Brand tracking: from bastard to prince
With brand tracking taking up so much of the insights budget and agency’s time, and so little excitement about it, James Jayesuria reveals four principles to make tracking programs relevant and useful
For some, brand trackers have become the bastard child of market research. Two-hour presentations and never-ending reports that show ‘brand awareness and consideration have remained broadly stable since last quarter’ have resulted in a lack of stakeholder excitement about brand tracking outcomes, and a lack of enthusiasm from agencies that work on them.
Despite these issues, brand tracking often takes up most of the insights budget and agency’s time. Now we’re not suggesting to get rid of brand tracking altogether – but in most cases we think there is room for improvement.
When you boil it all down a brand tracker really only has to do four
things: monitor what’s happening, flag when changes occur, diagnose why, then provide insights that inspire brand owners to take action. Unfortunately, most trackers today only make it to the second step (at best), with many only monitoring. Why? The answer is actually the question – if a brand tracker is unable to explain why changes occur, then how can they provide insights that inspire action?
