My Marketing Metric Can Beat Up Your Marketing Metric
26 Feb
One of the more entertaining things in the world of marketing is the ongoing battle among firms for metric supremacy. After all, who doesn’t want to come up with the metric that everyone else adopts as the de facto standard?
Add one more firm to the battle. Market research firm Millward Brown (MB) put out a press release which claimed that:
Amazon.com [is] the top performing brand in the U.S. based on trust and recommendation, the key ingredients to brand success, according to a new report entitled “Beyond Trust: Engaging Consumers in the Post-Recession World.” The study introduces TrustR, a new metric for understanding and strengthening the bond between consumers and brands.”
According to MB, “TrustR is calculated by looking at consumer responses to the questions ‘how trustworthy is this brand?’ and ‘would you recommend this brand?’ The scores are indexed and combined to reach a TrustR score.”
In other words, what MB did was take the severely flawed Net Promoter Score, simplify it to a yes/no question instead of a 10-point scale (thank god for that), and add another question about a poorly defined construct, trustworthiness.
And then proclaim their measure to be the key ingredients to brand success.
Was there any proof or evidence offered as to why this new measure would be superior to what’s already out there?
No. Even worse, however, is that the seeds of TrustR’s weaknesses are found right there in the press release, itself.
Among the firms ranked by TrustR, Toyota came in at #7. There’s a footnote in the press release, however, that states that the study was “conducted over the course of 2009, prior to Toyota’s recent recall.”
How reliable could this TrustR measure be, if, in the course of just a couple of weeks, a firm’s score could be so volatile as to necessitate this footnote?
Isn’t one of the benefits or attributes of having a “trusted brand” supposed to be the brand’s ability to withstand some setbacks like what Toyota is experiencing?
(BTW, I rented a car a couple of weeks ago. The agent asked me “Kia or Toyota?” and I thought to myself “wow, I can’t remember the last time I had to make a life or death decision.”)
What this really goes to show is that asking consumers about their perceptions or intentions (“trustworthiness” or “likelihood to recommend”) simply isn’t worth basing your management measurement structure on.
It’s why I continually urge marketers to adopt behavioral-driven metrics. That is, to determine which behaviors – beyond purchase – characterize a good, profitable customer, and to then develop a set of metrics that gauge how well they do in driving more of their customer base towards those behaviors.
The other thing that made me laugh at MB’s press release is their choice of report title: Beyond Trust.
It wasn’t good enough for MB to report on trust – oh no, now it’s “beyond” trust. As if trust is passe, and we should put it behind us. I don’t know about you, but I’d be very happy to know my clients trusted me. I don’t want to know what’s beyond trust.
And so the time has come again, my friends, for the Marketing Tea Party to trot out its favorite marketing metric — the Net Purchaser Score (you don’t even have to remember a new acronym!). We define NPS as:
Net Purchaser Score: The difference between the number of people who bought your product and the number of people who didn’t.
My non-scientific research shows that the Marketing Tea Party NPS:
- Is highly correlated with revenue.
- Measures behavior (not intention).
- Encompasses all customers (not just a sample).
- Directly impacts the bottom line (not indirectly).
- Is simple!
I expect to make millions consulting to firms to help them calculate their new NPS score.
Ditto.
The only reason firms like MB make things like the “TrustR” report is for their own self-serving PR. They don’t think, “How can we make a study that will really help people?” They don’t think, “How can we develop some metrics that change marketing?” The conversation starts with, “How can we get our name in the paper?”
JP: It’s what Jim Novo calls “market research for press release” (at least, I think that’s what he calls it). It’s a despicable practice. But can you blame them? Look how much money has been made off firms that suffer from net promoter syndrome?
Ron, thank you.
Instead of commenting more about your very insightful post, I am going to get predictive.
I think the next big metric is going to be: ThinkR (sm)
ThinkR (sm) is a ratio of the population that:
- Thinks about your brand
- Thinks about engaging with your brand
- Thinks about purchasing from your brand
Just to be clear, ThinkR (sm) is not to be confused with PurchaseR, or BuyeR or CustomeR.
Some other new metrics on the horizon are:
- ProftableCustomeR
- roiR
- LifeTimeValueR or ltvR some times known as CustomeR LifeTimeValueR
Again Ron, your brillianceR score is off the chart.
- DaveR
@dmgerbino
Mr. Gerbino: Thank you for taking the time to comment. May I point out one small flaw with your metric? There simply isn’t enough people out there who think — period.
You don’t need the SM if you call it Think®
Here is what’s really interesting about this kind of metric for me – it is designed to appeal to people who don’t want to really measure anything tangible or actionable.
This is perfect because if you sign up you can get on the “accountable” bandwagon with the CEO and then take credit if TrustR rises (our social media campaign was awesome!) but blame service or product design if TrustR falls.
Millward will make millions!
Agree with J. Pilcher who hit on my first thought, SO much of what people announce: metrics, e-books, “5 Big Ways to Waste Your Time Reading My Post” is shallow-assed PR. Its shallowness is what makes it such BAD PR. Oy!
Reading the content part of your post on NPS (I know, its either hard to find or accidentally there
) I was reminded of what Stu Richards et al did with Ford of Europe in the early ’80s. They modeled the interactions of customer value added chains before they owned a Ford, during ownership (maintenance and recommendation value), and repeat, or not, ownership. A lot of their metrics that they used to create business and then system priorities were NPS-like.
I wish I had a copy of the key reports from that work…
Disturbingly on topic: The 10 Social Media Metrics Your Company Should Monitor http://bit.ly/auFXqX via @socialmedia2day via @doverdeput