Tracking hasn’t changed in decades. In today’s reality, it raises more questions than it answers. That’s because it usually sits in a silo, disconnected from the data and real-world context that gives it meaning. It’s time to elevate your tracker from isolated measurement to a tool that delivers comprehensive, nuanced understanding of your brand’s place in the market. Connected with contextual information and timely data streams, tracking can power your entire research system and inform smarter, faster decision making. Greg Rice, Managing Director and leader of all things tracking at Kelton Global, has put together best practices and new ideas to turn your tracker into a mission-critical business tool. In this, he explains how proprietary research shaped this approach by understanding which metrics truly correlate with business growth, and show you how to connect your tracker to the contextual trends, influences and factors that most impact brand health. You’ll learn: • How to incorporate context throughout each stage of the tracking process. • Which metrics most impact market cap growth. • How to use contextual information to explain data discrepancies • Best practices for developing custom KPI’s. • How to present findings so that they stick with your audience.

1. 1 | CONFIDENTIAL
RETHINK
YOUR
TRACKER
Get more from your
tracking system.

2. 2 | CONFIDENTIAL2 | CONFIDENTIAL
Hi, I’m Greg
from Kelton

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Kelton is an insights + strategy consultancy.
By fusing research with strategy and design, we transform insights into business solutions.

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Scenario 1: You’re in the room presenting your tracking findings to eager stakeholders.
Consideration really took off over the summer – great!

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Scenario 1: You’re in the room presenting your tracking findings to eager stakeholders.
…but then someone points out that sales are flat.

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Scenario 2: You report that, while purchase intent is flat, your brand is building
momentum and a sense that it is more authentic.

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…But then the CMO asks
“Why should I care about
those other measures when
purchase intent is flat?"
Scenario 2: You report that, while purchase intent is flat, your brand is building
momentum and a sense that it is more authentic.

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The Trouble With Tracking.
Tracking hasn’t changed in decades.
It can be static, uninspired, and disconnected from what’s
important to your business.
Traditional Tracking:
• Sits in a silo, disconnected from the real world context that
give findings meaning.
• Treats all metrics the same, without a perspective on which
ones really matter to the health of your brand.
• Focuses rigidly on your brand and category, without the
flexibility to adapt to changing consumer needs or trends.

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Tracking is typically seen as a standalone study. But when it’s actually
done right, your tracker can power your entire research system.
Disconnected Information
Connected Insight
Streams of information link and build
to uncover real understanding
Brand
Tracking
Social Media
Analytics:
Unstructured
social
conversations
Cultural
Insights:
Future focused
cultural trends
Qualitative
Tools:
Richer human
understanding
Marcom:
Creative
recognition
and media
weight
Business Data (sales, traffic, leads)
Brand Tracking
Social Media Monitoring
Other Research
Business Data:
KPIs

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Good journalists know
the power of CONTEXT.

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Leverage context to modernize your tracker throughout the study process,
from beginning to end.
Build a better
tracking tool
Widen the
analysis toolkit
Disrupt
delivery
START FINISH

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Build A Better Tracking Tool
Ask questions that matter.
B E F O R E YO U R S T U DY

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Our quest to find the tracking metrics that
best relate to brand growth.
In 2016, we tested a suite of tracking metrics and correlated each
one against these brands’ long-term (four-year market cap) growth.
The study covered 17 categories and 40 brands, and we focused on
categories where the main brand of the company was aligned to the
company name/stock listing.
A few of the brands
included in our study:
BEFORE YOUR STUDY

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There’s no substitute for being top of mind.
BEFORE YOUR STUDY

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Be harder on yourself (AKA dump the “probably” box).
Average difference is .09 correlation points
BEFORE YOUR STUDY
CorrelationWith4YearMarketCapGrowth
Measure Number

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Favorite brand, asked exclusively, is the best way to tackle consideration.
BEFORE YOUR STUDY
0.43
0.38
0.31

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When it comes to brand health,
Character counts.
Character is an increasingly important aspect of
brand health – and directly relates to market cap growth.
BEFORE YOUR STUDY
Character:
the combination of
rich values that
define a brand and
provide a powerful
sense of purpose.

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Is a brand that is consistent wherever you find it 0.48
Is a brand that is authentic 0.44
Is a brand I trust 0.38
Is a brand that is honest with its customers 0.35
Is a brand that I know exactly what it stands for 0.29
Brands with Character are:
1) Dependable and transparent.
BEFORE YOUR STUDY

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Is a brand that cares about its customers 0.35
Is a brand committed to making the
world a better place
0.35
Brands with Character are:
1) Dependable and transparent.
2) Committed to improving their
customers’ lives.
BEFORE YOUR STUDY

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Is a brand that is very different from others
in this category
0.40
Is a brand that is ahead of its time 0.36
Is a brand that shakes up the category 0.35
Is a brand that regularly says and does
interesting things
0.29
Brands with Character are:
1) Dependable and transparent.
2) Committed to improving their
customers’ lives.
3) Not afraid to shake things up.
BEFORE YOUR STUDY

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Conduct regular checks of metrics against real world data.
BEFORE YOUR STUDY

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Conduct regular checks of metrics against real world data.
BEFORE YOUR STUDY

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Widen The Toolkit
Incorporate more context. Get more meaningful analysis.
D U R I N G YO U R S T U DY

