In early 2024, I was analysing data for a project that, among other things, looked at brand awareness among consumers in China. The brand in question wasn’t available in China, but we included it, along with some more established brands, to see if there was any latent awareness.
The results showed that claimed (prompted) awareness was way beyond what we might reasonably have expected. Not only that, but we had a notable proportion saying they bought the brand.
My clients, based in the region, said it wasn’t the first time they had seen something like this. When I canvassed opinions – across my colleagues and Brand Potential’s online panel partners – they told me about similar experiences. But no-one was able to offer a compelling reason why - beyond it being ‘cultural’.
With the help of Liz Dunford and the team at Potentia Insight, I designed a survey to test the impact of asking about brand awareness in different ways – to see if there was a way to mitigate the overclaim we saw in our survey.
We conducted over 9,500 interviews with consumers in eight countries (the UK, USA, Germany, Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, India and China).
The survey tested different ways of asking consumers if they were aware of global soft drinks brands. Crucially, we included a fake brand that allowed us to clearly identify mis-claim / over-claim.
The results were illuminating; the way in which we asked about brand awareness had a significant impact on the proportions that said they were aware of the fake brand. Depending on the way in which the question was asked, and the country in which the interviews were conducted, claimed awareness varied between 2% and 67%!
We hypothesised that the differences we saw were down to two main factors:
Individual psychology, which applies across countries. That when we directly prompt about a brand (i.e. ‘have you heard of X brand?’), there’s room for people to be unsure. For some, in the absence of a ‘not sure’ option, a ‘maybe I’ve heard of this brand’ will become a ‘yes’
Social dynamics (saving face and authority bias), that differ depending on country. This aligns with the extent to which a country could be seen as more ‘individualistic’ vs. more ‘collectivist’
We believe our findings have implications for agencies that conduct brand awareness studies (and other international research), and for brands that operate globally and measure their awareness. They highlight the importance of knowing international markets, of understanding cultural differences, and show how we should be mindful of taking apparently straightforward survey data at face value.
Especially as a recent report called “The Voice of the CMO” reveals that 62% of UK-based CMOs are tracking brand awareness following marketing activations. That’s +20% compared to last year and makes it CMO’s most important metric.
A full report, including more detail, is available for download from Brand Potential’s website.
