and Coles share a number of things in common that contributes enormously to their popularity. Almost every Australian grew up with each of these brands being the dominant player or players in their category and they have remained so for all their lives. Coles was founded over 100 years ago in 1914, Woolworths (in Australia) just 10 years later in 1924, with Qantas being our National Carrier since 1920.
In food retailing, Coles and Woolworths hold about 70% of the market, dominating the category that is most frequently visited. They have kept up-to-date with their online presence and home delivery in addition to their commitment to Australian society, charities, and providing quality produce and quality brands at competitive prices.
As successful as Coles and Woolworths are, with 800 to 1000 stores each, their share is not invulnerable. Aldi, in the relatively short period since 2001, has grown to 500 stores and is still growing, with between 10% and 15% market share.
Qantas carries the pride of the country with its heart-warming communications that reminded Australians for years that “We Still Call Australia Home” and is now “The Spirit of Australia”. It’s a brand which makes Australians proud to be Australian. In the past it had some local competition from Ansett, now defunct and its nearest competitor, Virgin Australia, is clearly not Australian at heart. Qantas holds 65% of the domestic market and also has kept pace with the times with its online presence, loyalty programs and budget offering in Jetstar.
Unless a massive increase in landing gates or airports happens, this ability to obtain real-estate is not likely to come quickly in the airline industry, meaning Qantas is unlikely to be seriously challenged in the foreseeable future.
