In July, Research Live reported a rise in UK profit warnings citing uncertainty and marketers have reported declines in research budgets for the sixth consecutive quarter.

Brand tracking is often a sizeable percentage of the research budget and a tool that should be kept at all costs. If well-designed, it offers a holistic and unbiased perspective on the health of the brand.

Gauging the temperature

A well-designed brand tracker should cover multiple brand equity metrics and act as a temperature gauge for the impact of external forces within and outside of a brand’s control. It allows brands to understand where to invest in the brand funnel and how well brand positioning and messaging is understood. It can include above-the-line campaign measurement: recall, reaction and takeout, as well as a sense of awareness and impact of non-paid media. 

Social media channels support an understanding of campaigns and brand but are not substitute measures given their inherent audience biases, though of course, brands can control their messaging through channels like YouTube.

Similarly, reviews and review sites offer a chance for brands to understand sentiment and sometimes influence, but are not a substitute for understanding overall sentiment among audiences. A tracker can understand if these channels are used and have contributed to an opinion.

Is brand advertising really less important?

Generative engine optimisation (GEO) has led to marketing industry talk (and debunking) that where you turn up in conversations is the most important thing to manage, and brand advertising is less important.

PR agencies are loving this narrative. It assumes everyone who buys something does their research before they buy. But wait a minute. What about supermarket shopping? With list in hand, brands tend to be purchased in an almost robotic manner or impulsively – not through prior heavy research. Familiarity through prior purchase (and therefore many of the elements that make up brand equity) and awareness of new brands through advertising make brands stand out.

What should a tracker look like?

The sample size and specific target audiences for a brand tracker will differ by brand and category, driven by factors such as geography, market penetration and competitive set, frequency of purchase and growth ambitions. 

Scoping discussions should include both external agencies and internal stakeholders. While not all brand trackers need to be the same, consumers will have an opinion whether you are Coke, Aviva, Hyundai or the Co-op, and this opinion impacts somewhere in the purchase journey whatever the size and frequency of purchase.

Ideally, trackers of audiences who are the key targets of campaigns should be continuous even though reporting frequency will be determined by campaign spend, market volatility and competitive activity. Continuous measurements allow for seasonality and robust trend measurement.

Budget aside, measurement of brand among some target audiences may be more appropriately conducted periodically. Sometimes it is about understanding what can be influenced internally, how quickly actions can be taken and how volatile the audience is in terms of brand sentiment.

The brand tracker should be ringfenced from the application of synthetic respondents that might be used to reduce cost. If brands only exist in the minds of consumers (how they think and feel about a brand) then a real human measure is essential. Managing a brand’s reputation with synthetic responses feels counterintuitive.

The devil is in the detail

While there may be standard components to the brand tracker (starting with measures of awareness and mental association) you should be laser focused on your intent with each question and how it ladders up to your overall understanding of the brand and its communications. Consider how you may want to split out the results by key groups and plan where possible from the ground up to ensure samples are robust though reporting may be less frequent.

Key driver analysis further assists in understanding a brand’s strengths and weaknesses relative to your objectives. It could indicate that what you stand for is not important and you need to alter your positioning.

Short-term tactical changes to communications may be driven through mixed media modelling but adding in brand tracker metrics enables brands to understand the long-term effect of campaigns.

A well-designed brand tracker with stakeholder input and buy-in will pay back time and again in helping brands navigate their markets. Saving money by stopping a brand tracker serves little purpose in the long-term. Push back where you can. It follows the age-old narrative that in hard times the brands that continue to invest in advertising win through in the long-term.

Peter Shreeve is an independent research consultant and former head of insight