New Zealand's top 100 brands

This look at New Zealand's top 100 brands is part of Campaign Asia-Pacific's Asia's Top 1000 Brands report. For more on the status of New Zealand brands according to our research, see the full New Zealand market report. 

New Zealand is a new entrant in Campaign Asia and Nielsen’s Top 1000 Brands list, featuring this year for the first time. A look at the country’s Top 10 rated brands reveals a fairly close parallel with the Top 10 both in neighbouring Australia and in Asia overall: consumers across all three datasets ranked Samsung and Apple in first and second place, respectively, and also rated Google, Panasonic, Sony, Nike and LG within the top 10. Google ranks higher in New Zealand than in Australia or Asia overall, coming in in third position: roughly 90% of the population uses the internet, and Google is by far the most popular site in the country.

Whittaker’s, the chocolate makers, is ranked in 16th position and Sanitarium, the health and wellbeing company that produces Weet-Bix cereal, ranks in 21st position.

Pride in local Kiwi names is also evident in the high placement of brands like low-cost food warehouse PAK’nSAVE, one of the country’s three major supermarket chains. PAK’nSAVE ranks 14th, beating its competitors in the space Countdown (ranked 28th) and New World (62nd), which is also owned by PAK’nSAVE’s parent company, Foodstuffs.

Ice cream brand Tip Top, another subsidiary of Fonterra, also performs well, landing in 31st position in New Zealand’s Top 100 - this despite a recent controversy when it was discovered that the brand was making some of its products in Spain.

Another noteworthy entrant in New Zealand’s Top 10 brands is Anchor, a heritage Kiwi dairy company that was founded in 1886. Its international arm, owned by the Fonterra Co-Op Group, spreads across Asia Pacific (it is set to re-enter India, which has the world’s fastest growing dairy industry, next year after last exiting the country in 2009) and the wider world and is the world’s largest exporter of dairy products. In its home country the brand benefits from the support of ambassador Richie McCaw, the retired Rugby Union player who has repeatedly been voted the country’s most trusted sportsperson.

While a recent survey by Statista puts YouTube as the highest ranked social media platform in New Zealand, survey respondents to Nielsen’s study ranked the video platform way down the list; as YouTube’s parent company, however, Google’s position in the top three may be due in some part to respondents linking the two brands together. Facebook is the highest ranked social media in Nielsen’s New Zealand Top 100, coming in in 20th position (above its rank at 26 for Asia overall), followed by Instagram, which doesn’t make the Top 100 but ranks in 155th position.

Across the Top 100 overall, there seems to be a healthy mix of local and international brands. With its economy stable and unemployment rates at a record recent low, as well as a new, highly popular Prime Minister at the helm, brands in New Zealand should enjoy a period of stability and growth. But will this be the picture painted next year, when we add our second set of data to the list? Watch this space to find out.