Vietnam's top mobile-friendly brands

As part of our look at Vietnam's top brands of 2018, which is part of our Asia’s Top 1000 Brands report, we found that Vietnam consumers see Samsung, Apple and Google as the top mobile-friendly brands. We asked in-market observers for their insights.

Chris Elkin, founder, Doodle Brands: Mobile enthusiasm and internet connectivity in Vietnam has exploded to be amongst the highest in the world. There’s now far more mobile phones in Vietnam than there are people. I believe each of these mobile-friendly brands have the following three traits that help them win, long-term.

1. Inside-out, they understand what their brand really stands for. (Their difference.)
2. They relentlessly innovate their product, service and brand around what their customers really want.
3. They fundamentally remain consistent in delivering their brand promise again and again.

Facebook, YouTube and messenger apps, such as FB Messenger and local Zalo, lead the pack in social media popularity, with Instagram and Twitter quite far behind. ‘Online’ is now the leading ‘first introduction’ channel to a product or service that customers subsequently purchased in Vietnam. Now far ahead of TV. There’s no silver bullet to success.

Brands need to be committed to building long-term relationships with their customers, continually innovating to find new ways of adding value to their customers often beyond their core product or service offering, designing customer delight as their top priority. Local brand, Mobile World (Thegioididong) is a great example.

With nearly 50% of Vietnam’s internet population claiming to have purchased a product or service online last year, this brand has rapidly expanded offering online delivery of mobile phones, groceries, cosmetics and electronics, ‘putting customer satisfaction first’ at the center of their brand building.

Ian Paynton, MD, We Create Content: Facebook is still the platform in Vietnam, which was the 7th largest in the world for number of users in 2017—third in Asia to Indonesia and the Philippines. 71% of Vietnam's users watch videos daily, and as Vietnam still has a huge 'Cash On Delivery' culture, many users will place orders on the platform too—especially from small and medium businesses. It's a platform used for absolutely everything in Vietnam and doesn't seem to budging just yet.

Sumit Ramchandani, head of Southeast Asia, Lion & Lion: In Vietnam, we’ve observed that there is an apparent snob appeal regarding brands of country origin, which we see play an important role in influencing brand love. For companies like Apple and Google, they have an advantage coming from the United States.

As Facebook and Instagram continue to gain traction and popularity with more than a quarter of the Vietnamese population active on both platforms, we see most brands taking this opportunity to invest heavily in those platforms. However, there are other interesting local platforms in Vietnam such as the leading messaging app Zalo, and its associated brand Zing, which comprises a number of services such as the Zing Me social network and the Zing MP3 music app. Zing MP3 is highly popular amongst teens but brands tend to stay away from this platform due to the questionable legality of its streaming service.

Chandler Nguyen, VP of media planning, Essence: Based on the audience media consumptions, Facebook and Zalo are the two main platforms in Vietnam. There are other smaller messaging apps too. "Bitis Hunter" social media campaign was quite good. "Hunter" was the new shoe that they wanted to launch. "Omo Matic" social media campaign was really good as well with a clear concept, using digital first, video first, mobile first approach.