For VND38,250,000 (US$1,500) per month, you can monitor your brand and learn how your hard work impacts its performance.  By managing what you can measure, you will save far more than the cost of brand monitoring.

Your results will be made available to you on an online dashboard and updated monthly with a rolling sample of 600 consumers over the past 3 months.  

In order to manage your brand, you must measure its performance. You will learn what works and does not work in your brand marketing activities. For example, to understand the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, messaging, channels and expenditure, you need to measure your brand’s performance.

Brand monitoring will enable data-driven decisions and make your marketing efforts far more cost-effective. You will save far more than the cost of brand monitoring by managing what you can measure.

Reasonable. Our fees are super low.

Reach. Rural, urban, region or key cities. You decide. It has no impact on the fees.

Rapid. Last month’s results are available on your dashboard. Always.

Responsive. No stopping required for holidays.

Reliable. Our quality control includes independent 3rd party quality monitoring.

Risk mitigation.  No annual commitment is required. You may choose not to renew at any time.

Brand monitoring enables you to manage your brand’s performance in the market and the activities you undertake to support your brand. Whether you are expanding your brand’s presence in-store or raising awareness amongst consumers through marketing activities., you can manage better, knowing how your brand is performing.

The biggest consumer brands in the market conduct brand monitoring. Brand monitoring does not need to be cumbersome, overpriced and unresponsive.   Cimigo makes agile, low-cost and responsive brand monitoring available to all brands. Cimigo’s brand health tracking monitor uses proprietary online panels and dashboards to deliver this agility.

Cimigo’s brand health tracking monitor will show you changes over time, including;

• Where and amongst which consumers is your brand strongest?
• How is your brand performing over time?
• What impact is your marketing having on your brand?
  • How is your brand awareness and presence improving?
  • Are your (unique) brand assets getting stronger?
  • Is your advertising reaching more of the right people?
  • Which marketing channels work best for your brand?
  • Is your market share increasing?
  • Brand performance funnel
• What impact is your messaging having on your brand?
  • What is your target consumer interest towards your brand?
  • What is important to your consumers when selecting a brand?
  • Is your brand superior to your competitors in achieving your desired positioning?
  • Is your brand’s equity stronger or weaker than your competitors?
  • Does your brand stand out as differentiated from others?
  • Open perceptions of your brand
  • How likely are consumers to recommend your brand to their friends?

You can compare your brand to competitors and learn from competitive successes and failures.  You may review your brand performance across different locations and demographic target groups (e.g., gender, age and economic class).

Where and amongst which consumers is your brand the strongest?

You can learn where your brand is strongest by location; rural, urban, region or key cities.  You may review your brand performance across different demographic target groups (e.g. gender, age and economic class).  You decide when you set up your study which locations and demographics to include.  It has no impact on the fees. 

Cimigo will kick off your brand monitor with 600 of your target consumers in the first month. Thereafter each month Cimigo will add 200 more, so you can always look at your brand’s performance on a rolling sample (that is, the last 600 interviews by the date conducted) during the past three months.

How is your brand performing over time?

Over any period of time, you may select your brand (or a competitive brand) and review a performance summary which includes any or all of the key metrics below;

1. Top-of-mind brand awareness (1^st brand mentioned).
2. Spontaneous brand awareness.
3. Aided brand awareness.
4. All brand awareness.
5. Top-of-mind advertising awareness (1^st brand mentioned).
6. Spontaneous advertising awareness.
7. Aided by brand: advertising awareness.
8. All advertising awareness.
9. The brand used in past 12 months.
10. The brand currently used.
11. The brand used most often.
12. The brand used most often (when relevant for on and off-premise).
13. First-choice brand.
14. Net promoter score.
15. The strength of your (unique) brand assets.
16. What does your brand truly stand for (and what does it not stand for)?
17. What are the consumer perceptions of your brand.

What impact is your marketing having on your brand?

How is your brand awareness and presence improving?

Building a presence in consumers’ memory requires physical availability at points of sale and through marketing communications. Empirical research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, popularised in the book titled How Brands Grow, authored by Byron Sharp,  highlights the importance of building a physical and mental presence.

Brands grow by increasing penetration, attracting incremental users, often very occasional brand users.  Whether those brands are products or services, marketed by business-to-consumer or by business-to-business channels, the empirical data supports this premise.

Seeking to convert the regular users of brands holding a large market share is less effective. The larger brand’s presence (both its mental and physical availability) ensures it gains at least its fair share of sales plus its own continued growth if it continues to build a further presence.

