Karen Chandler

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And our ESOMAR Congress continues to get better! Not only have two Nepians been chosen to impart some of their market research wisdom during the conference, but we’ve only gone and received an award! We are proud to announce that we won the Market Research Agency category (EMEA) in Dynata’s 2023 RISE awards.

The RISE “Recognising Innovation in Survey Engagement” awards are all about publicly recognising Dynata’s best-performing clients, with a focus on respondent engagement. Dynata has assessed all of their clients’ surveys over the last 12 months against 3 areas of respondent impact (efficiency, engagement, and trust) against 8 different variables, such as conversion rate, abandon rate, and survey length. Once analysed, the data was ranked and the top companies identified.

So what does this mean for Nepa? This means that clients can be assured that the insights collected are based on the best possible data, ensured by best-in-class respondent engagement. Winning this award is not just a testament to our dedication and expertise, but also a reflection of the value we place on research design, panellist engagement and operational best practices.

“Surveys are at the core of great research. This award reaffirms our commitment to maintaining the highest standards of data quality, ensuring that every insight we deliver is built on a foundation of trust.

I would like to say a massive thank you to our internal expert and client teams for making this award possible. From research and design to scripting and operations, their work is the foundation of every successful project.“
Ferry Wolswinkel, Interim CEO

Karen Chandler

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It’s less than a month to this year’s ESOMAR Congress in Amsterdam, and we’re delighted to let you know you’ll have (possibly!) more than two chances to watch a Nepian in action.

Monday 11th September, 09.25

The Supercharger Stage

Nepa UK’s Data Scientist Valere Demelier is one of the finalists of the YES Awards, and during this 60-second elevator pitch will discuss AI for Consumer Digital Profiles. He will (very quickly!) take us through a recent project that utilised open AI’s embedding tool to distil shopper search queries into an embedded data frame, which was then subjected to unsupervised machine learning clustering to identify patterns among shoppers.

Tuesday 12th September, 14.30

The Supercharger Stage

Nepa Sweden’s R&D Manager Cajsa Wirén will be presenting ‘The New Marketing Renaissance; The merging of creative work and scientific evaluation of communication’ alongside Klarna’s Global Consumer Insights Manager Karin Haglund.

This 20-minute session will cover how marketing mix modelling can be combined with survey-based measurements of campaign content, to quantify the value of creatives. This case study will provide insights on how different aspects of creative executions impact marketing effectiveness, and highlights how clear branding in campaigns is the most important challenge for brands to crack.

Tuesday 12th September, 16.20

The Supercharger Stage

If Valere’s pitch wows the ESOMAR delegates, then alongside two other finalists he will be showcasing his full pitch mainstage Pecha Kucha style for 6min40 in front of senior business leaders. Event attendees have the final word, so if you’re there in person please vote!

Alongside Valere and Cajsa, CEO Ferry Wolswinkel, Account Director Andrea Goeres, Senior Account Manager Malin Larsudd, and Marketing Manager Karen Chandler will be attending to explore the latest trends, innovations, and insights in the field of market research. All are more than happy to meet up over a coffee, just get in touch!

About ESOMAR Congress

ESOMAR Congress is ESOMAR’s flagship event that serves as a prominent platform for industry professionals, researchers, and experts to converge and learn. The event showcases a diverse array of sessions, including keynote presentations, panel discussions, workshops, and interactive sessions led by thought leaders and pioneers in the industry.

Niclas Ohman

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Many companies across the globe use Brand Tracking to monitor and measure the performance of their brands over time. It’s an important tool for long-term growth plans because it helps businesses understand how their brand is evolving and where they may need to adjust to stay relevant and competitive. By tracking key performance indicators such as brand awareness, brand loyalty, and customer satisfaction, businesses can identify areas of strength and weakness, whilst staying agile and responsive to market changes.

Traditionally, Brand Tracking is done using cross-sectional research. This is a a type of observational study that collects data from a sample of individuals at a specific point in time, to examine relationships between the variables. However, here at Nepa we do things differently. We believe that continuous research is far superior in several ways.

A continuous approach to research drastically expands the usefulness of data, compared to a traditional cross-sectional dip or an ad-hoc approach. Our aim is always to integrate with business results outside of what can be included into a questionnaire, and to do that we need a common denominator to be able connect the model universe in the data set to the real universe outside it. The most versatile and powerful common denominator is time.

