What do your customers think and feel about your brand? How are they bonded to your brand?
Your brand lives with your customers and audience. Do you have a handle on the value you provide? The best way to communicate that value? And, where your brand resides within the competitive landscape?
Talisman Insights offers capabilities to help you get a handle on how to tell your brand’s story and know where you fit within the competitive landscape.
Value Proposition Research
Insights from value proposition comprise the foundational elements of a good brand strategy. Every organization needs to know what it is they do at the core of their being before moving onto how they want to talk about it with their prospective customers.
General Learning Objectives:
- Align the organization with respect to the value proposition and its components
- Assess resonance of consumer-facing elements or how they feel about how the business operates
- Translate the functional elements of a value proposition into the benefits they provide customers
How We Do It:
- A value proposition exercise may be as simply as a workshop that helps bring the entire organization onto the same page.
- However, qualitative research in the form of an online discussion board or some focus groups helps translate what you do into the “what’s in it for me” with your customers (i.e., the WIIFM).
Note: Talisman Insights is a research consultancy. We have recommended agencies when our clients need a partner to help them develop brand strategy, positioning, and creative expressions.
Name Research
“A rose by any other name still smells as sweet” is a beautiful line by Shakespeare, but being nerds (and webcomic fans), we also like Rule 16 “Your name is in the mouths of others: be sure it has teeth.” Each speaks to different outcomes for brands: the former reflects brands that have become commodities while the latter implies that your name should convey the strengths that make you unique.
General Learning Objectives:
- Understand the potential red flags in both an abstract, naïve sense and inside the category
- Assess the resonance of potential names with respect to brand and business strategy
- Learn what various names imply inside the category
How We Do It:
- Fundamentally, a name is a strategic decision, which means qualitative research.
- We explore the qualities of the name both in the abstract and in the context of your category using focus groups or online qualitative discussion boards.
- Quantitative research (e.g., shelf study models, Max Diff testing, and other decision science assessments) can help when a qualitative decision is too close to call.
Note: Talisman Insights does not conduct trademark searches and recommends a trademark lawyer be engaged before proceeding to research.
Brand Positioning / Strategy Research
More often than not, a brand finds that its value propositions speak to different consumer beliefs and problems to be solved. You need to find the articulation of your value proposition that resonates most strongly with your customers
General Learning Objectives:
- Understand what your audiences really hears when your brand speaks
- Learn what underlies the resonance in potential ways to talk about your brand
- Assess the uniqueness and believability of what you want to say about who you are
How We Do It:
- Focus groups and online discussion boards are ideal vehicles for research with the latter being able to dive deeply into projective techniques that may also provide insight and direction on creative elements for future consideration.
- While we have capabilities to test positioning quantitatively, our position is that this is strategic research, and quantitative testing is not strictly necessary.
Note: Talisman Insights is a research consultancy. We have recommended agencies when our clients need a partner to help them develop brand strategy, positioning, and creative expressions.
Ad Tracking / Copytesting Research
You are about to go to market with new marketing materials, but your leadership team is skeptical and wants to be able to assess the potential impact before launching. Quite possibly, you have so many different options for copy that an A/B test in market would take too long with potentially low ROI. Let Talisman Insights help you with some potentially difficult conversations via feedback from the market.
General Learning Objectives:
- Eliminate marketing copy that will not perform as strongly as current copy
- Assess where new ad campaigns may create friction with prospective or current customers
How We Do It:
- Max Diff testing (or other decision science approaches) of new message copy with current marketing to help identify those that will perform at par (but be more on brand) or outperform current copy
- Explore red flags and disaster check completed marketing communication with focus groups or online qualitative discussion boards
Big Idea / Creative Platform Research
As your value proposition has multiple ways of articulation, so too can your positioning have multiple ways of creative expression. A data-informed selection process may be more apt to find a creative expression that will resonate strongly in the marketplace than one based on how only a few key individuals feel.
General Learning Objectives:
- Assess the resonance of potential new creative to engage consumers, including ad-like objects that exemplify the expressions
- Explore red flags that limit or inhibit communication or create sour notes for prospective customers
How We Do It:
- Test big ideas and creative platforms in an online survey environment using key metrics of performance (i.e., engagement, personal investment, relevance, and rapport)
- Analyses to assess which specific elements of relevance, resonance, rapport, and product experience drive engagement
Brand Awareness & Perception Research
Your brand lives in a marketplace full of competitors. We use the Irrational Loyalty Index to assess how you and your competitors capture prospective customers in the marketplace. We can map your position in the market vis-à-vis your competitors and help you better understand where your Irrational Loyalty comes from.
General Learning Objectives:
- Gain insights into how your brand fits into the overall competitive landscape
- Understand more about the lived experience of your brand with consumers
- Learn about red flags that signal your brand may be in trouble
How We Do It:
- Explore how your brand differentiates itself with customer focus groups and how and when they buy from you
- Our quantitative measurement assesses the mind space your brand takes up as well as drivers of brand engagement and usage.
- This methodology assesses performance of these drivers in a competitive context.