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Build an analytic plan with business
data in mind.
• Ask for data sources up front
• Figure out how to best align the reporting from other data
streams with your tracking results.
• Create a plan for how you’ll check your findings against
these other data streams.
Consider pulling from
the following sources:
DURING YOUR STUDY
SALES STORE
TRAFFIC
MEDIA
DATA
CREATIVE
ROTATION
WEB
TRAFFIC
PRICING
DISTRIBUTION

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Conflicting data can actually give you
deeper insights.
Leveraging a wider set of contextual data can help you
reconcile differences and produce more thorough analysis.
DURING YOUR STUDY

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Real world example:
Consideration was on the rise,
but sales data was flat.
What’s going on here?
37%
38%
37%
37%
26% 24%
27%
27%
39%
37%
45%
44%
24%
24%
26%
26%
23%
27%
26%
25%
Brand 1
Brand 2
Brand 3
Brand 4
Brand 5
DURING YOUR STUDY

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Real World Example:
We leveraged social
analytics to find out
why the metrics
weren’t aligned.
Widening the context helped us
identify the cause:
The parent brand of a key
competitor had launched a large
social campaign that was
generating lots of activity,
creating a short term lift for the
competitor brand.
DURING YOUR STUDY
Viral Tweet
Volume of conversation on social media
Parent Brand Category Sub-Brand Client Brand
Viral Post Strong
Coverage for
Giveaway
Promotion
Viral Fan Video

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Use social listening to identify trending
topics and thought leaders.
Capturing the unstructured conversation.
The messaging you don’t control has the potential to make or break
your brand.
Use Social Analytics to add context to the tracker and to help inform
future questions we may be missing.
Some of the key things we look at:
• Influencers
• Trending and tension-filled topics
• Emerging competition
• Shifting consumer expectations
DURING YOUR STUDY

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Future-proof your brand with trend
watching and Cultural Insights.
Trends and other Cultural analysis can identify broad, but
often subtle, changes in cultural attitudes that influence
consumer behavior.
Use Cultural Insights to uncover, understand, and
anticipate those emerging trends to:
• Understand why brand metrics may be changing
• Write better questions to track upcoming changes
• Get in front of impending forces of change
DURING YOUR STUDY
E C O N O M I C
CU L TU RAL
F ORCES OR
CHANG E
T E C H N O L O G I C A L
E N V I R O N M E N T A L
P OL I T I C AL
S OC I AL

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Disrupt Delivery
Tap into new ways to engage your audience.
A F T E R YO U R S T U DY

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Design deliverables in the way your
audience needs to use them.
Tailor reporting to the stakeholders and decision-makers
that rely on it.
For Example:
• Deep, nuanced reporting for consumer insights teams.
• Curated, visually appealing quarterly reports for
engaged stakeholders.
• Concise, issue-oriented summaries for executive teams.
• Infographics for broader audiences.
AFTER YOUR STUDY

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Leverage video to humanize your
tracker’s insights.
Add quick turn video tools to dig into special issues
and help your stakeholders to better understand
study results.
Types of quick video:
• Embedded webcam video open-ends in online
surveys for ongoing feedback.
• Quick turn smartphone ‘selfie’ videos to dive into
specific issues that arise from tracking.
AFTER YOUR STUDY
Melanie Turner, 24
Joe Smith, 29

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Digital Dashboards for when
time is tight
Curation and insight generation takes time. But
sometimes the client just need to see the data – quickly.
For Stakeholders: Dashboards with curated infographic-
style designs. Slides can include filters to allow for
real-time data cuts by key segment, demographic, or
other pre-set criteria.
For Analysts: A robust cross-tabbing tool allows for more
detailed data mining of any variable against any other.
AFTER YOUR STUDY

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Turn the presentation into a conversation
People don’t learn from lectures. They learn by talking, questioning,
and doing.
Flip the script on traditional ‘research monologues’ and turn
them into active workshops that cover what you’ve learned, what it
means, and what comes next.
Consider including key stakeholders from:
• Media
• Product
• Brand
• Ad agency partners
AFTER YOUR STUDY

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Final Thoughts
Combined with relevant insight streams and
contextual drivers, Trackers become more
than a measurement tool. They empower
better, more informed decision making.

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Leverage context to modernize your tracker throughout the study process,
from beginning to end.
Build a better
tracking tool
Widen the
analysis toolkit
Disrupt delivery
START FINISH
• Unaided measures are critical
• Dump the “probably” box
• Make consideration exclusive
• Don’t forget brand character
• Keep refining KPIs against client
data through the life
of the tracker
• Build client and other data
streams into the analysis plan
• Use social listening to identify
trending topics and thought
leaders
• Leverage Cultural Insights to
future-proof the tracker
• Design your deliverables with
your audience in mind.
• Leverage video to humanize
the insights.
• Use digital dashboards for
quick turn insights.
• Turn your presentation into
a conversation.

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Convergent Tracking
Better Basics
Minimize costs.
Maximize impact.
Marketing Matters
Measure the impact of
marketing and consumer
conversations.Consumer Culture
Get in front of changing
consumer trends and values.
Tracking and context unite
to tell a complete story.
Our Convergent Tracking system focuses the
“better basics” of quality and efficiency, with
the option to layer on tools that focus on the
impact of marketing spend and emerging
cultural trends.

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Thank You.
Greg Rice
greg.rice@keltonglobal.com | +1.310.479.4040