Research Methodologies

November 5, 2015

Fame, Feeling and Fluency: When Brand Tracking Meets Behavioral Science

Instead of trying to marry outmoded metrics to modern data sources, why not reinvent brand research from the ground up?

Tom Ewing

by Tom Ewing

0

Speedometer with needle racing through the words Revolution, Change, Shake it Up, Status Quo and Stagnation

 

By Tom Ewing

Brand tracking: in need of change

The great thing about science is that it simplifies and clarifies things. And if there’s one thing that needs simplifying and clarifying, it’s brand tracking. When we at BrainJuicer decided to tackle brand tracking, we took our inspiration from the behavioral sciences – psychology and behavioral economics – and came up with a model rooted in the science of how people really make decisions.

Before we look at that, we need to identify where current tracking goes wrong. Traditional brand tracking doesn’t really help much to guide and predict brand growth. Marketers have often criticized it for being backward looking, not predictive. And modern frustration with brand tracking is also rooted in its inability to get to grips with the myriad of new data sets available to marketers – more online data, more customer preference data, social media data, mobile data… the list goes on.

The obvious solution – and the one most suppliers are promising – is to try and integrate new and traditional data sources. But this has been a painful process. The truth is, brand tracking has never been brilliant at taking behavioral data into account, even before the digital revolution. Its fit with CRM and sales data has been messy and required serious work.

But why has brand tracking had these problems? The major issue is that brand research has tried to do two things at once – set strategic goals and inform tactical decisions while being a poor fit for either of them.

Brand trackers have always looked to give a big-picture view of a brand’s fortunes and market position. At the same time they have looked to provide tactical advice based on movements in the market. In an ideal world the big-picture metrics would let marketers make strategic decisions, and the trackers would show how they are paying off.

But it hasn’t worked out that way. Neither piece of the puzzle – strategic or tactical – has been served well by brand research.

Most of the criticism has focused on the tactical piece. Brand trackers always delivered a delayed view of data – sometimes months behind actual events. This was never ideal, but in the era of up-to-the-minute sales and social data it feels farcical. The gap in speed is a big reason why simply integrating the instant data of social media into traditional trackers hasn’t worked.

This is well understood. What’s less understood is that the strategic element of brand tracking is also deeply flawed. Put simply, we’ve been asking the wrong things. And this is where behavioral science comes in.

Fame, Feeling And Fluency: How people buy brands

Strategic branding research tends to assume that people make considered decisions about brands, becoming aware, then experienced, then finally loyal – and that the innate differences and attributes of brands guide them in this decision making. But Behavioral Science shows that this is very rare.

What the Behavioral Sciences tell us is that we humans are fast and frugal in our decision-making. The truth is that people think much less about brands than we, as an industry, previously believed. People don’t evaluate options carefully, but instead rely on mental shortcuts – rules of thumb – to help them decide between options quickly and effortlessly.

There are three key mental shortcuts that help people decide between brands. At BrainJuicer we call them Fame, Feeling and Fluency. To consumers’ fast-thinking, System 1 minds:

  • If a brand comes readily to mind, it’s a good choice (Fame).
  • If a brand feels good, it’s a good choice (Feeling).
  • If a brand is recognizable, it’s a good choice (Fluency).

These rules of thumb are what behavioral scientists call the ‘availability heuristic, the ‘affect heuristic’ and the ‘processing fluency heuristic’.

Why should these fancy terms be of any interest to a CMO, a CEO or a company shareholder? Because large brands have created these shortcuts in spades and are beneficiaries of them; small brands haven’t (yet) but need to if they are to grow. Taken together, these three heuristics explain market share across categories and regions with an average correlation of +0.9. That’s very explanatory. People hate thinking too hard about which brand to buy and avoid it whenever they can; a truly successful brand is one that people will buy without careful evaluation or consideration. The marketer’s task expressed at its simplest is therefore to create Fame, Feeling and Fluency shortcuts for their brand, such that it becomes the obvious, automatic, default choice.

The 3Fs in Action

Each of the three Fs play an important role for brands. Fame is the dominant indicator of current market share. Feeling, meanwhile, predicts a brand’s future market share. If a brand has greater positive Feeling than its size would suggest (we call this ‘surplus Feeling’), then it will grow the following year. If a brand is coasting on its fame, and neglects its Feeling so that it drops below the required minimum for its size, then it stands to lose share the following year. We saw this with UK supermarket Tesco – the dominant player in its market, we tracked its feeling and saw it drop sharply. The next year, it issued its first ever profit warning and has been in decline ever since, losing market share to newer, cheaper rivals – competitors who also enjoy a surplus of feeling.

