Netflix bumps Lidl from top two UK brands as M&S falls from top 10

The streaming giant has ended a dominant run for the German discounters in YouGov’s annual BrandIndex buzz rankings after a year in which it saw subscriber numbers soar and had both popular and critical hits with titles such as Bird Box and Roma.

Netflix has leapfrogged Lidl to take second spot in YouGov’s BrandIndex buzz rankings for 2018, marking the first time in five years that the German discounters Aldi and Lidl haven’t occupied the top two spots,

Netflix only entered the top 10 in 2016 but jumped from third place in 2017, when it scored 14, to second in 2018 with a score of 16.4. YouGov points to subscription growth – it now has more than 139 million subscribers globally – and the success of its original film and TV series, including Bird Box and Roma (which is nominated for 10 Oscars), as reasons for its growth.

Lidl, which has been second for the past four years, drops to fourth place in the rankings as its score drops to 13.8, from 14.5 in 2017. Aldi, however, secured the top spot for the fifth consecutive year with a score of 18.7.

YouGov’s BrandIndex measures public perceptions of brands on a daily basis across a range of metrics including quality, satisfaction and recommendation. The ranking is compiled using buzz scores, a balance of whether people have heard good or bad things about a brand over the past two weeks.

Another brand winner in 2018 was MoneySavingExpert.com, which saw its score increase to 14, from 12.6 in 2017, and putting it third in the rankings. Ikea rounds out the top five with a score of 12.1, up 1.6 points year on year.

The rest of the top 10 is made up of BBC iPlayer, which has fell from fourth to sixth, Yorkshire Tea and PayPal, alongside newcomers Samsung and BBC One. Having finished in eighth and 10th spots last year, Marks & Spencer and Premier Inn are absent from this year’s top 10.

Source: YouGov BrandIndex

Meanwhile, British Airways has been crowned the “most improved” brand, according to YouGov. The airline scored 0.3, up from -6.3 the previous year when its brand suffered when it was forced to ground flights due to a global IT outage.

Southern Trains on -10.7, Uber with a score of -9.7, United Airlines on -1.1 and Toblerone on 2.4 finished in the top five in terms of improvement scores.

“With all four top positions being inhabited by transport companies, it’s clear that brands have had to make great improvements – particularly in a year of relatively bad press among cancellations, strikes and increased costs across the entire transport industry,” says Amelia Brophy, head of data products at YouGov UK.

 

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