For over two decades, Oxfam — a global organization dedicated to fighting inequality, poverty, and injustice — tracked brand health in the U.S. using traditional funnel metrics (i.e., brand awareness, consideration). Over time, Debbie Medvinsky, Oxfam America's Constituent Insights Lead, found that these metrics often left leadership with a persistent follow up question: “What next?”
Traditional tracking metrics tell you where you currently stand in your market, but are less likely to provide clear, actionable next steps for growth. In a sector where brand metrics are highly influenced by the ever-changing state of the world, Oxfam needed a way to stay on top of shifts as they happen — not after the fact. To accomplish this, Debbie recommended shifting Oxfam’s tracking approach to quantilope to leverage the platform’s Mental Availability tracking solution: a topic her and quantilope's Gianna Saladino recently discussed on stage at Quirk's Chicago.
Shifting the framework: From awareness to Mental Availability
As a long time proponent of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s (EBI) research around consumer insights, Debbie was drawn to quantilope’s Consumer Intelligence Platform for its adoption of the EBI’s Better Brand Health framework. This approach, pioneered by EBI Professors Jenni Romaniuk and Byron Sharp, moves away from the linear purchase funnel and focuses instead on Category Entry Points (CEPs) and Mental Availability metrics.
Think of CEPs as the “triggers” that prompt a consumer to shop in a particular category. These can be internal triggers like “I’m feeling hungry” or external triggers like “When the weather is nice.” When brands understand these consumer cues, they can precisely tailor their marketing, branding, packaging, and communication strategies around those specific moments.
Mental Availability metrics highlight how brands perform in those particular buying moments (i.e., which brands are present in consumers minds (Mental Market Share), which brands have formed at least one mental connection between their brand and the category (Mental Penetration), and how broad their mental associations are (Network Size). Oxfam uses this data alongside Mental Advantage analysis to identify "white space" opportunities where no other brand currently owns an entry point.
Debbie’s understanding of this approach completely changed her outlook on tracking. She recognized the value in uncovering what’s bringing people to the category in the first place, and then exploring how organizations stand out in that space. The framework designs tracking studies for the category as a whole, analyzes for the buyer, and only then, reports for the brand. According to Debbie, “If we had designed a tracker ourselves, it would have been very focused on the attributes that we thought were important instead of what’s actually bringing people to the category.” By applying this framework, Oxfam America is able to broaden their focus rather than narrow in on attributes they perceive/assume to impact donations.
To get a broader category perspective when designing the tracker, Oxfam leaned on quantilope’s workshops and implicit association testing to identify 20 CEPs that were core to the nonprofit category. This allowed them to track not only "crisis CEPs" like natural disasters, political crises, and humanitarian emergencies, but also the more positive reasons that people give, such as when a donor feels hopeful for change or has a sense of gratitude. Debbie explains: "Mental Availability analysis helps us see where there are opportunities to drive associations with Oxfam in a variety of situations - not just in times of crisis.”
Leveraging modern platform capabilities and AI-driven Insights for growth
The integration of quantilope’s advanced AI tools has further accelerated Oxfam's ability to act on their insights. Debbie describes quinn, quantilope's AI research partner, as an essential extension of her team: “I find quinn to be almost like another analyst I can bounce ideas off of and ask to build charts for me — exceeding my expectations.” She notes that quinn is uniquely capable because it understands the underlying methodology and specific project insights, frequently using those frameworks to prioritize CEPs for action.
Additionally, Oxfam has been exploring quantilope’s Category Twins — AI-driven synthetic consumers — that can simulate real-world reactions to new creative ideas or strategic decisions. This technology will allow Debbie and team to gut-check ideas in real-time, reduce the "time to insight" and effectively manage complex, global brand health tracking with the efficiency of a much larger department.
“I’m an insights function of one so I really appreciate how quantilope has productized the Better Brand Health approach making it very turnkey and low touch. I used to only be able to run our tracker once a year and it took me almost 2 months; now we run quarterly tracking waves with quantilope and it almost runs itself.”
- Debbie Medvinsky, Constituent Insights Lead at Oxfam America
A clear path forward
By leveraging quantilope’s automated approach to Mental Availability tracking, Oxfam has successfully transitioned from brand reporting to active brand building. They no longer view brand performance in a vacuum; instead, they contextualize quarterly internal tracking data with world news and events to guide future decision-making. The result is a scientifically-led view of brand health that aims to keep Oxfam in donors’ minds “in good times and in bad.”
As a final remark, Debbie summarizes her experience thus far in saying:
“Better Brand Health has given us much more actionable insights going beyond just how our brand is performing and toward where we should go next in order to grow.”
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