Brand Assessment Research
Brand strategies that are powerful and sustainable require a solid platform of brand assessment data. No kidding! The point is not that research gets done; it’s how research is done that matters. Of course using modern, proven research methodologies are important, that’s the price of entry. Applying these research techniques to assess brand perceptions and preferences is different than classic “awareness, trial usage”-type of market research studies. Understanding the perceptional landscape in consumers’ minds is part cognitive and part statistical. More Rogers and Hammerstein, than Einstein, if you get my drift.
Our teams are a collaboration of senior brand consultants and brand research experts; our corporate brand strategies are informed and inspired by insights that are rooted in market realities. We find that having facts on our side makes it much easier to get everyone on board with a good corporate brand strategy.
After almost 30 years of conducting brand assessment studies we have concluded the following axioms when assessing a brand:
- Collaborating with clients to produce better studies. Clients have insights about their organization and markets that can be valuable in designing research studies. We work hard at asking the right questions and sharing our experiences to add to our client’s insights, intuition and concerns.
- Garbage in, garbage out. Creating the most effective research strategy can make or break a brand research study. Although we have many proven approaches to developing questionnaires and data collection methods, we know there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all in brand assessment research. Our senior research professionals know how to leverage their decades of experience without trying to fit the same size shoe on every client.
- Research nerds love to find the tastiest acorns. We start with a proven analytical framework employing the most reliable statistical techniques. After the core data analysis we hand the preliminary report off to our senior research professionals and let them have fun! Our senior research professionals work hand-in-hand with our senior brand consultants to find the nuggets that can have insightful implications for developing powerful brand strategies.
- Understanding the brand inside adds clarity to a brand’s strength and possibilities. Assessing the perceptions and attitudes of employees will add powerful insights about an organization’s brand. We have found great value in evaluating the strength of the brand inside by asking employees to respond to a similar assessment tool as we do outside target audiences. Taken by themselves or comparing employees perceptions to outside audiences will almost always produce valuable insights that produce better brand strategies.
- K.I.S.S. Our reports and presentation all have one objective – keep it simple and get to the strategic implications. With the exclusion of other market research professionals, our clients get their thrill not from the “what,” but the “so what.” Our senior folks present brand assessment results in a way that is relevant to everyone in the audience, no matter how short their attention span.
The more brand assessment studies we do, the more we think they all look different. So if you would like to learn how we could apply our experience and enthusiasm to delivery brand assessment data that will make your brand strategy sing, give us a whistle!
In case you’re interested about some of our research client experience here’s a few examples:
- For EDMC as a part of developing the corporate brand strategy we conducted a quantitative brand assessment study of adult students. Following the development of the corporate brand strategy we conducted qualitative research to test and refine key parts of the strategy.
- As a part of an extensive internal brand-building program at GTE Federal Credit Union we conducted a quantitative brand assessment study of their large base of members in support of the development of a brand platform.
- When Patterson Dental needed a new corporate brand strategy to support their growth as the industry leader, Brand Tool Box started the project with conducting a very large sample-sized brand assessment study, one of the largest ever completed in the category.
- Toro engaged Brand Tool Box to develop a multi-tier brand strategy to support their evolving distribution channel strategy. Our first step in developing the brand strategy was to conduct a large-scale quantitative brand assessment study of U.S. consumers.
- For 3M we conducted an extensive global brand assessment study with a sample from 18 countries to determine brand extendibility boundaries as a part of 3M’s new product strategy.
- Brand Tool Box was retained by Scotts to develop a corporate brand strategy. The first step of the project was to assess their corporate brand strength across all of their U.S. consumer groups using a battery of quantitative and qualitative methods reaching thousands of consumers.
We can tell you more, but we’ll spare you. If you want to hear more about our experience give us a jingle.