The following metrics are included to help you manage brand presence and the degree of awareness and saliency being achieved.

1. Top-of-mind brand awareness (1st brand mentioned)
2. Spontaneous brand awareness
3. Aided brand awareness.
4. All brand awareness.
5. This brand is widely available.

Are your (unique) brand assets getting stronger?

Prompting your brand in a consumer’s memory (i.e. prompting mental presence) is made easier when unique brand assets help anchor consumer memory constructs to your brand. For example, the Oreo cookie, the audio pitch of the Biore voice-over, the Coca-Cola bottle, the Dutch Lady image, the Nike swoosh and the McDonald’s “I’m Lovin’ It” jingle.

Unique brand assets hold great importance, where there is limited room for differentiation, e.g., bottled water. A unique brand asset (e.g. pack design) enables consumers to recall your brand readily, so they can then make a quick and easy decision to buy your familiar brand.

The metric used is the correct brand recognition when consumers see or hear the brand asset tested. This could be an image, a pack or a sound. Managing your brand assets will help build and maintain your brand’s presence and the saliency of awareness is achieved.

Is your advertising reaching more of the right people?

You will learn what works and does not work in your brand marketing activities. The metrics included below will enable you to understand how effective your marketing expenditure is, whether advertising is being recalled, and whether you are reaching more target consumers (i.e. what proportion of your target consumers are recalling your advertising).

1. Spontaneous advertising awareness.
2. Aided by brand: advertising awareness.
3. All advertising awareness.

Which marketing channels work best for your brand?

You may assess which online and offline channels are improving brand awareness through either mental and/or physical presence.

Is your market share increasing?

The brand used most often is the metric used for market share.

If your category exhibits different brand dynamics when used at home as opposed to on-premise in outlets (e.g. drinks, tobacco) then your market share is shown for both on-premise and off premise. 

Brand performance funnel

The brand performance funnel is a construct to measure the conversion of consumers from awareness to using your brand and to compare your brand with competitive brands. The key metrics included are below:

1. Spontaneous brand awareness.
2. All brand awareness.
3. The brand used in the past 12 months.
4. The brand currently used.
5. The brand used most often.
6. First-choice brand.

The conversion from one metric to the other (for example, at metric 3, you will also find the % of consumers who have used your brand in the past 12 months amongst all consumers aware of your brand (metric 2 above).

Whilst this is a useful analytical construct, the user should be aware that not all paths to purchase follow such a sequential path. For example, I may use the brand for the first time without having known the brand, in this case, awareness may not have always preceded use, but followed use.

What impact is your messaging having on your brand?

What is your target consumer interest towards your brand?

Monitoring the interest in your brand and that of your key competitors helps diagnose how consumer interest towards your brand changes over time and in response to competitive brand management.

The key metrics included are;

1. My first-choice brand.
2. This is one of the brands I prefer to buy.
3. Overall, this brand is appealing to me.
4. I would like to try this brand.
5. I would never consider buying this brand.
6. I don’t know much about this brand.
7. I have never heard of this brand.

What is important to your consumers when selecting a brand?

Cimigo’s brand health tracking monitor measures how consumers perceive your brand on fourteen attributes.  Seven are pre-defined mandatory attributes.  The mandatory attributes are;

1. This brand is popular.
2. This brand is easy to buy.
3. This brand costs more than I am prepared to pay.
4. This brand is widely available.
5. This brand stands out positively from competitors.
6. This brand is easy to recognise.
7. Overall, this brand is appealing to me.

You may add a further seven optional attributes of your own choosing.  Cimigo has provided some pre-defined attributes you may choose from organised under sections; Equity, User personality, Occasions, Gratification, Service and Product.

Alternatively, you can write and add your own attributes.  Typically, these would include the intended associations (corresponding to your brand promise or proposition) you seek through to build through your brand management. 

Consumers are asked to rate the importance of these attributes when selecting a brand in your category or industry.   Further Cimigo derives (using correlation statistical analysis) which attributes best explain consumers’ appeal towards brands.

Comparing the stated importance and derived importance provides a helpful analysis construct as depicted below.  This is helpful to determine which brand attributes (or equities) make a difference and where to focus brand marketing activities.

When assessing whether your brand’s equity is stronger or weaker than your competitors, it is advisable to look at the attributes through this lens of what is important to your target consumers.

Ideally, your brand is not weakly associated with the Basic attributes.  Marketing efforts leverage your brand’s strengths amongst the Motivator attributes to build your brand’s competitive advantage. 

