Emirates has been crowned as the top brand in YouGov’s Best Buzz Rankings 2021 in the UAE for the fourth year (+53.6). Despite travel restrictions and some renewed global flight suspensions amidst the latest wave of Covid-19 dominated by the Omicron variant, the airline maintains a strong net positive sentiment among UAE residents, retaining the first rank.

YouGov’s BrandIndex measures the public’s perception of brands on a daily basis across a range of metrics. The annual Buzz rankings are compiled using Buzz scores from the entire years’ worth of data. Buzz scores measure whether people have heard anything positive or negative about a brand during the previous two weeks and the scores are reported as NET scores.

Smartphone giant iPhone and its parent company Apple both have made notable improvements to their scores over the years, jumping up five places from their 2019 rankings to second (45.8) and third (45.6) respectively, in 2021 rankings.

Samsung has seen its ranking drop down two places to fifth (from third in 2019), with a marginal decline to its score (44.1). YouTube remains in sixth (43.3); however, it has strengthened its Buzz scores over the years among the UAE residents (from 42.2 in 2019 to 43.3 in 2021).

In eighth place (41.8) is the much talked about, Expo 2020 Dubai. Despite the pandemic, the expo hosted 190-plus countries, creating a lot of positive buzz and securing a place in UAE’s top ten list.

The rest of the list is completed by new entrants including sportswear brands Adidas and Nike as well as homecare brand Dettol, in fourth (45.0), seventh (41.8), and tenth (38.6), respectively.  Almarai completes the 2021 rankings in ninth (40.6). After featuring in the KSA Buzz Rankings for years, the dairy giant makes its debut in UAE’s top ten rankings.

YouGov BrandIndex has also released the ten “most improved” brands of the past year. Along with featuring in the 2021 UAE top ten list, Expo 2020 Dubai is also the “most improved” brand of the past year, with a change in score of +16.8 points.

Social networking brand Tik-Tok and Middle East’s popular airline service Qatar Airways, are the second and third best improvers of the past year, with a change in score of +7.6 and +5.9, respectively.

Noon is the next brand to feature in the improvers list (with a change in score of +4.2), followed by online food and grocery delivery brand Talabat in fifth (change in score of +3.8) and another lifestyle brand Smiles that has also recently ventured into food orders and delivery features in sixth (change in score of +3.6).

Bluewaters, the destination with the newly launched Al Ain wheel featured as well in the improvers (+3.2), alongside Dragon Mart (+3.2), energy drink Red Bull (+3.1) and the much-promoted Saudi destination of Neom (+3.0), making up the list of top ten improvers of 2021 in the UAE.

Methodology

The brands in YouGov Best Buzz Rankings 2021 were ranked based on the Buzz score, which asks respondents, “If you've heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?” Scores are net scores, calculated by subtracting the percentage of negative responses from the percentage of positive responses for each brand.

The Buzz Rankings chart shows the brands with the highest average Buzz scores between January 1st and December 31st, 2021. The Buzz Improvers chart ranks the brands with the highest increase in Buzz comparing scores in years 2020 and 2021, to be included in the Buzz Improvers list, the variance must be positive.

All Buzz scores listed have been rounded to a single decimal place; however, we have used additional precision to assign ranks.

All brands must be tracked for at least 6 months to be included in the rankings and have been tracked for at least 6 months in the prior year’s period (as well as being currently tracked) to appear in the Improvers tables.