Understanding how to measure brand value is crucial for any brand looking to carve out their own niche within a crowded market space. While traditional brand tracking can help measure brand equity, brand funnel metrics, and market position, the fourth wave of our soda category Better Brand Health Tracking study explores a new metric known as Mental Advantage – informing soda brands where they currently perform better or worse than expected.
Using advanced brand tracking software, we focus in on Diet Coke as our focal brand. Our final interactive dashboard narrows in on where Diet Coke currently performs better than expected for certain brand attributes, given the brand’s size and how common each attribute is to the category (as Jenni Romaniuk refers to in her book, Better Brand Health, these are attributes or Category Entry Points that 'prototypically' belong to the category - such as ‘waking me up in the morning’ for the coffee category).
Brand attributes and Category Entry Points (CEPs) that perform better than expected are known as Mental Advantages. These are areas brands need to defend while also building on other associations to hopefully expand their Network Size (another key brand health tracking metric); that’s how brands grow.
Mental Advantage for Diet Coke:
One of the many interesting brand insights from the most recent wave of our tracker is that Diet Coke has a clear Mental Advantage for ‘takeout’.
Consumers today are frequently on-the-go, whether it’s commuting to work, running between errands, or grabbing a quick dinner before an evening activity. As such, brands that fit their way into this ‘on-the-go’ lifestyle will be ones that consumers begin to think of and gravitate toward (aka, brands that have Mental Availability in consumers’ minds). Diet Coke shows a clear Mental Advantage for ‘takeout’ which is a great way of fitting into this on-the-go lifestyle - and an area Diet Coke should work hard to defend in future business operations (be it marketing, branding, etc.). This is especially true given that no other brand (at least those tracked in our BBHT study) show a Mental Advantage for this brand attribute.
About quantilope’s Brand Health Tracking solution:
quantilope's Better Brand Health Tracking solution is built on the well-respected industry concepts of Category Entry Points and Mental Availability. By learning why, when, and where consumers think about shopping in your category (Category Entry Points) and which brands come to mind in those instances (Mental Availability), you're left with actionable takeaways to grow and future-proof your brand.
To learn more about quantilope’s Better Brand Health Tracking approach, and to dig deeper into Diet Coke’s Mental Advantage and other key metrics, access our soda category dashboard below!
