Brand trackers, but not as you know them

I’m sure I’m not alone in historically having conflicting views and emotions around the value of brand trackers. Throughout my insight career, I’ve worked on and seen the ‘good, bad and the ugly’. The ‘good’ has been key to understanding a brand, its consumers, competition, the category and most importantly identified brand growth opportunities that lead to action. However, many clients end up with the ‘bad and the ugly’, often bloated solutions that have ‘rearward-facing metrics’, a sense that little changes and an overriding feeling of a lot of ‘what’ and very little in the ‘why’. Often a feeling of lacking any business impact where it becomes measurement for measurement’s sake and, more often than not, the real kicker is at considerable cost.

In recent years, there has been a growing recognition that there has to be a better way and some improvements have taken root. More agile modularised design, faster delivery and the utilisation of technology to capture consumers and automated processes have been welcome improvements. However, at DVJ, we fundamentally believe that the world of trackers can and should be a true force for valuable and cost-effective insight. BUT ONLY if the strategic purpose is properly thought through and the design and quality of the ‘inputs’ are optimised. Sounds easy, so why is it so scarce?

The DVJ philosophy is that we pay a great deal of attention upstream to scientific and academic thinking around consumer behaviour and that is reflected in our approach to tracker optimisation – great design, better questions and techniques and better analysis. So, specifically what makes our Reality Analytics tracking solution so different?

1. Integrating Brand, Media and Creative

Often brand health monitoring and media and creative campaigns have been measured in splendid isolation. During campaign periods we add several elements to the tracking questionnaire, including recognition and evaluation of the campaign assets. We have developed a validated set of media behaviour questions, which allows us to determine exposure to the campaign for all types of media including TV, online video, social and branded content. In an ever-changing media landscape, the ability to have an integrated approach helps deliver real value.

2. The ‘Why’ and the vital role of MassQual

DVJ’s MassQual approach is a really powerful strength, with an emphasis on using storytelling and free associations. Storytelling brings the world of the consumer to life. We present people with a cue related to a relevant theme and ask them to share a story that comes to mind. Consumer stories in their words – a constant flow of inspiration and better understanding.

Then, rather than prompting people with a pre-defined list of imagery statements, we ask them to share their own thoughts, feelings and associations that come to mind when thinking of a brand. Next, we ask them to classify these on sentiment and relevance, leading to a quantitative measure which we can benchmark. This provides a rich insight into the neural network and associations that consumers have with a brand, as well as an understanding of how strongly the memory structures related to the brand are nested in the consumer’s mind. Of course, we still capture important brand metrics that are key to strategy but MassQual brings real richness, relevancy and depth at scale.

We also have full flexibility to change the cues according to market developments, which has been invaluable in uncertain and changing times. At a time when emotions are impacting decision-making even more strongly, it’s vital to know what is really in people’s heads. The tracker, whilst retaining elements of consistency should also be a ‘living breathing’ design, adapting to the issues that marketers must understand to drive their brand’s growth in tumultuous times.

3. Always on but with smaller samples

The last 18 months have been a very timely reminder that it is key to be able to monitor and respond to consumer and market change, at the moment when it happens. So, we design our tracking based on small weekly samples that can be analysed to identify short term change and aggregated to develop a deeper understanding. This approach avoids ‘bloated’ unnecessary cost but is sensitive to both short term change and more ‘structural’ development of the brand, competition and category.

4. Integration of relevant and complementary data sources

Often, we see tracking outputs themselves stand-alone or not put in the context of the wider world. There are a range of non-survey datasets (e.g., sales performance, media spend, website visits, etc) that are often hugely complementary and crucial to better understanding brand health. Understanding what those datasets are and integrating them elevates the value of both survey and non-survey data.

5. End to end excellence

DVJ combines great questions and methods, a design-led Power BI-based reporting tool and importantly experienced consultancy that ensures clients get real action that can drive business impact.

6. Great value for money

Finally, and last but not least, our streamlined design supported by really well thought operational excellence means we deliver great value. Agility has become a bit of a nebulous insight term, but we believe a combination of a much better understanding of the why’s, integrating brand, media and creative, quick delivery and great value is compelling for clients.

But it’s more than a great process. The smart forward-thinking design and growth-oriented thinking mean DVJ tracking provides impactful insight that can drive action and decisions. We believe trackers can be great for your brand health and growth!

The times of the ‘good, bad and the ugly’ are over, so let us solely focus on the good. If you would like to know how DVJ’s Reality Analytics tracking can support your brand growth and strategy, we would love to talk.