Brand Perception Studies

If we take a public stance on a social issue, will it boost brand perception or backfire? This is one of the hottest debated questions I hear from founders, CMOs, and brand leaders. While the answer is nuanced, it’s worth studying brands that have built campaigns on taking a stand. Consider E.L.F. BEAUTY In 2024, the brand launched its audacious “So Many Dicks” campaign, highlighting gender and racial disparities in U.S. boardrooms by pointing out that there were more men named Richard, Rick, or Dick on public company boards than women or underrepresented groups. The campaign was data-backed, paired with tangible initiatives, and generated a huge cultural conversation. Marketing industry accolades poured in. That said, I was curious to learn how it impacts consumers' awareness, consideration, and perception of the brand. According to Tracksuit data (March ‘25 to Aug ‘25), in the US Skincare & Makeup category: ✅ 19% brand preference – nearly 2 in 10 shoppers say e.l.f. is their top choice, one of the hardest metrics to grow. ✅ 45% agree the brand is “for people like me.” ✅ 55% agree its products are “worth the price,” leading against brands like L’Oreal, Colorpo, and NYX. e.l.f. has built its reputation by moving fast, breaking conventions, and leaning into culture. By choosing an issue aligned with its values and executing a strong campaign, it converted attention into brand strength. 💡 Takeaways for #challengerbrands: Making a big campaign bet is high stakes, but with always-on brand data, you can: - Get pre-launch data to understand what audience to target, and what channels to reach them. - Prove it shifted awareness, consideration, and perceptions, not just reached people.  - Demonstrate ROI on brand activity beyond the buzz That’s why I’m glad tools like Tracksuit make this data accessible to small challenger brands as well. 💬 Your turn: Which brand do you want me to explore next in this challenger brand series? Drop your pick in the comments ⬇️ 📎 Link to download the Tracksuit Brand Playbook is in the first comment.  #BrandStrategy #marketing #data #partnership

92% of B2B buyers only purchase from vendors already on their "day-1" shortlist. Yet most B2B marketers have no clue if they're making that list. Share-of-search? Only shows the 5% actively buying today. Pipeline data? You've already won or lost by then. Social metrics? Vanity numbers that don't predict deals. Here's what actually works: survey-based brand tracking. It's the only way to measure what matters most, whether you're in the minds of the 95% who aren't buying yet but are forming tomorrow's shortlists. How many people do you need to survey? Precisely targeted 100 category buyers is enough for most. A 100-respondent B2B survey gives you: → ±9.8% margin of error (plenty tight to spot meaningful shifts) → can be 5-10% of your total addressable market (way higher than consumer research) → Stable directional insights Google and Bain found that shortlists have shrunk from 6 suppliers to 3.5 today. And 62% of decision-makers finalize that list without ever talking to sales. Miss the initial cut? Less than 10% chance to win the deal. What to track in brand tracking surveys, three metrics matter: 1. Unaided awareness: "Name vendors you'd consider for X" 2. Aided awareness: "Have you heard of...?" 3. Preference: "If you had to decide today...?" Add 2-3 perception questions tied to your positioning. Run it quarterly if you're in a competitive category, semi-annually otherwise. Open-ended questions reveal why you're making (or missing) shortlists: "Credible enterprise-grade security" vs "Too expensive" "Innovative technology" vs "Unproven startup" That's your roadmap for messaging, product, and go-to-market. While your competitors chase vanity metrics, you'll have a direct line to what actually drives deals (mental availability among future buyers). Survey-based brand tracking isn't just measurement. Its competitive intelligence disguised as market research.