Changes in data collected over time in a persistent way is always more reliable than the levels themselves at any given time. Data collected at a single point in time can be influenced by various factors such as random fluctuations and sample variability, which can make it difficult to draw reliable, actionable conclusions.

Ready-aim-fire has become ready-aim-steer. Many of the business problems we aim to solve for our clients focus on small, constant adjustments to reach a target over time, rather than one big change. Continuous does this infinitely better than ad-hocs or dips.

Brand Tracking at Nepa

We have a long history and a built in DNA of viewing the data we collect as a component in our delivery, not as the delivery. We also have a track record of guiding our customers to well thought through decisions on what data they need from us to solve their business questions, and to go beyond the questions they formulate themselves in the initial brief to us.

We have a clear take on the pros and cons of different methods and ways of collecting data and generally think one or two steps further than the average customer. On the surface, our data looks like that of our competitors’, but it’s most often not the same. The difference doesn’t show if you are looking at line-graphs or pie-charts; it starts to show when you start trying to make inferences based on the insights and connect or integrate it with other sources of data.

A prime example is our continuous collection of data in our Brand Tracking. Heraclitos said that “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man”. What I think he meant is that there is constant change in both the environment and the agent, and that you have to adapt and continuously revise what you thought you know. That, one may think, should constitute enough of a reason to believe in continuous data collection, continuous analysis, and continuous action.

There is more to it though since a continuous approach will drastically expand the usefulness of your data. Let me elaborate on this. If you are satisfied with quarterly score cards and a temperature gauge of your brand health or brand experience, and you are confident that you can cram everything you need analyzing into the same questionnaire, you might as well do dips and save yourself some costs and some work.

However, if you aim to connect it to business results outside of what you managed to cram into the questionnaire, or if you didn’t quite manage to anticipate and fit all the factors influencing your KPI beforehand, the differences will start to show. Recent global events like the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, inflation, Brexit, etc., has highlighted how incredibly hard it is to manage to foresee and include all relevant factors into a questionnaire before they happen. We live in a complex and eventful world and it’s not only global macro-economic factor like these that affect our brands and marketing efforts. There are a tenfold of industry or market specific circumstances that’ll have an impact on our company’s performance. Things like new competitors, changed competitor ad spending, product innovation, cross-segment merchandising, or any number of hard to predict occurrences within an industry. These are just some examples that either must be incorporated beforehand in the survey of a cross-sectional study to allow us to assess the impact or be left to guessing.

In a continuous approach this is not an issue. The beauty of continuous Brand Tracking is that we don’t need to predict the unpredictable and add specific questions to the survey beforehand. We can take it into account whenever it occurs and assess the impact of any unforeseeable event as to long as we can assign a point in time to it.

Continuous data collection, if done right, allows for a much broader and much deeper analysis, and consequently much more actionable recommendations. You can switch back and forth between respondents and time as units of analyses and connect the survey data to other sources such as Marketing Mix Models, tracking insight meetings, and campaign meta-analyses.

We have always had this approach at Nepa, and we tend to take it for granted. We have built all, or close to all, of our technical assets around this basic philosophy. Not just that they should be continuous, but that it should be possible to connect our insights to things happening outside the survey or tracker. That’s why we are best in class in continuous sampling and that’s why we are investing in continuous quality control, continuous analysis, media investment integration, data exchange protocols, “action triggers”/“notifications”, event driven processing, etc.

Our long-term commitment to continuous is what makes our trackers better than our competitor’s when trying to weave them into MMM-solutions. It’s why we can connect financial impact to brand health scores. It’s deep in our DNA and a philosophy much more than, and far beyond, a technical feature.

Cajsa Wiren

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Greetings brand tracking lovers! Oh, are you not one of them? Well, you’re not alone. Many companies work with some sort of brand tracking tool to help them understand how consumers perceive their brand, and how their brand strength is developing. The results are often used in brand strategy development and to steer day-to-day decision-making. However, in many organisations brand tracking data is underutilised. The results float around the organisation in general KPI-reports, but what’s causing the results is rarely discussed and few actions are taken based on the data.

Why are brand tracking tools underutilised?

When a brand tracking program is first implemented, there is often a lot of interest and engagement from the organisation. People are excited to get new insights and expand their data tool set. But after a couple of years of measurement, many organisations see a declining interest and usage of the data internally. The users may find the brand tracking stale with no new insights. Rather than exploring how the brand tracking can be further evolved, users tend to gravitate towards new, perhaps more exciting, research solutions or data sources instead.

