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The BRAG Blog: Hop on the Brand-wagon!

Jun 23, 2022
By: Ravi Pimplaskar

Looking for hot off the presses brand insight? Check out our new BRAG Index Brand Insight Infographics released June 23, 2022. What do they include? Well read on!  

Our BRAG Report, launched with Apptopia in May 2022, provided breakthrough insight on how apps performed relative to their brand strength (hence the report name – Brand Relative App Growth). The report was a mixture of a consumer survey (conducted in October 2021) and Apptopia’s Performance Data (from October 2021 – April 2022). 

The survey, conducted through the Global Web Index, tracked app category interest, app awareness, app install intent, app favorability, and more about leading apps from 7 different categories. From this, we established a “growth potential” score, or a leading predictor, on how each app might perform. We then measured that score against Apptopia’s Performance Data of total installs for the next 6 months.

The end result was a revelation of the brands that transcended expectations and went beyond their growth potential. Of particular interest was the strategies less well known brands used to outperform their brand funnel. Every year an app comes on to the scene seemingly out of nowhere. How do these brands do it? Well, we found it takes creative, out of the box thinking to overperform in a crowded market. And within this research we found great stories like:

  1. Klarna, a shopping app, who used social media influencers and smart partnerships
  2. Coinbase, a finance app that blew up during the Super Bowl with a bouncing QR crowd
  3. Tubi, a streaming app which focused on providing heavily desired anime content
  4. Chick-Fil-A, the fast casual restaurant that created offline partnerships with sports teams
  5. Newsbreak, the news aggregator that used on-device integrations 

While these brands were successful during our research period, the question becomes what now? Did these brands breakthrough performances grow their awareness and install intent? How does the change in the interest of an app category, like Finance apps, change the market outlook? What about a change in brand sentiment? 

All of these factors would affect a BRAG ranking since it would change a brand’s growth potential. And while Apptopia is still tracking installs from April 2022 (when our last survey period ended) to the end of this quarter, we can’t award BRAG-ing rights in July without tracking the other side of it.

Which means, in order to create the perfect peanut butter combo to Apptopia’s chocolate that goes into our BRAG Index, we ran our consumer survey again in March/April 2022 to once again calculate growth potential for leading apps. The end result is 5 category infographics that we’ve titled BRAG Index Brand Insights. 

Want to find out which of your favorite brands are hot or not with consumers this quarter? Check out the top risers and fallers in our full BRAG Index Brand Insight Infographics with exciting nuggets like:

  1. SHOPPING: What app joined Klarna and SHEIN’s build on consumer momentum? 
  2. FINANCE: What impact will the crypto drop have on Coinbase and Crypto.com?
  3. STREAMING VIDEO: The streaming wars saw Netflix drop and HBOMax soar, but what does that mean for their brand?
  4. FOOD & DRINK: Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizza was back! And then it wasn’t. How did that change their brand favorability?
  5. NEWS: Will the popularity of news aggregators like SmartNews and Newsbreak continue?
By Ravi Pimplaskar
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