Amazon Beats Flipkart To Become India’s Buzziest Brand; Paper Boat Makes A Surprise Entry In Top 10 List

By Mohul Ghosh On Mar 10, 2016

afaqs! has just announced their 11^th Buzziest Brand of India list, and there are some surprising results this year. Flipkart, which was the buzziest brand last year, has been dethroned by Amazon which has been hailed as India’s Buzziest Brand.

But Flipkart is not #2 in the list, as Airtel has climbed 7 spots this year to be ranked at #2 behind Amazon. Flipkart, which was #1 last year, is now ranked #3.

Airtel’s recent 4G advertisement push is seen as the primary reason for it’s remarkable ascend. Meanwhile, Amazon’s climb to #1 is the most talked about branding coup right now. Last year, Amazon was ranked #25 but due to their intense focus on Indian consumers, and their attempt to get into the psyche of Indian mindset has certainly helped them.

Specially mentioned were Amazon’s recent video ad featuring a Tamil family getting assistance in Assam and their ‘Aur Dikhao Aur Dikhao’ campaign, targeted specially for Indian customers.

Flipkart has been punished by brand pundits for not breaking any advertisement barriers this year, as all of their campaigns were routine and average.

Nokia Is Still Making Buzz!

afaqs! specially noted the achievement of Brand Nokia, which is still buzzing at #44; even though the brand Nokia no longer exists. Maybe this is the true power of an erstwhile brand, which Indians loved and adored.

Surprise Winner: Paper Boat

In a power list which boasts of brands having turnover of thousands of crores (Samsung at #4; Gionee at #5; Maruti Suzuki at #6; Apple at #7), there comes a brand which is only 5 year old and turnover of less than Rs 100 crore (unconfirmed): Paper Boat.

Brand pundits are mightily impressed with the approach and attitude of this tiny beverages brand, which is attempting to fight billion dollar corporations like Pepsi and Coca Cola in India.

In fact, last year, Paper Boat was not even in the top 100 rank!

Modus Operandi

There were overall 21 product groups, on which voting was conducted to determine the top brands of India.

There are two entities who decide the winners: afaqs! provides their readers an option to select top 5 brands; and a jury is created of eminent marketers, brand managers who are presented with a list of brands, which also included past years’ winners and losers.

Popular vote reserves 70% weightage while jury determines the rest 30% of the voting. Note here, that the jury is not authorized to vote on product based brands. Overall, 1629 people participated in the poll, out of which 1420 validated their choice by confirming on email.

This year’s jury consisted of:

Anuradha Aggarwal, chief marketing officer, Marico
Pradeep Dwivedi, chief corporate sales and marketing officer, Dainik Bhaskar Group
Sudhanshu Vats, Group CEO, Viacom 18
Ashish Bhasin, chairman and CEO, South Asia, Dentsu Aegis Network
Satbir Singh, founder and chief creative officer, Thinkstr

You can read the complete list here.