The vast majority of brand managers are uncertain about what’s in people’s minds. This is because 9 in 10 brands of a measurable status don’t track their brand equity, which raises the question whether the Brand Manager job title accurately reflects their responsibilities.
The rise of brand tracking technology
We must admit that the old ways of tracking brand health were quite off-putting; sample was scarce and restrictive, the margins of error were high, the analytics limited, and nothing was quite at the click of a button. Over the last ten years though, we’ve gone beyond measuring attitudes; behaviour and neuroscience interpretations from survey and non-survey data got integrated within tracking and the number of brands in high clutter categories stretched beyond sufficient levels. The upgrade to mobile ready questions and the automated back-end dashboard solutions dialled up the (dare we say) enjoyment levels for both interviewees and tracker users alike.
So, if you are a marketing director who boasts about award-winning advertising or a brand manager who shines through their product refinement cycles, there is now no excuse not to also focus on your brand’s winning attributes. After all, unless you monitor your brand and your competitors, how would you know where to invest your marketing resources and the optimal time for doing so?
Choosing the right brand tracking solution
It's decision time. Your desired brand tracker should score high in its ability to do the following:
- Get the whole picture, not just part of it
Don’t settle for anything less than continuous tracking. The difference between a monthly bang and a daily spread of respondents resembles the contrast between a static, pixelated image vs. a moving picture in high resolution. Continuous tracking offers a panorama view; a moving image with a great deal of definition that relates to the sequence of your activities.
BrandDynamics on Kantar Marketplace builds on the legacy continuous tracking that Maurice Millward & Gordon Brown invented back in 1976. It collects 100 survey responses every day of the year in each category, allowing for a crisp analysis and a generous slicing and dicing of our quality sampling. Have you felt in the past that some of your own or your competitors’ activities have fallen off the radar despite your respectable yearly sampling? It’s time for a change.
- Watch the vault at all times with AI
Steady now, there won’t be a heist. But different metrics will move at a different tempo. Functional and direct metrics that measure behaviours will be moving fast, whereas emotional and indirect equity indicators will shift slowly in line with attitudes. You need to ensure that in all the commotion, you won’t fail to notice that sedate moving of the needle in your equity metrics; for instance, a slip in your Demand Power or even a spurt in the competitor’s Pricing Power.
Even if some metrics won’t move daily, data should be updated every day and for everyone’s sanity, the façade of it all should be a self-serve dashboard powered up by analytics.
BrandDynamics uses an AI capability that can filter out the random noise inherent to surveys (detecting structural changes, seasonality and outliers), can forecast how metrics are likely to move over the next 3 months and, soon enough, will alert you of all that with notifications. Keen to identify risks and opportunities on the fly? Look no further.
- Integrate the short and the long term
Most companies are still struggling to prioritise brand building. According to Marketing Week’s Language of Effectiveness Study 2023, less than half (42.5%) focus on brand marketing vs. performance marketing. The data and insights gap is widening, and only 23% of marketers measure the short and the long term in an integrated way. But marketers’ advocacy for an integrated viewpoint (86% of them concur it’s important to measure effectiveness in the short and the long term) shines through brightly. Brand tracking has grown up, so make sure you detect this maturity when looking for a platform: it’s got to be able to measure the interactions between the short and the long term.
BrandDynamics, powered by MDS*, answers marketing questions with a combination of both short- and long-term measures in a highly visual dashboard. Keep tabs on a specific campaign response in real time while monitoring the forecast trends of your brand equity metrics. Keen to measure and diagnose the intangible asset of a brand in your scorecard? The integrated MDS framework will equip you amply, measuring the value of brand equity accumulated in the minds of consumers – its impact on penetration and market share, its impact on willingness to pay, and its impact on future growth potential.
No ifs and buts. It’s now easier than ever to track your brand
A few years ago, the role of brand manager was included in David Graeber’s list of BS jobs – brutal but likely an accurate observation unless you can show your brand tracking data. BrandDynamics is your ticket to exit the list (or, in fact, never to enter it). More importantly, it is your ticket to lead your brand to sustainable growth and long-term success.
Ready to discover how continuous brand tracking can empower your daily marketing decisions? Always know how your brand is performing vs the competition and monitor the KPIs that will help you grow your brand with real-time brand tracking technology, BrandDynamics on Kantar Marketplace. Book a demo today.
*Meaningful Different Salient framework