Survey-led brand tracking is a constant trade-off between accuracy and cost. The larger the sample size, the more reliable the insights, but invariably the larger the budget required. Nepa’s AI Trend Boost is your solution.

This revolutionary machine-learning based approach takes historical tracking data, analyses context and covariance between key variables, and then creates a model with the same accuracy as a sample with five times the data. It also reduces sampling variances by up to 75%, bringing you closer than ever to your consumer.

– Offers a 5 times increase in the depth and granularity of your data

– Enhances low incidence target groups to create meaningful business insights

– Produces insights with the smoothness of a moving average, combined with the responsiveness of near-time data

How does AI Trend Boost Work?

If you have a small sample, unboosted raw data in your brand tracker can have notable weekly shifts. How do you make confident business decisions when you can’t tell what’s a concrete trend, and what is simply noise?

AI Trend Boost uses a proprietary algorithm to analyse several key data variables and past-time series data to generate an accurate model for your brand’s KPIs. It learns and improves over time – the more data it is given, the more refined its predictions become, making it an invaluable tool to optimise your brand’s performance and stay ahead of trends.

In almost all simulated cases, the output of a tracker with AI Trend Boost applied is far superior to a simple moving average in terms of real-life population trend accuracy, including in those with decreased sample sizes. Error metrics are reduced by up to 75%.

Plus, AI Trend Boost is easy to integrate into our core Brand Trackers, letting you effectively enhance your insights with a single click​.

Industry recognition for AI Trend Boost

AI Trend Boost’s Brand Noise Reduction methodology has been recognised by industry experts as cutting-edge technology, and it is trusted by the biggest global brands including IKEA.

“Applying Nepa’s Brand Noise Reduction algorithm to Marketing Mix Modelling really gives us peace of mind that we’re making decisions based on the best data possible.”​

​Brinda Matthew​, Head of Brand Marketing Performance, IKEA Canada​

ESOMAR Congress is over for another year, and what a Congress it was for Nepa. Artificial Intelligence was the buzz word of the week, with sessions on topics such as using predictive analytics and natural language processing to revolutionise your marketing strategy and unlocking travel’s new frontier with AI-powered dream destination bookings. And we were also there to talk AI!

The Young ESOMAR Society (YES) Awards

Nepa Data Scientist Valere Demelier was chosen as one of the nine brightest young research minds to present at this year’s conference. A 60-second pitch was voted on by conference attendees, and the three with the most votes were invited back the next day to showcase their full presentation.

Valere’s topic was the one on everyone’s lips at the event – Artificial Intelligence. He showcased a project he worked on with a large global retailer who wanted to learn more about what their key personas searched for online.

AI and machine learning were used to cluster millions of search terms into specific segments, identifying which topics each digital consumer profile was interested in. Not only did machine learning speed up the analysis, but using GPT technology made the reporting more accurate.

Valere won silver for his presentation.

“This year I was invited to ESOMAR Congress 2023 as a YES awards finalist, where I was delighted to have won the silver award. The congress was an incredible experience filled with inspiring presentations, innovative research projects, and new friends.

Amongst the many incredible papers presented one of my favourites was the brilliant “Uncovering the Human Voice for Deep Insights”. This presentation elegantly explored how consumers build relationships with brands they interact and over time develop “Brand Love”. The integration of market research and psychology concepts as well as advanced language modelling techniques created a compelling story rooted in sound research methods and powerful conclusions and real-world implications.”, said Valere.

The New Marketing Renaissance

Nepa‘s R&D Manager Cajsa Wirén joined forces with Klarna Bank‘s Global Consumer Insights Manger to present their talk on how to merge the creative with the technical.

There are high demands on marketers today. They need to produce content of such high quality that people actively want to consume it, whilst understanding the technicalities of tailoring content to the multitude of different channels. They also simultaneously need to not get lost in all the choices, and overlook the fundamentals for a successful campaign, be it objectives, measurement KPIs or execution: a true DaVincian feat!

The talk covered how new techniques can be applied to Marketing Mix Modeling to specifically measure creative quality, thereby providing insights on how this quality relates directly back to market effectiveness.

The full paper can be found here.

Dynata RISE Awards 2023

Nepa won the Market Research Agency category (EMEA) in Dynata’s 2023 RISE awards. Nepa’s Chief Product Officer Robert Beatus collected the trophy that assessed Dynata’s best-performing clients, with a focus on respondent engagement.
Read more about this award here.

Nepa’s Interim CEO Ferry Wolswinkel commented: “This was my first year at ESOMAR Congress, and what a first year it was. I was immensely proud to see Nepa’s Data Scientist Valere earn a well-deserved silver medal at the YES Awards, and receiving Dynata’s RISE award is truly a testament of the hard work put into our surveys by our teams globally.

I would also like to thank Klarna’s Karin Haglund for joining R&D Manager Cajsa Wiren on the Supercharger stage to present ‘The New Marketing Renaissance’. Such an inspiring session by both”.

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.

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.