In 2021, the world continues to battle a pandemic, our online spaces are plagued with misinformation, and conspiracies and political scandals still top the news. But while we may be in a constant state of flux, the fundamentals of managing your brand remain the same.
In CoreData’s Brand Survival Guide whitepaper we outline three key priorities for strengthening your brand, unpacking how each applies to a dynamic world.
To stay ahead, we recommend you:
- Play to your strengths
- Mitigate risks; and
- Measure performance.
We examine the claim – based on Daniel Kahneman’s Systems 1 and 2 thinking – that distinctiveness is what is important when it comes to brands.
While many brands focus on differentiation, pumping out beautiful, complex and meaningful stories that set them apart from competitors, these advertisements require customers to expend a considerable amount of energy analysing the features of our brand. They rely on System 2 thinking, the slow and analytical mind that requires cognitive effort.
Conversely, distinctiveness plays into the innate abilities of the human mind, using repetition and association to make brand recall an automatic process. It’s why if we ask you to think of “the golden arches”, you immediately know the brand we’re referencing. Bolstering the distinctiveness of your brand means consumers are more likely to recall who you are and what you offer without a second thought.
The whitepaper also provides some tips for tracking brand metrics, including which metrics are most important to measure and why. We examine four traditional metrics: awareness, consideration, association and advocacy, and consider best practice ways to approach their measurement. Beyond brand tracking, measurement methods have advanced to provide marketers with greater insight into which decisions to make and what actions to take. So with this in mind, we’ve outlined some more modern marketing measurements to be aware of when monitoring brand performance.
Finally, you’ll learn when it’s sufficient to benchmark key metrics and when deeper or more nuanced research is required. There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to measuring the success of your brand’s performance in market, but there are some clear indicators to watch out for to ensure you stay ahead of any adverse trends.
Brand management requires constant reflection, planning and agility in a world that is constantly throwing up challenges, but with the right tools, brands can succeed and thrive.
