The Brand Instinct® Monitor Tracks 100+ Unconscious Associations, Giving Marketers
a Predictive Layer of Brand Health that Traditional Trackers Miss Entirely
NEW YORK (JULY 9, 2026) — Triggers®, the behavioral science-based brand growth strategy firm,
today announced the launch of the Brand Instinct® Monitor (BIM), the first system designed to measure
the instinctive associations that drive brand preference and business performance, and how they shift
over time. Unlike traditional brand trackers that map what consumers consciously say about a brand, the
BIM captures what they actually feel at the moment of choice.
The launch comes as frustration with conventional brand measurement reaches a boiling point.
According to Gartner, roughly four in five brand leaders believe their tracking data is not sufficiently
actionable for daily decision-making. Traditional trackers rely on explicit surveys and rational attributes
that pull from the conscious mind, creating a lag that leaves marketers chasing sentiment shifts rather
than anticipating them. Nearly 80% of CMOs describe tracking data as directional at best, and too
surface-level to guide action.
Research has established that 95 percent of brand purchases are driven by the subconscious mind; yet
every major brand tracker on the market monitors only the five percent that is conscious. The BIM closes
that gap by tracking 100+ implicit verbal and visual associations – compared to the 15-20 measured in
traditional trackers – offering marketers a dynamic, predictive model of brand choice rather than a static
list of metrics. Its visual association tracking is an industry first, tracking the images and symbols that
automatically activate brand meaning, before they register in rational thought.
“Traditional brand metrics rarely move because they’re not sensitive to the effects of marketing
communications,” says Leslie Zane, Founder & CEO of Triggers®. “It can take years for the impact of
what you do to show up in your brand tracker—and by the time it does, it’s already appearing in your
sales results. At that point, it’s too late.”
The Brand Instinct Monitor completely changes how companies understand and manage brand growth.
Because associations change more rapidly than attributes do, brands can now see—and shape—the
drivers of consumer choice before they influence purchase.
The speed advantage is fundamental. Subconscious brand associations form in milliseconds, while
conscious evaluations require deliberative processing that unfolds 200,000 times slower. This agility is
what makes the BIM actionable in ways traditional tools are not: brands can see the impact of a
marketing campaign on instinctive associations long before they show up in their traditional brand
tracker.
The BIM is designed to complement traditional trackers to create a complete picture: instinctive
associations as a leading indicator, and self-reported attributes as a lagging one. One of the most
striking findings that the BIM reveals is the dramatic difference between what consumers consciously
report and what implicitly drives their decisions. In one client engagement, price was cited as a barrier
17% of the time in conscious survey responses – but only 7% implicitly. Brands solving for the wrong
problem are wasting time and investment, while also missing the actual levers of growth.
“Tapping into consumers’ instinctive associations is at the core of our branding and marketing approach
at Kraft Heinz,” said Doug Healy, Head of Consumer Insights at Kraft Heinz. “We utilize the Triggers’
definition of a brand: the cumulative memories and associations that get ‘glued’ to a brand over time. For
a company like Kraft Heinz, with iconic brands such as Kraft Mac & Cheese, Capri Sun, and Lunchables,
which have been part of consumers’ lives for generations, this construct is especially meaningful. These
deeply rooted associations often trace back to childhood, creating lasting connections that continue to
influence consumer behavior today.”
The BIM is built on Triggers®’ proprietary Brand Connectome® framework, the mapped network of
cumulative verbal and visual memories and associations living in a consumer’s unconscious mind. To
learn more about Triggers® and the Brand Instinct Monitor, please visit triggers.com
As featured in AdExchanger.