For many established brands, brand tracking results may appear stable year after year, with very little movement in the top funnel KPIs. And when changes in the KPIs do occur, many users find it difficult to deduct why this is happening and what’s causing the changes. This can lead to a perception that the brand tracking is not actionable and that results cannot be trusted.

The two types of brand trackers

If we generalize, we can say that the brand trackers used by companies can be divided into two categories: the report card and the business tool.

The report card type is focused on measuring the brands performance on a set number of KPIs, e.g., top-of-mind awareness or brand preference. These KPIs are reported across the organization on a regular basis, and results might be tied to compensation or bonuses for the marketing teams. These report card trackers usually have a narrow, inside-out perspective. They only measure the brand associations a company wants to stand for and the specific consumer segments that they want to reach. Report card style trackers tend to have limited usage in the organisation. The main focus is to monitor changes in brand KPIs since these are often tied to compensation, but the data provides very little guidance on how to improve the brand’s performance. Results ultimately lead to very little action.

The business tool, on the other hand, has a wider, more market-oriented focus. They include the main brand KPIs, but the set-up aims to cover the whole competitive landscape and all types of consumers on the market, rather than the narrower focus of the report card. These types of trackers are designed to not only measure how the brand is performing on its KPIs, but also what else is happening in the market and why things are happening, allowing for more proactive actions. This generally creates more internal engagement and long-term usage of the tracking as it helps to answers more business questions.

The business tool tracker is also more sustainable as it can withstand changes in brand strategy, market changes etcetera, without needing large updates, providing a more continuous data stream.

How to create a business tool brand tracker

Design the brand tracking around your business challenges

One key factor for creating a business tool tracker is designing the set-up around the business challenges you would like to address and the specific dynamics of your business and market. At Nepa, we tailor our clients’ brand tracking surveys to their business needs using a modular approach. For example, a client who advertises heavily will want to use the brand tracking to monitor communication effects. In that case, Nepa’s media and ad tracking modules would be applied to provide input to media optimisation and further development of creatives. A client with a new brand in an emerging category, on the other hand, would want to understand how behaviours and attitudes are developing and would benefit from Nepa’s modules on category drivers and purchasing behaviour. By considering what the specific use cases are for your brand tracking, you will be able to design a survey that is both more actionable and more engaging for the users in the organisation.

Use relevant slicing questions

When designing a brand tracking survey, it’s easy to get caught up in the brand and market related questions. But an area that often gets too little attention are the slicing questions that enable breakdowns of the data. Examples of slicing questions could be demographics, category behaviours, shopping missions or consumption occasions. These are the questions that help you answer the why’s: why my brand preference is declining, why a competitor is gaining strength etcetera. Slicing questions help you dig deeper beyond the top level KPIs and provide you with a wider range of analysis possibilities.

These questions are also an opportunity to ensure the brand tracking can cater to a wide audience within the organisation by enabling breakdowns that are relevant for a range of different stakeholders, for example product teams, assortment, customer service etcetera. Slicing questions can easily be added or updated when needed to keep the brand tracking up to date without having to makes changes to the main brand KPIs in the questionnaire.

Apply a continuous data collection approach

Many companies collect their brand tracking data in waves, either monthly, quarterly, or yearly. While this approach provides an understanding of the brand’s performance at a given point in time, it limits the opportunities for insight and analysis of the data. A continuous sampling approach, where data is collected every day of the year, drastically expands the value of the brand tracking. You can more easily follow the effects of campaigns and marketing activities.

External factors such as seasonal fluctuations, or competitor movements, can quickly be viewed and analysed. The continuous survey data can also be combined with other time series data such as media investments, market share development or sales. Additionally, continuous data collection provides more robust results and a more reliable base for conclusions.

Brand tracking can get a bad rep for not being actionable and relevant enough for the users in the organisation. However, by truly treating your brand tracking as a business tool when designing the survey and set-up, you can drastically expand the value and actionability of the insights and keep up the interest in the data over a long period of time.