So in rethinking brand tracking, we take how a brand performs on the three heuristics and translate the scores into a 1-5 star rating. A 1-star brand will have low levels of fame and low market share; a 5-star (famous) brand will have high market share and be the most obvious choice for most people – an automatic, default choice that requires no deliberative thought. In addition, we assign a star rating prediction for the future, based on the brand’s surplus or deficit amount of Feeling.

Above all else, the marketer’s task is to make as many people feel something positive towards their brand as possible. Feeling simplifies and guides decision-making, it provides a ‘lift’ that helps people to decide in favor of your brand over another. Besides share growth, there are many other benefits of having a surplus of Feeling – it provides a buffer against PR problems (think VW) and gives brands permission to extend into new areas, and it lets brands charge more. Feeling is what economists might call ‘demand’. If you feel nothing, you’ll do nothing; if you feel more, you’ll buy more.

As for Fluency, the early indications from our database is that it enjoys a strong relationship with price. Strong, clear, brand assets make a brand easy to buy, and more powerful as a means of signalling status. The ability to charge a price premium is a brand’s most valuable asset, so brands with high fluency find themselves in a strong position. An example is Santander, one of Spain’s biggest banks but a relatively new entrant to the UK market. It’s enjoyed a remarkable rise in fame and scores strongly on feeling and fluency, thanks to its distinctive branding and simple offering. It’s now felt able to raise the prices on its offers by 150%.

Strategic brand tracking in the analytics age

Fame, Feeling and Fluency offer a way out of the impasse that brand research has found itself in. The problem was that brand tracking tried to mix the strategic and the tactical, and failed on both counts. The tactical element was out of date by the time it was charted. The strategic element was based on a misconception about how people choose brands. The result has been tools that fail to predict the future and can’t even handle the present!

Instead of trying to marry outmoded metrics to modern data sources, why not reinvent brand research from the ground up? Stop trying to ride two horses at once, and separate the tactical and strategic roles. Use behavioral data analytics to build a monitoring tool that gives you just-in-time tactical insight on what your customers are really doing and saying. But then use Fame, Feeling and Fluency as navigational aids to set broad strategic priorities. They let you create easy to understand, top-level performance metrics that give you a way to focus and clarify the day-to-day frenzy of brand activity. Modern branding is just too fast and complex for one-size-fits-all solutions at the tactical level: marketers need analytics. But alongside them you need something more high-level, human, and predictive, that gives you the opportunity to take a big picture view, set goals, and breathe a little.

0

behavioral sciencebrand researchbrand tracking

Disclaimer

The views, opinions, data, and methodologies expressed above are those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect or represent the official policies, positions, or beliefs of Greenbook.

Comments

More from Tom Ewing

Five Big Themes From IIeX 2019

Research Technology (ResTech)

Five Big Themes From IIeX 2019

A look back at the key learnings from IIeX North America.

Tom Ewing

Tom Ewing

First day of IIeX North America 2019 Wrap-Up

First day of IIeX North America 2019 Wrap-Up

Tom Ewing gives us the low-down on sessions here during the first day of IIeX North America and the hot topics being covered.

Tom Ewing

Tom Ewing

Testing Every Ad Unlocks Cereal Share Growth

Testing Every Ad Unlocks Cereal Share Growth

System1 Research’s ad testing strategy to satisfy planning needs and drive brand growth

Tom Ewing

Tom Ewing

A 2016 Election Prediction: The Rise and Fall of Donald Trump

A 2016 Election Prediction: The Rise and Fall of Donald Trump

Donald Trump was a classic challenger brand. We love a challenger brand story. But, we usually remember the challenger brands that make it.

Tom Ewing

Tom Ewing

ARTICLES

Moving Away from a Narcissistic Market Research Model

Research Methodologies

Moving Away from a Narcissistic Market Research Model

Why are we still measuring brand loyalty? It isn’t something that naturally comes up with consumers, who rarely think about brand first, if at all. Ma...

Devora Rogers

Devora Rogers

Chief Strategy Officer at Alter Agents

The Stepping Stones of Innovation: Navigating Failure and Empathy with Carol Fitzgerald
Natalie Pusch

Natalie Pusch

Senior Content Producer at Greenbook

Sign Up for
Updates

Get what matters, straight to your inbox.
Curated by top Insight Market experts.

67k+ subscribers

Weekly Newsletter

Greenbook Podcast

Webinars

Event Updates

I agree to receive emails with insights-related content from Greenbook. I understand that I can manage my email preferences or unsubscribe at any time and that Greenbook protects my privacy under the General Data Protection Regulation.*