The first step in designing a tracking study is to identify what your goal is and what you want to do with it.

Do you need a Brand Equity, Brand Health or Advertising Tracker?  Or some combination?

So let’s first define each…

Some researchers lump Brand Equity and Brand Health into the same bucket but they’re actually different.  Here’s how…

Brand Equity:

Brand Equity is a measure of the value of a brand.  That value is built on everything the brand goes to market with; name, logo, image, advertising, packaging, service, quality, price, performance, availability, etc.  In very practical terms, it is why a consumer will choose one brand over another, and why in some instances, even pay a price premium for that brand.

MSW’s CC Brand Preference™ measure is a proven, independently validated measure of brand value.

Brand Health:

Brand Health is how the brand got here and where can it go in the future.  Brand Health can be made up of many measures depending on the objectives; awareness, consideration, perceptions, our Brand Franchise Analysis (a segmentation technique that looks at Loyalty, Repertoire usage, Lapsed, Rejectors, Attracted, Indifferent, and Hostile), our RDE Analysis (which looks at Relevance, Differentiation and Emotion), etc.  Examining trends is also an important part of Brand Health.  All of this is what informs and creates the actionability of a well designed tracker.

And there’s also Advertising Tracking to consider:

Advertising Tracking measures the performance of a brand’s communications.  How well is it working to move consumers to consider, use, or use more of your brand.  And how to optimize messaging, media, and weight.

With these definitions in mind, the first step is to align this with your goals.

We can help.  At MSW we provide insights derived from proven, brand growth oriented KPI’s; innovative tracking analytics that empower you to grow your brand by demonstrating how to:

• Retain current customers,
• Acquire new customers, and
• Improve the return on your marketing investment.

Contact us to learn more.

In our last Chart of the Week we started looking at the Subscription Video Streaming Services category and specifically the pandemic winner – HBO Max.  This week we’re taking a deep dive and examining the Pre/Post Pandemic Penetration and Usage by demographics.

The MSW TBSM tracking service measures category penetration and level of usage as one component of the survey.  A comparison of results taken before the beginning of the pandemic to a comparable assessment from May 2021 reveals explosive growth in the Subscription Streaming Video Services category.

• Overall, category penetration increased from 75.4% to 86.6%, which represents a 15% increase.  Moreover, claimed heavy usage increased by over half during the pandemic, from 18.5% before the outbreak to 29.2% in May 2021.  Clearly, as a result of spending much more time at home during the pandemic, people were turning to video entertainment.

• Those demographic groups which have seen particularly large gains include:
  • Women, with heavy usage of streaming video services more than doubling.
  • Age 55 Plus, which had the lowest pre-pandemic penetration, but closed the gap substantially, reaching penetration of 70% in the latest reading.
  • Below Median Income, clearly also looking for entertainment options and perhaps enticed by some of the newer services, particularly lower cost “basic” plans.

• Clearly these results are consistent with the surge in subscription levels reported by the major subscription streaming video services for 2020:
  • Netflix added 37 million new subscribers worldwide in 2020 – easily the largest annual increase since expanding into video streaming 14 years ago.
  • Hulu added 9 million new subscriptions, a 29.6% year-over-year increase.
  • While Disney+ debuted with very strong numbers pre-pandemic, growth continued to surge through the pandemic. The service hit 100 million subscribers in March 2021; a remarkable feat for a service just over a year old which initially hoped to reach 60 to 90 million subscribers by 2024.
  • At the end of the first quarter of 2021, HBO and HBO Max totaled 44.2 million domestic subscribers – far exceeding the 33.1 million subscribers a year ago (before HBO Max).

While subscriber growth is seen to be slowing with the easing of the pandemic, it is clear the pandemic accelerated the trend toward the use of streaming services, particularly among those groups which had been slower to adopt the technology.

MSW’s RDE Analytic Framework rests on a study that found that three equity dimensions (Relevance, Differentiation, Emotion) are responsible for driving a significant portion of brand growth. The RDE composite strongly relates to – and helps explain – CCPreference which itself is a validated predictor of market share.

Comparing RDE Assessment taken before the pandemic to comparable assessment from May 2021 reveals one brand in the Subscription Video Streaming Services category that has emerged as a winner – HBO Max.

• HBO Max was launched in May 2020 well after the COVID pandemic was underway. It essentially replaced the previous HBO streaming service, HBO Now, but with a huge amount of new content from a variety of WarnerMedia brands.
• Despite RDE levels being generally depressed as a result of the pandemic, HBO Max RDE levels easily surpass HBO Now pre-pandemic levels.
  • HBO Max easily outstrips HBO Now on all three RDE dimensions.
  • HBO Max is particularly strong in terms of relevance meaning that SVOD consumers feel that the HBO Max service is for someone like them.

• HBO Max also far exceeds HBO Now in terms of CCPreference – the percent of consumers preferring HBO Max over competitors in the subscription streaming services category. This suggests that HBO Max should be performing well in the marketplace. How has it done?
• HBO Max’s strength is its large and varied TV and movie catalog. In addition, Warner Brothers has been releasing its 2021 movies on HBO Max simultaneous with the theatrical release which has proven very popular.
  • At the end of the first quarter of 2021, HBO and HBO Max totaled 44.2 million domestic subscribers – far exceeding the 33.1 million subscribers a year ago (before HBO Max).
  • A report from Reelgood indicated HBO’s share of streaming activity rose from 2.0% in Q1 of 2020 (pre-HBO Max) to 12% in Q4 2020, placing HBO Max ahead of Disney+ and behind only Netflix, Prime Video and Hulu.
• This success – mirrored by extremely strong CCPreference growth – has come despite a soft launch which slowly added support for many popular streaming devices, the COVID pandemic and accompanying economic downturn, and ever-increasing competition in the streaming video space.

The RDE composite is strongly related to brand preference in this category, with a correlation of 0.96