Karen Chandler

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If you work in marketing, or a marketing adjacent field, then your LinkedIn feed has probably been full of Cannes Lions posts over the last couple of weeks. Between the 19th and 23rd of June, the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity returned to the The Palais in Cannes. The largest gathering in the creative marketing community, the event celebrates creativity, effectiveness, and innovation in the global advertising, marketing, and communication industries. And Nepa were there too!

Insights Manager Charlotta Lundberg and Data Scientist Jessika Ödling spent the week yacht hopping between panels, discussions, and presentations, with some personal highlights of theirs including watching Les Binet discuss The 3rd Age of Effectiveness and stressing the importance of video in brand building, and the COO of Open AI Brad Lightcap discussing how AI is not there to take jobs, just enhance productivity.

Charlotta Lundberg (left) and Jessika Ödling (right) at the Cannes Lions Festival 2023

The key themes

Throughout the festival there were three key themes that kept coming up, time and again.

Maximising the effects of your campaigns

One thing that was mentioned across the days was how to use different platforms correctly to build a brand. You can’t just use the same content and hope that it will achieve the effect you desire. Every platform has a very different audience, with very different expectations, and a very different language. However, even though the delivery is different, you need to maintain some consistency across every platform to build brand recognition.

You also need to stand out and, as our recent blog post by Head of R&D Robert Beatus demonstrates, those that create strong positive emotions are the ones that drive ad awareness.

AI

A big topic that will undoubtedly be front and centre at events for the coming years was Artificial Intelligence. Mentioned in almost all sessions, even those focused on inclusivity and diversity, the main takeaway was that we should see it as a tool – It’s not here to take our jobs!

“This industry [marketing] will be busier than ever in 5 years“, said Brad Lightcap, COO Open AI.

It should be there to enable people to be even more creative, and push the limits of what is possible to achieve. For example when Dall-E was created people were worried that it would be the death of art. However, it’s led to the rise of impressionism and helped develop the art world further.

Inclusivity / Diversity

The final major theme was inclusiveness and diversity. No matter what kind of marketing activities or materials people are creating, these two things should be at the centre. Rather than act performatively, brands need to walk the talk – Be it including a wider range of people in leadership, a variety of people in production teams, or setting specific diversity KPIs. Bias is bad for business.

And that’s a wrap on 2023. We hope to see you there in 2024!

Karen Chandler

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Cadbury’s 2007 “Gorilla” campaign was a remarkable display of the power of emotions. Instead of relying on a brand message, product offering, or category-specific benefits, they instead took a bold approach by focusing purely on evoking strong feelings. The ad featured the iconic Cadbury purple as a backdrop, and showcased a large gorilla seated at a drum kit, skilfully playing the iconic drum solo from “In the air tonight”. Following its release, a staggering extra 20% of the UK population held a ‘favourable’ view of the brand. This impressive number firmly illustrates the immense influence of strong emotions in capturing consumer attention, and driving both short and long-term success.

In our recent blog post, “Have your cake and eat it: How brand building campaigns can drive both short and long-term sales”, we talked about how some companies earmark separate budgets for long-term brand building and short-term sales activation, and how an increasing number of brand-building creatives have been driving short-term sales by triggering these kind of emotions.

When we analysed our campaign performance database, we can clearly see campaigns with high emotional liking – the typical objective for brand building – not only drive a positive brand perception but also trigger call-to-action effects like purchases or website visits.

Campaigns with high ad-liking have a significantly higher short-term impact than campaigns with a lower score. The more an audience likes the creatives, the more inclined they are to act directly.

Which emotions should you trigger?

So what are the right emotions to trigger in a successful brand-building campaign? We again analysed our database, this time using our N-Emotion intelligence tool to look at the spectrum of emotions that were evoked across more than 3,000 campaigns. Even across the vast range of brands and industries, there were several common emotional factors that could be seen in campaigns that had a high ad-liking.

Firstly, regardless of how well executed an advertisement is in other aspects, if it leaves your audience with a feeling of irritation, scepticism, or distrust it will have a poor impact. Conversely, ads that leave people feeling happy, entertained, or high-energy tend to achieve average or higher performance levels. However, generally ‘happy’ is not enough by itself. An ad must also engage the audience. We see the the emotional barrier stopping ads reaching the top 20% of ads in our database as indifference or disinterest.

Only 5% of ads reached level 5; representing campaigns with the highest short and long-term interest. These are the make-or-break ads. Interestingly, here we find a significant number have taken a brave approach by successfully creating elements of surprise that evoke strong emotions. But striking the right balance is crucial. While some bold endeavours triumph others falter, sparking anger or unease. These ads tend to have no positive effects for the brand.

