No one wants to hear that the car that has always felt safe and comfortable now needs a major overhaul. When the ride has always been smooth, it’s hard to believe that the engine will soon be straining to get the car up hills. But for those of us behind the wheel of continuous tracking, that's how it feels at the moment. We are still moving forward well enough, but signs we pass along the road are warning of tough conditions ahead. Are the wheels really going to fall off around the next bend?

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But for those of us behind the wheel of continuous
tracking, that’s how it feels at the moment.We
are still moving forward well enough, but signs
we pass along the road are warning of tough
conditions ahead. Are the wheels really going to
fall off around the next bend?
The Drive So Far
Continuous tracking was invented by Maurice
Millward and Gordon Brown in the 1970s
to address specific client questions. Clients
commissioned our early studies because they
needed insight and actionable advice about
marketplace events, such as the launch of
new competitors or the start of new advertising
campaigns, and continuous tracking enabled
them to make informed marketing decisions that
helped grow their brands.
In time this longitudinal data also proved its
value by revealing the underlying dynamics
of how marketing worked. It became clear, for
instance, that the majority of ads did not wear
out in the way marketers anticipated, and that
the most important attributes in a category are
often the most difficult to change. Learning built
up around the measures and how they could be
used to predict the sales impact of marketing
activity. Over time, another distinct use for
tracking emerged: to monitor Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs) on an ongoing basis. Because
tracking was proving to be so valuable, the
demand for tracking studies increased, and soon
they became an essential part of the marketing
and research landscape.
Challenges Past and Present
Tracking continued to be an invaluable tool in the
decades that followed. But as marketers relied
on it more and more, some problems became
apparent. For example, the dual purposes of
tracking cited above (tracking advertising as well
as monitoring KPIs) created tensions. As KPI
output from tracking became part of dashboards
and was reported to senior management, the
focus on the immediate actionability of tracking
data was often relegated to the backseat. This
in turn led to questions about the need for such
large studies to produce top-line metrics.
Tracking’s versatility, when exploited, actually
became a drawback. Tracking studies seemed
to be convenient vehicles for carrying any and
all questions related to marketing, but as the
studies were loaded up, they became unwieldy.
At the same time, pressure on costs led to a
reduction of sample sizes, limiting fast, reliable
Tracking at the Crossroads
No one wants to hear that the car that has always felt safe and comfortable
now needs a major overhaul. When the ride has always been smooth, it’s
hard to believe that the engine will soon be straining to get the car up hills.
Gordon Pincott
Chairman,Global Solutions

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feedback. Forced to carry more weight with
a less powerful engine, the tracking study
struggled to perform as it once had.
Tracking also encountered new challenges as
the media and research environments changed.
For example, a major need has emerged in
the last few years: to evaluate the performance
of media channels. Existing multipurpose
tracking studies can provide a high-level read
on two or three major media, but sample sizes
and questionnaire space limit the depth of the
analysis. Similarly, the broad definition of a
tracking sample and the limited sample size
make it difficult to give detailed guidance on
many digital campaigns.
One of the most recent challenges to tracking
is the ready availability of data scraped from
the Web. Online data—from social media in
particular—provides cheap continuous feedback
about brands and their marketing. Thus some
advertisers have new reasons to question the
value of large-scale tracking surveys.
The View at the Crossroads
The signs are clear: The world is changing and
research needs to change with it. Respondents
are harder to reach, especially those in the most
desirable demographic groups, and they don’t
want to engage with long, repetitious surveys.
We need to adjust to that reality.
But not every blinking light warns of a real
hazard. For example, unstructured data from
online sources is not going to nullify the need
for structured survey data. Social media data is
crucially important for certain types of brands,
such as those that conduct business online, and
service brands that have customer or community
relationships to manage. But for most brands,
coverage on social media is typically at a low
level, is often generated by a vocal minority,
and frequently relates to events (marketing or
otherwise) rather than to the brand itself.
While this information has value, if it is
evaluated in isolation it may present a distorted
and partial view. Businesses need to know what
is changing, and a self-appointed online group
will not usually provide the consistent frame of
reference that is needed to discern if real change
is occurring.
The Way Ahead
To compete in today’s fast-moving, competitive,
and complex markets, brand stewards need
regular, timely, and reliable feedback. Now more
than ever, they need to monitor the underlying
long-term trajectory of their brands as well as
the short-term effects of in-market activity.
The question is how to capture this information
most efficiently.
Many improvements and modifications have
already been made to tracking over the years.
In web-based markets, the look and feel of tracking
studies have changed enormously. Questions are
designed to make interviews more engaging and
enjoyable for respondents, and questionnaires
have been shortened. Further remodeling is
already under way, as interviews on mobile phones
need to be shorter still.
But old-style tracking has never been able to cover
every aspect of marketing activity, nor was it best
placed to do so. As the pressure on questionnaires
to become shorter has increased, it has become
obvious that there are better ways of tackling some
of the important marketing questions.

