Refreshing Research on Brand Performance

Technology and new marketing techniques have changed the way marketers converse with audiences. Building your brand with a tech savvy, media saturated audience is no easy task. To get those messages out requires a multi-media, multi touchpoint approach. But how do you measure the success and performance of such a campaign?

Recently, a leading refreshment brand came to Ipsos looking for research solutions for measuring an integrated and complex marketing campaign. In a particularly competitive environment, the brand needed to find ways to stand out from competitors, connect with their target markets, and build an especially powerful brand experience. They also needed to make sure their investment paid off and that in fact they were building their brand.

Setting it up

While television advertising is a big part of communicating the brand, it alone is not enough to build the brand with consumers. To reach out, the client was willing to take the brand to new levels and try different ways to get in front of their targeted consumers.

A key strategy that emerged was the sponsorship of a popular sporting event. The sponsorship involved brand presence at the games and a mix of related activities that supported the brand and the event. Specific activities included on-line advertising, contests, onsite interactions, and special product packaging designed specifically for the sport.

Such a sponsorship represented a number of touchpoints with consumers and required a sizable investment. But the questions remained... was this the right investment? What elements worked best and what didn't? And how do you measure that?

Seeking answers

That's where Brand*Graph 360 came in. Brand*Graph 360 takes a holistic approach to measuring brand strategies. Because brand touchpoints go beyond one or two executions and media, this tool has been designed to examine the entire brand experience and measure the performance of each element.

In this case, Ipsos ASI worked with the client to measure the performance of all activities relating to their sponsorship campaign. Setting out to evaluate the entire campaign, they needed to find out which elements popped and which ones fizzled out.

Delivering results

The campaign represented a significant financial investment for the client. It was a particularly important task given that a previous campaign that took a similar sponsorship and advertising approach, but with a heavier investment, had failed to deliver.

What Brand*Graph 360 found was that in this campaign, the client had struck on a very valuable brand property. The event sponsorship was central to the campaign and had proven to be an ideal way to reach the valued youth target market.

Measuring each brand touchpoint revealed that specific activities had specific impacts, but to varying degrees of success. Certainly the unique packaging and contests had a high impact. Word of mouth also generated some significant brand impact.

But the most critical finding? While each brand touchpoint offered its own level of success, the brand really kicked off and saw significant shift once a consumer had three to five interactions with the brand. Indeed, the holistic research approach demonstrated the strengths of the marketing approach.

With this information in hand, the brand can continue to grow by building off the successes, exploring new opportunities that emerged, and fine tuning the program to build an even stronger brand experience.

About Brand*Graph 360

Brand*Graph 360 tracks the in-market reach, impact, and cost effectiveness of all your communications. A powerful consumer mix model shows you the contributions of POS, packaging, sponsorship, even uncontrolled communication like word of mouth, in addition to each part of your ad media mix. By analyzing the effect of each consumer touchpoint on brand equity, purchase intent, and other measures, we can help you to focus your messages in the mediums that work best.