In conclussion

Triggering the right emotions makes an ad stick in the consumer’s mind, and it plays a crucial role in shaping brand perceptions. However, it is essential to strike the right balance in order to achieve the desired effects. Significant rewards are there if you can balance the tight-rope. A well-crafted emotional experience leads to a deeper processing of your ad, creating stronger associations between the campaign and your brand. Providing an emotional experience will also make consumers focus their attention on the content, thereby improving sender recall (which is one of the growing challenges in marketing communication). Furthermore, stronger associations increase the likelihood your brand will be front of mind in future purchase making decisions.

This post was written by Robert Beatus, Nepa’s Head of R&D.

Karen Chandler

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We are embarking on an exciting journey with our pioneering new artificial intelligence initiative. It’s part of our commitment to innovation, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, and shaping the future of technology.

By seamlessly integrating AI technologies into our operations we can unlock new levels of efficiency; streamlining workflows, automating repetitive tasks, and driving productivity gains. Our AI-driven solutions help to empower our organisation to maximise resource utilisation, minimise costs, and accelerate time-to-market, enabling us to stay one step ahead of our competition. We are currently under an explorative phase where multiple AI tools are being investigated to see which ones have the greatest impact, both on internal developments and client deliveries.

One of our development initiatives, Brand Noise Reduction, is based on an AI and machine learning model. It utilises pattern recognition and time series analysis to make our weekly Brand Tracking data both more accurate and granular. This ultimately enables our clients to make better, faster, data-based decisions.

Other explorations of AI solutions focus on predictive and prescriptive capabilities. Synthetic Respondent Solutions is one such area of investigation, whereby we will be leveraging the vast amount of historical brand tracking data we have collected over the years. Such a machine learning model could predict current KPIs based on historical trends, without the need of additional data collection. Another initiative we are running focuses on creating an AI solution that generates suggestions based on data and survey results.

Through this initiative, we are fostering an environment that encourages experimentation, prototyping, and knowledge-sharing. By continuously learning from our findings and experiences, we are shaping a future where AI plays a pivotal role in driving sustainable growth, delivering exceptional customer experiences, and fostering a more connected and intelligent world.

Robert Beatus

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To kick off our series on the ins and outs of brand tracking we are starting with the basics. More specifically, the types of business questions a brand tracker can answer. In our perspective here at Nepa, brand tracking is an essential business tool to make informed business decisions. Unfortunately, many companies tend to underuse their brand trackers. It’s often primarily used to measure KPIs for internal reports, with results only looked at every month or quarter. However, to stay ahead as a brand in an ever-evolving world, it is crucial to continuously measure, analyse and adapt your business strategies. Here is where really making the most of your tracker comes into play.

Tips to increase the value of your brand tracker: Check your measurements

A well-designed tracker can answer a broad set of business questions. These go beyond the basics of simply following some sort of brand funnel or key management KPIs such as consideration, preference, and purchase/usage perspectives. Some of the typical questions that a Nepa brand tracker can answer include:

Brand awareness: To what degree are people aware of your brand, and are your marketing efforts paying off?

Brand and competitor perception: How do people perceive your brand and your competitors? Are you seen as trustworthy or untrustworthy, innovative or old-fashioned? How do you compare to your competition?

Marketing impact: Are your marketing campaigns resonating with your target audience, and do they have a lasting effect? What actions should you take to optimise your marketing strategy?

Market drivers: Is your brand truly answering the needs and expectations of the market that are the true drivers of consideration or sales? Do you differentiate yourself on these factors when compared to your competition?

Customer loyalty: Are your customers more loyal to you or your competitors? What drives customer loyalty, and how can you improve customer retention?

Target audience: Who are the consumer groups that are most attracted to and purchase your brand, and how do they relate to the competing offerings out there?

Tips to increase the value of your brand tracker: Focus on core business questions

If you want to elevate your brand tracking and make it an even stronger business tool, there are some additional things to consider in choosing both set-up and supplier:

1. The set of attributes that you include in your tracking is crucial to define how your brand, and competing brands, is seen by your consumers. If the attributes measured are not truly comprehensive, it will give you the wrong picture of your brand’s position, increasing the risk of making wrong business decisions.