“Brand becomes a growth lever when you measure what comes to customers’ minds—not just what you ask them to rate.”   New research we led at CVS Health—now published in Harvard Business Review—shows that the words, feelings, and experiences customers spontaneously associate with a brand are powerful predictors of how their spending will change over time. Working with my colleague Erin Condon, and Marco Vriens and Rogier Verhulst, and Felix Eggers from the Copenhagen Business School, our team found that unprompted brand associations outperform traditional brand metrics in predicting future customer value. Even more striking: not all perceptions matter equally—some associations are several times more economically impactful than others. Listening to customers’ natural language isn’t just qualitative color—it’s actionable intelligence that can help prioritize where experience investments will deliver real growth.   Grateful to our academic collaborators for the rigor behind this work, and to Harvard Business Review for publishing it.   📘 Read the article linked in the comments below:   #TeamCVS #CustomerExperience #BrandStrategy #CustomerValue #CX

Lots of opinions about the new Burger King campaign System1 tested it with real customers. It splits the crowd. Using Test Your Ad Outdoor, we've shown it to a large crowd of the UK public to understand their emotional reaction, why they felt this way, what associations it builds and whether they knew it was for Burger King. We've shown that this data predicts how hard a campaign will work in the long and short term once it's out in the real world. 1. It's important to note that research with System1, JCDecaux and Lumen Research has shown that people look at posters for 2sec on average. So, getting brand recall at this time is key. Amazingly, this ad is one of the most 'fluent' we've ever tested. In just 2 seconds, 89% of viewers know it's for Burger King. 2. Even better, when people are done viewing. 97% of people know this ad is for Burger King. This puts it in the top 5% of OOH campaigns for brand recognition. 3. What about short-term effects? Ads need to engage, causing a high level of emotional arousal, to inspire some sort of short-term behaviour change. Again, this ad does very well. The emotional insight and proactive imagery does it's job. 4. For long-term brand building, ideally we leave viewers feeling positive towards the brand. Here's where it splits the crowd. It's one of the most polarising we've tested. 30% of people feel intense disgust, contempt and sadness. But 40% LOVE it, feeling happiness and surprise. 5. Important to note the strategy here. Emotions aren't the end goal of advertising, they activate strategy. You need to land positioning and brand associations to build salience. We see 46% of viewers recalling "fast food", linking the brand to the category well. However, we see no "delivery" messaging being created. Which looks to be the objective here - hard to tell! 6. We dug deeper into the data to understand how females feel compared to males. It's surprisingly similar. 5% more Female viewers feel happiness with less feeling nothing. But very similar amounts of negative emotions. So - all in all, did it work? It will remind people of the brand, it's linked to the category, and it gets a lot of engagement (which will drive earned reach and short-term effects) but it will only build long-term equity for a segment of the public. You see a lot of the anger is due to people rejecting the category and the brand's tone of voice. This could exactly be the objective of the campaign. Using this data - I think it's a winner. It's anything but dull. You can see the full testing report here for free: https://lnkd.in/ebQFn-_P I share #advertising and #marketing insights daily, follow for more. Thanks for sharing Will Poskett

Your snap judgments aren't as objective as you think. See how the power of thin-slicing flips the script on first impressions and hidden biases. The concept of thin-slicing from Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Blink” can be incredibly relevant to building brands and shaping perceptions. Thin-slicing, the ability of the unconscious mind to make quick decisions based on limited information, plays a crucial role in how consumers perceive and interact with brands. THIN-SLICING IN BRAND PERCEPTION → Consumers make snap judgments about brands within seconds → Judgments are based on logos, packaging, tone, or a single interaction → These quick assessments form the overall perception of the brand → Clean, minimalist design = modern and high-end → Cluttered visuals = disorganized and low-quality THE ADAPTIVE UNCONSCIOUS AND BRAND CONSISTENCY → Consistent messaging and visuals build trust → Positive thin-slices reinforce reliability and trust → Consistency aligns with the unconscious mind, solidifying the brand's identity THE FLIP SIDE: SNAP JUDGMENTS AND BRAND PREJUDICE → Snap judgments can lead to misperceptions or brand prejudice → Negative stereotypes or past controversies can trigger unfavorable judgments → The "Warren Harding Error": superficial traits can overshadow key qualities → Brands must counter biases with authentic storytelling and positive interactions LEVERAGING FIRST IMPRESSIONS IN BRANDING → First impressions are crucial in brand strategy → Every touchpoint must be carefully crafted for a lasting positive perception → A strong first impression can drive consumer preference IMPROVE BRAND STRATEGY WITH RAPID COGNITION → Thin-slicing insights help refine brand strategies for rapid cognition → Simplify messages for clarity and impact, even in brief encounters → Use priming techniques to influence behavior and reinforce brand associations Aligning strategies with rapid cognition creates strong, positive brand perceptions. Understanding and leveraging thin-slicing leads to lasting brand success. How are you aligning your business with this? ------------------------------------------ 💬 Let me know what you think 🔗 Share if helpful! ------------------------------------------ #brand #strategy #bias #thinking