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Reengineering for High
Performance
We need to think about moving from“tracking
studies”to“brand performance programs.”A
single study can no longer answer all marketing
questions, but a brand performance program
can employ the individual tools that are best
suited to address each issue. To understand
how a new ad campaign has broken through,
a program can include a short study, executed
over two or three days, with a robust sample. To
quantify the contribution of individual channels
to short- and long-term sales, a program
can have a CrossMedia study running over
the duration of the campaign with enough
questionnaire space to ask the relevant media
questions.
A program, however, cannot be a series of
disconnected ad hoc projects; the components
of the program must provide a platform for
integrated storytelling. They should be glued
together by the brand, not just conceptually
but by consistent brand measures selected
by the brand and research teams to address
the central questions, such as how marketing
activities are expected to influence the brand
and what attitudes or ideas about the brand
need to be changed. The components of a
research program will vary according to brand,
category, and circumstances, but an effective
program should include the following elements:
Adetailedunderstandingofbrandequity
Underpinning the entire program and dictating its
components should be brand equity insights that
identify the process through which associations
build brand equity and how that equity manifests
itself in the financial performance of the brand.
This understanding will make it clear what
marketing actions need to be taken and what
KPIs need to be captured in the ongoing
monitoring of brand performance.
A continuous monitor
The second essential piece will be a sleek
continuous monitor of the KPIs that signal changes
in the health of the brand. For web-enabled studies
(via computers or mobile devices), the results will
flow automatically to a web-delivered dashboard.
Pen-and-paper markets will need more manual
intervention but will still be able to input the data
to a dashboard via an automated analysis engine.
This monitor will cost less than a traditional tracking
study, thus freeing up funds to be deployed against
other elements of the program.
Insights into channel effectiveness and
creative power
CrossMedia studies and digital deep dives can
identify the effectiveness of channels. Feedback
on executions and campaigns can be provided
either continuously or on an intermittent, fast-
turnaround basis immediately after the start of
the campaign. Either method will allow timely
adjustments to be made if necessary. A complete
picture of the brand activities will need to harness
social media data as well as survey data.
A single study can no longer
answerallmarketingquestions,
but a program can apply the
individual tools that are best-
suited to address each issue.

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Ready for the Road Ahead
Cars today serve the same purpose as cars
40 years ago. But today’s cars look and feel
different; they go faster, they’re more efficient,
and the components and technology that power
them have radically changed.
And just as cars have evolved to meet today’s
driving conditions, research solutions must be
adapted for the complexity of our current era.
Brand performance programs are, in spirit, totally
in tune with the idea that gave birth to tracking
40 years ago. Action oriented and designed
to give timely advice on important investment
decisions, brand performance programs will
provide a set of linked solutions, each solution
chosen because it is the best one to answer a
specific question. They will harness the latest
available technology to be cost-efficient and
timely. And because the most crucial factors for
the category will be identified early on through
detailed brand equity work, the questionnaires
that make up the rest of the program can be
short and tightly focused.
When designed and implemented effectively,
brand performance programs will help brands
negotiate the complex interchanges faced at
every point of decision-making. Moving smoothly
down the highway, through a landscape of
challenging and changing conditions, they will
carry brands safely and efficiently to profitable
outcomes.
To read more about research solutions,
please visit www.mb-blog.com.
If you enjoyed“Tracking at the
Crossroads,”you might also be
interested in:
“Brand Equity: What’s Price Got to Do
with it?”
“The Keys to Brand Success”
“Is the Internet Information-rich and
emotion-poor?”
“The big risk of big data”
“To get a God’s-eye view of human
behavior you have to ask”
Research solutions must be
adapted for the complexity of
our current era.