2. A continuous brand tracker is far more useful as a business tool than those performed periodically in dips quarterly, or even annually. With a continuous tracker, you get several advantages that are crucial in a world where constantly changing demands is the only thing you can be sure of. In addition, this approach creates a granular time-series of data that can be connected to other continuous data sources, such as sales, visits, etc. This then offers completely new arena of analytical possibilities using predictive modelling and econometrics.

3. Often when setting up a brand tracker a lot of focus, and rightly so, is on getting your competitor list right and deciding on which brand associations to include. Less time is spent on background questions, which offer the possibility to add further dimensions such as target groups or situational perspectives. What you miss if these questions are not relevant to your category and carefully considered is the possibility to take the analysis, and thus the value of the insights, to the next level.

4. The possibility to calculate the value or equity of your brand is something that some brand trackers claim to be able to do, but are they really? It is essential to use a tracking module that truly delivers on the need to understand brand value. We at Nepa pride ourselves with our Willingness to Pay module that truly delivers. It is based on cutting-edge conjoint methodology that has been adapted work alongside continuous brand tracking, offering you insights into the true value the market is applying to your brand compared to competing brands. It means no more guesswork, no strange index solutions that are hard to explain internally, just a simple figure measured in your own currencies.

5. Your supplier should be an expert at analysing tracking data. Challenge them, and if you do not get even more value from the data that you are already collecting, simply change the supplier. Don’t get caught up in a sunk coast fallacy.

In conclusion, brand tracking is an always-on measure of how your brand is performing and how your market, customers, and prospects are changing. To maximize the value of a tracker, choose a well-designed solution that can answer a broad set of business questions, and consider our additional tips to take it to the next level.

This post was co-written by Lars Pahlman, Senior Director, and Robert Beatus, Head of R&D.

Karen Chandler

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This post was guest authored by Jim Carlberg, who most recently held the role as Head of Marketing for telecom operator Tre/3.

“In early 2019, Tre had high brand awareness, but only 14% of the Swedish population would consider choosing us. Traditionally, we attracted customers with discounts, which impacted long-term margins and retention rates. Tre needed to make people really want to choose our brand again to get back to profitable growth.

So, we asked Nepa for help. We conducted extensive strategic work that resulted in a new strong foundation to build on; A completely different segmentation model for the market, new core target groups, updated definitions of drivers that create consideration, a revamped strategic position based on growth potential, and finally, a new communication concept.

The telecom industry in Sweden has often been associated with complex contracts, making it hard for people to compare operators. The analysis showed that a “simple, flexible, and helpful operator” would have a higher consideration – and this was attributes that most operators lacked. For us it suddenly became clear, we know Tre delivers on all these attributes, but our consumers didn’t.

Based on this insight we asked the question – How do we create a concept that both increases liking, consideration, and differentiates us from competitors?

We found the answer in Tre’s internal culture, which had been named among the top best workplaces in Sweden for several years in a row. With this as a starting point we could prove to the Swedish people who Tre really are, without making up an untrue story; the TREvliga operator (a wordplay with our brand name and the Swedish word for “friendly and nice”). Our new communication concept became effective because we chose to present what people look for in an operator whilst remaining true and unique to Tre. We removed all asterisks, avoided complicated terms, and pretentious words – we simply made it much more “Trevligt” for everyone.

Based on the clear direction and fresh insights from the work conducted with Nepa, we focused extensively on innovation and development over the next three years, launching products and services better suited to market needs, and marketed the brand and our offerings in a new and more interesting way.

“Trevligt” is now fully integrated in the business. It affects everything, from how we attract and onboard new employees, how we prioritize our roadmap for products and services, how we meet customers in all channels, and of course – our communicative expression and how we market Tre.

When “Trevligt” was launched, we managed to fill several needs with one approach. We started from something that was true for Tre, and that the entire company and culture could stand behind and live every day. We created something unique to the business that no other competitor could own. And we dramatized it in a way that broke through in an industry that is among the largest media buyers in Sweden, where everyone is essentially shouting about the same thing.

In other words, we questioned old truths, ignored what everyone else did, and aimed high on the value of building a strong brand from the inside out.

The results have been nothing but amazing. Brand consideration has increased from 14% to 18%, and Ad Liking doubled from an average 22% to 44% over the last campaign. The business is now flourishing – last year our customer base increased by 7.5%, with improved margins and profitability. Customer churn has decreased, and NPS increased by 12%. As a result of our new strategy, based on initial work with Nepa, last year we had the best financial year in Tre’s history since we started back in 2003.”