🧠 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻. Neuroscience research confirms it. In a 2020 ERP study, researchers compared how people’s brains reacted to high vs. low brand awareness phones, even when those brands weren’t the focus of attention. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱: ✅ Less brain effort was needed to process high-awareness brands  ✅ More attention and cognitive control were required to process low-awareness brands ✅ Recognition happened unconsciously, even when participants didn’t intend to process the brand 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻? Advertising changes how efficiently the brain allocates attention and how it identifies what matters. Your audience knows your brand before they even know they know it. 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀  1. Investing in building consistent, distinctive, and repeated exposure, pays off by making your brand neurologically “easy” to process  2. Familiar brands don’t fight for attention. Instead, they command it. This helps reduce friction in multitasking or low-involvement scenarios  3. Brand tracking and creative testing that rely only on stated preferences are missing rich, non-conscious signals that drive real-world behavior.  4. Brands can now benchmark how easily they’re identified and how much attention they require to be processed, helping diagnose whether the brand is too forgettable, requires toop much effort, or is just right 👉 Read the full study: https://lnkd.in/g_yi3TxD This is post #1 in a short series breaking down The Brain Behind the Brand and decoding what neuroscience tells us about building mental authority. #Neuroscience #BrandStrategy #ConsumerPsychology #MarketingScience #EEG #MentalAuthority #BrandAwareness #CMOInsights

Branding is important, but how do we measure it? If you work for a large B2B tech company, you’ve probably heard this question more times than you can count. Securing budget for branding always comes down to one thing: proving impact. The equation is simple: Mindshare → Wallet Share → Revenue Growth. Here are three proven methods to measure brand impact and make your case: 1️⃣ Share of Voice (SOV) - Quarterly Analysis It is your real-time indicator of market presence. Increasing mentions is the core stone but solid increase of SOV against competitors is even better. Large companies have diversified portfolios, so SOV should be segmented to be measured against the right competitors (hint: this is the toughest part.) At Hexagon we do it by business unit. 2️⃣ Seller Feedback - Frontline Insights Your sellers are your eyes and ears. If customers know your brand before they even hear the pitch, you’ve made an impact. Or if they’ve heard about your product launch before your sellers even bring it up, you’re winning the awareness game. Work closely with your sellers, and you will get enough quotes to solidify your case. 3️⃣ Brand Surveys - Strategic Benchmarking Yes, the big guns. Annual brand surveys are expensive, but there’s no better way to benchmark awareness and perception. These surveys turn brand perception from a guessing game into a business case. Of course, there are other website related early KPI's (homepage traffic among them) but at large companies, websites are complex ecosystems of acquisitions and potentially older systems, so building a credible story for your CFO might not be ideal. Here’s the reality: gut feeling isn’t enough - you need measurable proof to unlock budget. How are you proving brand impact? 👇

Marketing Myth #8 A rebrand will fix a perception problem. Reality A rebrand will surface a perception problem. Before a single creative brief gets written, before an agency is hired, before a mood board exists, you need to know what people actually think of you. Not what you hope they think. Not what your internal team believes. What lives in the minds of your customers and your own organization right now. That requires a formal perception study. Internal and external. Because those two things are almost never the same and the gap between them is where the real problem lives. Perception isn’t visual. It isn’t your logo or your color palette or your tagline. It is the only reality your customer operates from. You don’t get to just give it a new identity. You have to understand it first. A rebrand that skips this step isn’t a strategy. It’s a guess with an expensive new design. The logo is the last decision. The perception study is the first. #marketing