The 26th edition of the annual CMO survey conducted in February 2021 for the American Marketing Association by Deloitte, identified that the importance of Marketing had increased during the pandemic.  CMOs said that they were focused on brand building and reported 5 specific “Objectives”.

MSW Research directly addresses each of these “5 CMO Objectives” with unique measurements that enhance your insights process; measurements all founded upon the evidence based, MSW Predictive Brand Growth Marketing Model™…

The “5 CMO Objectives” and how MSW addresses each with, a Philosophical Framework, specific Applications/Products/Services, and the Evidenced Based Proof that supports this:

“CMO Objective” Number 1:  Building Brand Value That Connects with Customers

Two elements of the MSW Marketing Model that address this CMO ”Objective”:

1:  Brand Relationships; existing brand relationships drive Brand Preference.  MSW uses a segmentation model that places every individual into one of eight groups for each brand in the category.  We utilize a relationship decision tree to identify the strength of the brand relationship with customers.

2:  Brand Perceptions; all successful brands have a set of distinctive brand assets (sensory cues: color, logo, design, character, jingle, etc.) that aid memory encoding and act as signals to enhance availability.  Additionally, all brands also have a differentiated positioning (a reason to be).

Framework and Research Objectives:

• Category whitespace and market need priorities-Decoder™
• Brand lift opportunities in competitive context-BrandScape™
• Preference shift linked to short term sales and long-term brand equity-The Brand Strength Monitor™
• Ongoing campaign and individual message/medium brand lift in competitive context-Advertising Performance Monitor™
• Pre and post campaign message and media effectiveness-Touchpoint™

Applications/Products/Services:

• A&U – Decoder™
• Brand Purpose – BrandScape™
• Brand Equity Tracking – The Brand Strength Monitor™
• Early-Stage Message Screening – Sifter™

Evidence Based Proof that Supports this:

• Of the points that support this objective, one that stands out in particular because of its validation as a predictive indicator of brand health and sales is our RDE Analytic Framework™, which measures Relevance, Differentiation and Emotion.  RDE™ has been proven to grow brands based on 17 years of experience, with 3,500,000+ individual brand evaluations, across 400+ categories, for 2,000+ brands, in 44 countries.

“CMO Objective” Number 2:  Increasing Awareness

Every piece of brand communication needs to build awareness. At MSW, we have proven methods to effectively measure awareness and determine the contribution to the memory structure that drives saliency and brand association.

Framework and Research Objectives:

• Ongoing campaign and individual message/medium awareness and preference lift in competitive context-Advertising Performance Monitor
• Pre and post campaign message and media effectiveness-Touchpoint

Applications/Products/Services:

• Development / Copy Testing – TouchPoint™
• Advertising Performance Tracking – APM™

Evidence Based Proof that Supports this:

• Saliency, as measured by Top-of-Mind Awareness, is a stronger predictor of sales than Aided Awareness (average R2 = 0.70 vs. 0.44). Simply improving a brand’s TOM Awareness can often lead to an increase in market share.  We see this in the correlation between TOM Awareness and sales.  TOM Awareness is usually the second most accurate predictor of sales after our CC Brand Preference measure, which is independently proven to correlate at .94.

“CMO Objective” Number 3:  Acquiring New Customers

Evidence shows that the primary driver of brand growth is penetration, all other growth mechanisms are secondary. New customers can be acquired though promotional activity, but these gains tend to be short lived. A more successful longer-term strategy is to invest in brand building, and evidence shows that message quality is the most impactful element when explaining changes in market share.

Framework and Research Objectives:

• Customer Acquisition Forecast and sales from advertising

Applications/Products/Services:

• Development / Copy Testing – TouchPoint™
• Advertising Performance Tracking – APM™

Evidence Based Proof that Supports this:

• Research conducted by MSW on its database of advertising has found that 52% of changes in market share can be explained by ad quality.  Media explains 13% of market share changes and a variety of other factors explain 35% of the changes.  The importance of ad quality is undeniable, and our validated, proven and in 2 cases Patented, advertising development tools such as CC Brand Preference™, CC Brand Persuasion™, RDE Analytic Framework™ and Outlook® Media Mix Optimization & Market Share Forecast Model™ deliver high quality advertising.

“CMO Objective” Number 4:  Retaining Customers

This was the primary activity of more CMOs than any other in the 2021 CMO survey.  The pandemic was a shock to the system, but brand loyalty has been declining for years along with trust in brands.  MSW’s brand tracking studies show that approximately half the consumers in any given category are not loyal to any one brand.

An entire industry has been built to measure Customer Satisfaction, and to help companies improve their Satisfaction scores, yet customer loyalty continues to decline.  This has led people to question the value of customer satisfaction and to recognize that the real goal is Loyalty.

For MSW Research, the key to addressing this objective is the ability to accurately measure human emotional response to brands and their messaging, combined with measurement of various brand relationship segments.

Framework and Research Objectives:

• Loyalty shifts among various brand relationship segments-The Brand Strength Monitor
• Preference Shift linked to traffic, sales, etc.-The Brand Strength Monitor

Applications/Products/Services:

• Brand Equity Tracking – The Brand Strength Monitor™
• Brand Franchise Analysis™
• Persuadables Segmentation Analysis℠

Evidence Based Proof that Supports this:

• Our data shows that Brand Loyalty is affected by how each brand interaction makes consumers feel.  The MSW brand relationship model captures attitudinal loyalty and allows us to understand the drivers of loyalty. A battery of emotional response measurement tools drills down to provide exact direction to activate these drivers.

“CMO Objective” Number 5:  Improving Marketing ROI

Most importantly of all, brand and marketing investment must create brand preference over competitive offerings, which propels sustainable and longer-term financial value and growth.

Framework and Research Objectives:

• Continuous measurement – The Brand Strength Monitor
• Point-in-time measurement – Touchpoint 360

Applications/Products/Services:

• Brand Equity Tracking – The Brand Strength Monitor™
• Outlook® Media Mix Optimization & Market Share Forecast Model™

Evidence Based Proof that Supports this:

• MSW Brand Preference explained more of the variation in sales across a study of 120 brands in 12 categories over 18 months than other classic market research metrics.  MSW Brand Preference is a measure of Long-Term Brand Equity and it explains most, but not all, changes in brand sales; but we still have a Market Gap that is explained by other factors.
• The link between MSW Brand Preference and Sales has been presented to the ARF and AMA, written about in The Economist, The International Finance Review, The Journal of Brand Management and CFO Magazine, and has been discussed with The International Accounting Standards Board and incorporated into the ISO definition of Brand Equity.

Conclusion

The 5 CMO “Objectives” can be summarized by one illustration.

All brands have potential, not all are living up to that potential.  We help brands identify the reasons for the gap between their Performance and their Potential and provide guidance to help close the gap.

In addition to helping brands meet their current potential we uncover opportunities for brands to expand their future potential.