Jim’s top tips on how to best work with insights

Utilize market research to identify consumer needs: No more guesswork – to understand market trends and what’s really driving your customers behaviours is vital. Tre’s strategic work shaped our marketing and communication strategy, increasing all of our brand and business KPI’s.

Align marketing with brand values and culture: Tre used its top-rated company culture to create a communication strategy reflecting our values, differentiating us from competitors and resonating more with consumers.

Innovate based on insights and feedback: Tre’s focus on innovation and development, guided by market research and customer feedback, led us to increased satisfaction, reduced churn, and improved profitability.

About the author

Jim Carlberg is an experienced marketing executive, who most recently held the role as Head of Marketing for telecom operator Tre/3.

Karen Chandler

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These days, many companies earmark separate budgets for long-term brand building and short-term sales activation. However, here at Nepa we have been seeing an increasing number of examples, both in our own data and other meta studies, that successful brand building creatives can drive short-term sales too.

Consumers care less about what effects a campaign is designed to have, and more that it appeals to their current needs, views and personality Too much focus on finding the right split between long and short-term benefits could therefore result in less effective campaigns and ultimately lower ROIs.

More than a decade ago, evidence that most companies are underinvesting in brand building was successfully presented by Binet and Fields in their world-famous IPA paper “The Long and Short of It”, and marketers took note. The publication suggested companies need to balance their marketing between long-term brand building communication and shorter-term activation marketing, with a suggested average split of 60/40 in favour of longer-term objectives.

What does the latest research say?

In a recent piece of cross-media research Nepa conducted in conjunction with Meta, the results demonstrated that many channels yielded effects both in the short and long-term.

As seen above, most media types can contribute to both short and long-term effects, especially online video, social media, and display. The effect of long vs short is not only connected to media type but also the creative content in each media. So, this begs the question, can the same communication build both?

We see similar indications when looking at our data on campaign creatives. It shows ads that perform strongly on brand building KPIs are not only driving long-term effects, but also short-term ones.

A typical objective for brand building communications is to evoke a positive emotional reaction among the audience that can be connected back to the brand. Hence, “ad-liking” is usually seen as an important KPI for measuring brand building effects in ads. On the other hand, “persuasive message” with a “clear call to action” are usually seen as important KPIs for sales activation.

When we analysed our campaign performance database we can clearly see those campaigns with high emotional liking – the typical objective for brand building campaigns – are not only driving a positive brand perception, but they also trigger call to action effects, like purchases or website visits.

Based on more than 3,000 campaigns in Nepa’s database classified in levels 0-6 by average liking score from lowest to highest. The green curve shows the change in short-term ad impact compared to the previous level of ad liking.

Campaigns with high “ad-liking” have a significantly higher short-term impact than campaigns with a lower “ad-liking” score. The more an audience likes the creatives, the more inclined they are to act directly.

In summary, here at Nepa we have found evidence across different sources of data that successful brand building creatives can also help a company to drive short-term sales. Whilst focusing on both long-term brand building and short-term sales is important, we believe that businesses who focuses on creating the most effective messaging for their consumers will reach the perfect balance between long and short.

Written by Thomas Berthelsen and Robert Beatus, Nepa’s Heads of R&D

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Why your brand tracker sucks and how to fix it

Cajsa Wiren

Why are brand tracking tools underutilised?

The two types of brand trackers

How to create a business tool brand tracker

Blog Posts

Nepa at Cannes Lions Festival 2023

Karen Chandler

The key themes

Blog Posts

What is the value of emotions for a brand?

Karen Chandler

Which emotions should you trigger?

In conclussion

Blog Posts

Embracing AI for business success

Karen Chandler

Blog Posts

Unveiling the mystery of brand tracking: The top questions answered by trackers

Robert Beatus

Tips to increase the value of your brand tracker: Check your measurements

Tips to increase the value of your brand tracker: Focus on core business questions

Blog Posts

Tre’s brand revamp: Strategy for profitable growth

Karen Chandler

Jim’s top tips on how to best work with insights

About the author

Blog Posts

Have your cake and eat it: How brand building campaigns can drive both short and long-term sales

Karen Chandler

What does the latest research say?