Your brand is making promises to your market every day, through your marketing, your products, your customer experience, and even through what your competitors say about you. The question is whether those promises are landing. Brand health tells you whether the market perceives your brand the way you intend, whether that perception is strengthening or eroding, and where the gaps sit between your strategy and your reality.
Meraki Research conducts brand health studies that go beyond vanity metrics to give your company a diagnostic view of how your brand is actually performing with your target audience. We measure across the full marketing funnel, from initial awareness through loyalty and advocacy, and we connect those measurements to the business outcomes that justify your brand investment.
Our Approach: The Meraki Brand Vitals Diagnostic
Measuring brand health is like a physical exam for your most important intangible asset. Surface-level numbers tell you something, but the real value comes from understanding what's driving those numbers and what they mean for your company's future. Our Brand Vitals Diagnostic is built for that depth.
Phase 1: Diagnostic Design
We start by understanding what health means in your specific context. For some brands, it's about awareness and consideration at the top of the marketing funnel. For others, it's about NPS, customer experience, and advocacy at the bottom. For most, it's a variety of metrics across the full journey.
We work with your team to select the dimensions that matter, then design a study that measures each one with the precision your decisions require. This includes defining your target audience, competitive frame, and the stage of the funnel where your biggest opportunities and risks likely sit.
Phase 2: Multi-Dimensional Measurement
Our measurement covers the full spectrum of brand health dimensions:
- Awareness (unaided, aided, top-of-mind)
- Perception and attribute associations
- Consideration and preference within the competitive set
- Usage and satisfaction
- NPS and recommendation likelihood
- Sentiment analysis of open-ended responses
- Loyalty indicators and switching risk
- Customer experience alignment with brand promise
We use a mix of quantitative survey methods and sentiment analysis techniques to capture both the structured metrics your dashboards need and the qualitative texture that brings those numbers to life.
Phase 3: Driver Analysis
Knowing your brand health score is useful. Knowing what drives it is essential. We run driver analysis to identify which attributes, experiences, and associations have the strongest impact on overall brand performance and which ones are underperforming relative to their importance.
This analysis tells you where to invest for maximum brand lift, not just where you're weak.
Phase 4: Competitive Benchmarking
No brand exists in isolation. We benchmark your brand health metrics against your key competitors and, where available, against category norms. This framing turns your absolute scores into relative positions, which is how your customers actually experience your brand, as one choice among several.
Phase 5: Strategic Recommendations
We deliver findings with a clear strategic roadmap. Every report identifies the two to four highest-impact actions your company can take to improve brand health, based on the gap between current perception and strategic intent. Recommendations are specific, prioritized, and connected to the metrics that will show whether they're working.
When Brand Health Research Is the Right Fit
Brand health research is right when you need a thorough diagnostic of how your brand is performing with your market. Specific situations include:
- Pre-campaign planning. Before investing in a major campaign, a brand health study identifies the perceptions you need to reinforce or change, so your creative and media strategy targets the right dimensions.
- Post-repositioning assessment. After a repositioning effort, you need to know whether the new positioning has taken hold with your target audience or whether the old perception persists.
- Annual strategic planning. Many brands commission brand health studies annually to inform the next year's marketing and brand strategy with current data.
- Merger or acquisition integration. When brands combine, a health study reveals how each brand is perceived and where the merged identity should focus.
- Competitive threat response. When a competitor gains ground, a health study pinpoints where their gains are coming from and which dimensions of your brand are most at risk.
Brand health research connects to ongoing measurement through Brand Tracking and Brand Tracker Programs, and to competitive analysis through Competitive Brand Tracking.
When Brand Health Research Is NOT the Right Fit
If you already have a mature brand tracking program delivering quarterly data, a standalone brand health study may be redundant. The tracker should be capturing health metrics continuously. In that case, the better investment is a deeper dive into a specific dimension, like Brand Perception Research or Brand Equity Research.
It's also not the right fit if you need quick tactical feedback on a single campaign. That's a campaign effectiveness study, not a health diagnostic.
What We Deliver
Every brand health engagement produces actionable outputs designed for both strategic planning and day-to-day brand management.
- Brand Health Scorecard. A comprehensive scorecard showing performance across all measured dimensions, with benchmarks, trend context (if prior data exists), and competitive comparisons.
- Driver Analysis Report. A detailed analysis of which attributes and experiences drive overall brand health, with importance-performance mapping.
- Perception Map. A visual positioning map showing how your brand and competitors are perceived on the dimensions that matter most to your target audience.
- Funnel Analysis. A marketing funnel analysis showing conversion rates from awareness through loyalty, with competitive comparisons at each stage.
- Sentiment Report. A sentiment analysis of open-ended responses capturing the emotional and experiential texture behind the quantitative metrics.
- Strategic Recommendations Deck. A presentation-ready document identifying the highest-impact actions your company can take, with projected outcomes and measurement milestones.
- Data Files. Full datasets and cross-tabulations in your preferred format.
Industry Applications
Consumer Packaged Goods
CPG brands use brand health research to measure the full purchase funnel, from awareness through repeat purchase, and to assess whether brand promises align with product experience. We design studies that capture both the rational and emotional drivers of brand choice.
Financial Services
For banks, insurers, and wealth managers, brand health centres on trust, safety, reliability, and service quality. We measure these dimensions alongside product awareness and consideration to provide a complete picture of competitive standing.
Technology & SaaS
Tech company brand health studies assess awareness, innovation perception, and preference among both technical and business audiences. We capture how brand perception differs across buyer roles and how it maps to actual purchase consideration.
Healthcare & Pharma
Patient and HCP brand health studies measure therapy-area associations, trust, efficacy perception, and safety concerns. Our methodology complies with healthcare research standards and leverages specialized panel access for clinical and professional audiences.
Retail & Hospitality
Retail and hospitality brands measure value perception, customer experience alignment, loyalty strength, and competitive differentiation. Studies often integrate NPS and satisfaction data with broader brand health metrics through Brand Health Measurement.
Automotive
Automaker brand health studies track attribute associations (reliability, innovation, safety, value), consideration set dynamics, and ownership satisfaction across vehicle segments and regional markets. We use a variety of measurement approaches calibrated to the long purchase cycle.