Brand tracking, but make it real-time: How modern teams monitor brand health without the lag

New brand messaging or rebrand ideas are always a bit of a risk, but early consumer feedback prevents over-investing in the wrong ones. The problem is that lagging indicators tell brands what has already happened, and while data does have a place in marketing, knowing what is happening right now is more important.

Modern marketing teams need modern tools that provide real-time brand intelligence. Here, we look at how leading teams are shifting away from traditional brand trackers to tools that provide faster insights and discuss: 

• How delays and quarterly tracking create blind spots and missed opportunities

• Why real-time, continuous readouts on brand health matter to internal stakeholders

• A modern alternative that is modular, customizable and offers actionable insights throughout campaigns

We can’t see what’s happening to our brand in real time—how do we fix that? 

Quick take: Quarterly tracking creates blind spots between campaigns and strategy shifts, making it unviable for today’s consumer expectations. 

Quarterly, or even monthly, reports on marketing campaigns leave marketing teams in the dark for too long. More damage can be done to the brand’s reputation during the lag time, or conversely, marketing teams can miss an opportunity to improve brand reach and reputation. 

Shifting a strategy can feel like a gamble, and waiting weeks to understand if the changes had a positive impact put too much at stake. A shift in marketing strategy can be expensive, and understanding exactly what’s happening in real-time is one way to mitigate the expense by limiting it if necessary. 

Traditional brand monitoring tools provide quarterly results, which means you know three months after kicking off a campaign how well or how poorly things are going. Three months is a life-time in the modern environment. 

In a world where you can order a product and have it delivered within hours, get replies to messages within seconds and look up answers to nearly any question you can imagine instantly, three months simply won’t do when it comes to monitoring your brand health. In industries like consumer packaged goods (CPG) and quick serve restaurants (QSR), where timelines for supply and demand are compressed, having insights immediately is imperative. 

A well-known example of how greatly this can have an impact on any industry is from 2010 when Gap unexpectedly rolled out a new logo, ditching its iconic blue box for a minimalist Helvetica design. The reaction was immediate and overwhelmingly negative. Social media users, designers, and loyal customers slammed the redesign as bland and unnecessary. Within six days, Gap scrapped the new look and brought back the original logo.

What went wrong? The brand didn’t test the change or track how consumers felt about its identity. With proper brand tracking Gap might’ve realized how much equity was tied to its original logo. Instead, the lack of insight turned a rebrand into a PR crisis.

“We’ve learned just how much energy there is around our brand. All roads are leading us back to the blue box."

- Gap

💡 Zappi in action: Always-on brand tracking delivers continuous readouts on brand health metrics like awareness, consideration and perception gap. At Zappi, we are working to help our clients uncover problems faster and identify opportunities easily with real time brand health KPI trackers. And the best part? These tools are affordable. Keep up with key indicators like awareness, behavioral loyalty, competitor insights and more. 

How do we know if our campaign actually moved the needle? 

Quick take: Most teams rely on reporting that comes too late to act, and internal stakeholders want proof of brand lift—fast.

“Memorable marketing moments—the ones that we share and recall over time—tend to steal the spotlight because of their creative magic. Behind the scenes, it takes marketers building muscle to help make those moments happen. Stretch. Strengthen. Repeat.” - Deloitte Global Chief Marketing Officer and Deloitte US CMO, Suzanne Kounkel, in Brand Finance 

Relying on post-campaign reporting takes away your team’s ability to adjust at crucial moments, simply because those moments have already passed! This is particularly important when internal stakeholders want proof that your concept or campaign is working. Using real time brand tracking tools gives you the information you need to show brand lift or to adjust when an idea isn’t working as expected.

💡 Zappi in action: You can get fast-turn insights on the brand impact of new creative, activations or launches in real-time with our Brand Health KPI Trackers.

As we covered above, traditional models are based on what has already happened. Zappi provides continuous feedback throughout the development lifecycle with our brand tracker so you can test, analyze, optimize, create and repeat in a continuous loop that provides a flexible process lacking in outdated models. 

What’s a modern alternative to brand trackers that take forever and cost a fortune? 

Quick take: Traditional trackers are built for another era: with long lead times, locked designs and agency bottlenecks.

“At the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Bob Dylan went electric. He plugged his guitar into an amp and proceeded to play his first all-electric set. The chords were the same as before, but the arrangements were new—a new sound for a new age.” -Mckinsey, 2020

In 2020, before AI really hit the scene, the experts at Mckinsey recommended brands reassess their strategies and “go electric” with an emphasis on trustworthiness. Understanding what consumers want and expect is key to gaining and keeping their trust. Frictionless access to real time data provides that critical information.

💡 Zappi in action: What if you could get modular, self-serve tracking tailored to your business—not someone else’s norms? 

One of the issues with older brand trackers is that they are one-size-fits-all, or to be more accurate, one-size-fits-few. Zappi offers modular technology that allows you to tailor your brand tracking tools to your business. Meaning you’ll have less clutter to deal with and a solution that’s easier on your budget. 

How do we make brand health insights more actionable for internal teams? 

Quick take: Research teams often get stuck translating brand data into business language rather than the consumer’s language. 

“The disconnect between those who manage data and those who use it for business decisions is becoming increasingly apparent. Technology experts often focus on databases, algorithms, and data structures, while decision-makers prioritize KPIs, market trends, and strategic objectives.” - Forbes

Having data and using data to make decisions are two different things, and marketing and insights teams can get stuck between them. Brand health data covering a wide set of indicators can be complex and difficult to parse. 

Worse, sometimes indicators can seem contradictory. Instead of pointing in a clear direction they seem to show that no direction is the right direction. When data is out of context, or presented in a chaotic way, it’s almost as bad as when it is weeks out-of-date. 

💡 Zappi in action: Intuitive dashboards and shareable insights designed for marketers, not just researchers.

The difference between seeing lines of data on a spreadsheet and seeing that same information represented in a chart can be the difference between making a confident decision quickly and needing time to think and analyze and debate. In a fast-moving campaign, that time can mean money and opportunity lost. 

Zappi’s brand tracking dashboards present data in ways that make sense and provide context. Teams can even see metrics based on country, category, brand and other benchmarks that are updated as the information comes in.

Real time brand health data, presented clearly and with context, means messaging, product, ideas and more can be tested, optimized and tested again in a continuous feedback loop that reduces the risk of slowing down development or over-investing in the wrong concepts. 

Zappi offers an agile, self-serve system that allows teams to get the information they need instead of the information a big, expensive agency thinks they should have.