The short answer
The alternatives to a traditional brand tracker fall into two groups. The first measures the same things in a new way: faster and cheaper survey tools, and signals such as search and social data. The second measures what a survey can’t reach: implicit tests that record fast, automatic reactions, and memory mapping, which draws out the associations tied to a brand and measures how strongly each one holds. If your problem is cost or speed, the first group helps. If your problem is that the tracker can’t explain your sales, you need the second. Most brands keep their tracker and add one view from the second group.
Start with the problem you need to solve
Teams look for an alternative to their tracker for different reasons. The right answer depends on which one is yours.
| If your problem is | Look at |
|---|---|
| The tracker costs too much or reports too slowly | Always-on survey tools |
| You need to compare with competitors over time | Keep a tracker, syndicated or custom |
| You want to know what people search for and talk about | Search and social data |
| You need to test one ad, one pack or one name | Implicit tests |
| The tracker can’t explain why sales moved | Memory mapping |
| You need to know where to act next | Memory mapping |
The options, side by side
| Approach | What it measures | Good for | Its limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Syndicated tracker | Stated awareness, consideration and image for many brands, from one shared survey | Benchmarks against your category | The same questions for every brand, and only what people can say |
| Custom tracker | The same stated measures, with questions built for your brand | Keeping score on your own terms over time | Reports after the quarter has closed |
| Always-on survey tool | Stated measures, run often and set up by your team | Fast, lower-cost reads | Faster answers to the same survey questions |
| Search and social data | What people search for and post about, and in what tone | Seeing interest and conversation in close to real time | Shows what people do online, not why they choose |
| Implicit tests | Fast, automatic reactions, such as reaction times or where the eye goes | Testing one ad, pack or name | One response at a time, not the whole picture |
| Memory mapping | The associations tied to a brand, how strongly, and whether they help or hold it back | Finding why sales moved, and what to change | Takes weeks, so it is a deep read, not a daily dashboard |
Why a faster survey doesn’t solve the core problem
Faster and cheaper survey tools are real progress. They make it easier to keep score. But they ask people the same kind of question, so they hear the same kind of answer: what people are willing and able to say.
Most brand choices are instinctive. The reasons sit in memories and associations people can’t put into words. Traditional trackers rely on explicit surveys and rational attributes that pull from the conscious mind, and that creates a lag. Marketers end up chasing changes in sentiment instead of seeing them coming.
“The rules of marketing were created back in the Stone Age when we still thought that the brain made conscious decisions. And this whole set of rules grew up around marketing. Things like segmentation, uniqueness, insights, tracking data.”
Where memory mapping fits
Memory mapping is our route. We map the Brand Connectome®: the network of memories and associations tied to your brand in buyers’ minds, and how tightly each one is tied to it. We map your competitors the same way. The result shows what helps your brand, what holds it back and what is missing, and it leads to a plan: what to keep, what to stop and what to add.
It doesn’t replace your tracker. Tracking tells you where you landed, after the quarter closed. The map tells you what is causing it and what to do next. Most of our clients keep their tracker. Our Brand Instinct® Monitor then follows how the associations shift over time, alongside it.
“A brand’s growth potential isn’t measured by a metric. It’s guided by a map.”
For how the associations are drawn out and measured, see how to measure brand associations.
Questions to ask any measurement provider
- Does it measure what people say, or what drives what they choose?
- Does it show your competitors the same way, so you can see what pulls buyers to them?
- Does it show your core and your growth target, the buyers you need to win, separately?
- Does it tell you why something changed, and what to do about it, or only that it changed?
- How soon do you get the answer, and how often can you repeat it?
- How will you check it against your sales and your other business results?
No single measure proves why sales moved on its own. The useful ones show you where to act, and you check them against your results over time.