If your brand does not own any of Motivator attributes, choose one that you can dominate over your competitors in your product or service and support it in your marketing activities. The Opportunity attributes can help you to differentiate your brand from other competitors.

Is your brand superior to your competitors in achieving your desired positioning?

Cimigo’s brand health tracking monitors consumers’ perception of your brand on fourteen attributes.

Cimigo’s brand health tracking monitors these associations for your brand and up to five competitive brands so a comparison can be readily understood.

Detailed results on all attributes are included in the dashboard, comparing each competitive brand.  The attributes are organised by the attributes which are important to your consumers when selecting a brand, in the four groups detailed below.

Basic. High stated but low derived importance. These attributes are the minimum requirements for a brand to appeal.   Weakness in these attributes hinders your brand’s appeal.

Motivators. High both stated and derived importance. These attributes best explain a brand’s appeal. The more motivators that are the strengths of your brand, the better.

Opportunities. Low stated but high derived importance. These attributes are not obvious but can increase your brand’s appeal. These attributes present opportunities to differentiate your brand.

Low priorities. Low stated and low derived importance. These attributes have minimal impact on the appeal of a brand.  You do not need to be investing your resources in building these attributes.

Is your brand’s equity stronger or weaker than your competitors?

Cimigo’s brand health tracking monitors consumers’ perception of your brand on fourteen attributes.

Cimigo’s brand health tracking monitors these associations for your brand and up to five competitive brands so a comparison can be readily understood.

An analytical construct is used to identify your brand’s relative strengths and weaknesses.  The attributes are analysed using a statistical tool named chi-square normalisation. This tool corrects the distortion that the size of a brand has on the absolute scores of consumer associations. For example, a brand like Coca-Cola with a large market share attracts more associations than a brand like Big Cola with a smaller market share, making performance for smaller brands difficult to gauge.

The statistical tool output is a normalised score for each attribute with which you can gauge comparative strengths and weaknesses across the brands. In many cases, brands will not have any strengths but should strive to have them.

The attributes are organised by the attributes which are important to your consumers when selecting a brand, in the four groups detailed above.

Does your brand stand out as differentiated from others?

Using the aforementioned comparative strengths and weaknesses of your brand’s equity, you can identify what (if anything) your brand truly stands for in consumers’ minds and just as importantly, what it does not stand for. 

The normalised scores for the attributes (equities) are used to determine each brand’s relative strengths and weaknesses. The normalised scores are compared to the standard deviation.   Scores higher than the standard deviation indicate a strength (when positive) or weakness (when negative).

In many cases, no brand will stand out from other brands, with a specific strength or a specific weakness. The category or industry exhibits minimal or no differentiation across brands. This highlights a risk as one brand may readily be substituted for another. Alternatively, this highlights an opportunity for a brand team willing to build differentiated equity (attributes) for their brand.

The dashboard shows only the attributes (equities) that apply to your brand compared with competitive brands.  When empty, the brand does not stand for anything amongst the attributes (equities) measured. 

Open perceptions of your brand

Cimigo’s brand health tracking monitor also includes a word association presented as a word cloud. Here the bigger words are mentioned more by consumers than the smaller words. 

Cimigo’s brand health tracking monitor asks consumers to describe brands with two words of their choosing.  This supports other more structured quantitative metrics assessing consumer perceptions of your brand.

The word cloud can be useful if the category or industry exhibits well differentiated brands. Many categories and industries exhibit minimal or no differentiation across brands. If this is the case, the word cloud is not helpful and the conclusion may well be that your brand is a “me-too” brand in a sea of similar brands.

How likely are consumers to recommend your brand to their friends?

Consumers are asked how likely they are to recommend the brand which they use most often. This metric is known as a net promoter score (NPS).

NPS is a widely used market research metric that is based on a single survey question asking respondents to rate the likelihood that they would recommend a brand to a friend. The NPS is typically used to indicate customer loyalty and signal relative brand growth within an industry or category.

This metric is more relevant to assessing services or high-value products or services, as opposed to mass consumer goods or low value products and services, which require more involved (as opposed to impulse) decision-making. 

NPS is the most useful when observed over time and in comparison, to the average across brands in the category or industry. The NPS for competing brands is shown over time and is compared to an average for all brands in the category or industry. 

Dashboard example

You can access the live example dashboard (with dummy data) using this link: https://link.cimigo.com/rsbm

If you have questions, please get in touch with Cimigo at ask@cimigo.com for support.