Tutorial on: How to do brand research more effective & in real time

To be a successful marketer there are three main steps to follow (as advised by Mark Ritson):
1) Research
2) Strategy
3) Execution

The challenge is that until now research has been very expensive resulting in most companies only performing research once a year - if they are lucky - but on average, once every third year. So how can one understand the market and where the market is going if you don’t take the time to do the research? Without the research, companies will inevitably end up developing strategies and operations based on assumptions -  at best, someone will hopefully measure if it worked or not. Normally what happens is that nobody does measure so the budget gets cut and you get fired.

We came up with the product My Telescope “Competitive Compass” to enable you to follow your key metrics and get a deeper understanding of the underlying facts in an easy and fast way.

The main metric is the “Competitiveness Index”. It is aggregated from 3 key data points:

• Interest: How interested people are in your brand

• Consideration: How likely people are to choose your brand, 

• Attitude: Whether people are positive or negative towards your brand

 In addition to the “Competitiveness Index” we also give you access to 4 key data-points for your brand:

1. Sentiment (the attitude towards your brand and key competitors)

2. Marketing drivers

3. Attributes

4. AND - as a bonus - The key topics and themes associated with your brand (you can try here )

Here is an example used by Mark Ritson in Marketing Week on the P&G brand Febreze

(Marketing Week, by Marketing Week Reporters 10 June 2019):

“In 2011, Procter and Gamble’s Febreze reached an important milestone – $1bn (£786,000) in global sales and a place in P&G’s brand hall of fame.

Despite this apparent success, there was concern. Sales were softening and main rivals Glade and Airwick were catching up by expanding their own lines and replicating many of the same messages in their ads as Febreze had around odour elimination.

Rivals began to own its point of difference, the category became commoditized and the advertising generic. As the brand with the premium price, Febreze had the most to lose.

Ritson explains how the marketers at the brand used a mix of qualitative and quantitative research to diagnose and understand the market, competition, category and brand. The results confirmed that customers saw the category as generic and were suspicious of the product benefits being claimed. Worse,  Febreze no longer owned its key attribute – odour elimination.

The resulting integrated campaign targeted 25- to 65-year-old mums with a key message: Febreze makes the filthiest place smell nice. Activity included a TV spot showing blindfolded women taken to an unattractive and apparently dirty room and asked to sit on a sofa sprayed with Febreze. They were asked to describe what they smelt – the smell of Febreze – and then we see their shock at where they are when the blindfolds are removed.

The brand also sponsored a series of events to underline the message that it could make even the smelliest of situations smell nice, including the Gilroy Garlic Festival, held in California every summer.

The results exceeded expectations – outstripping sales increase and brand attribution targets. More than 80% of those that recalled the ads attributed odour elimination with Febreze.”

The challenge is of course that not all companies have the budgets like P&G to do that extensive research. That is why we came up with the “Competitive Compass” to make standardized research available in a fast and easy way to track your competitiveness on the market