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Episode 124

The Brand Metrics That Matter with Kantar's Mary Kyriakidi

On average, brand equity accounts for over 30% of a company's value, yet most marketers still chase vanity metrics instead of measuring what drives real business results.

This week, Elena, Angela, and Rob are joined by Kantar's Mary Kyriakidi to unpack findings from Kantar's Diary of a CMO Report. Mary explains why meaningful difference beats distinctiveness alone, how brands can build pricing power instead of defaulting to promotions, and what separates successful CMOs in the boardroom. Plus, learn about Kantar's meaningful, different, and salient framework and why brand equity should be treated as a financial asset.

Topics Covered

• [04:00] Why meaningful difference drives growth beyond distinctiveness alone

• [09:00] How Kantar's meaningful, different, and salient framework works

• [14:00] The promotion trap that destroys pricing power and brand equity

• [16:00] How brands build pricing power through meaningfulness and difference

• [21:00] What CMOs need to gain credibility in the boardroom

• [23:00] Common mistakes when measuring brand performance

Resources:

Kantar’s Diary of a CMO Report

Mary Kyriakidi’s LinkedIn

Today's Hosts

Elena Jasper

Chief Marketing Officer

Rob DeMars

Chief Product Architect

Angela Voss

Chief Executive Officer

Mary Kyriakidi

Global Thought Leader at Kantar

Transcript

Mary: We know that by investing in these three dimensions, you will build your pricing power. And pricing power is gold. It's what lets you hold your price.

Elena: Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects. A research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions.

I'm Elena Jasper. I'm on the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-host Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects and Rob DeMars, the Chief Product Architect of Misfits and Machines, and we're joined by a special returning guest to the show, Mary Kyriakidi.

Mary is the global thought leader at Kantar, where she shapes evidence-based narratives that influence how the world's biggest brands grow. She's an award-winning media executive and the driving force behind some of Kantar's most influential thinking, including the meaningful, different and salient framework.

Backed by a masters from the London School of Economics and decades of experience leading global insight teams across media and brand strategy. Mary brings both creativity and commercial rigor to every conversation, and we're excited to have her with us again today. Thanks for returning to the show, Mary.

Mary: Oh God. Thank you Elena for inviting me and such a wonderful introduction. Thank you. I feel uplifted.

Rob: It's nice for me to meet you as well. I was not on your last episode and you, it sounds like you were born and did your career beginnings in Greece. If I have that correct, and I have a tendency to put my foot in my mouth. And so I wanted to make sure I was on my best behavior and I learned that if I were to wave hello with my fingers spread like this, that's a very bad thing.

Mary: It wouldn't go down well.

Rob: It would not go out. So I'm not gonna do that. It's like the equivalent of saying go to hell. Is that, do I have that correct?

Mary: Yes, yes.

Rob: Okay.

Mary: Drivers do this to each other and many accidents happen as a result of it.

Rob: Saying hello to you with my fingers.

Mary: Thank you and I'm saying hello back.

Elena: That's funny. I didn't know that. That's good to know if you're ever traveling to Greece.

Angela: I feel like it should be avoided somehow between countries to have things like that. Like it's just unintended and that should be illegal to have discrepancies like that.

Rob: My guess is it predates the hello that we have created as Americans, so I think we have to probably come up with a different hello.

Angela: It's our fault. It's our fault. I'm okay.

Mary: Well, you know what? Unless you do this with an angry face and normally sweat, it doesn't count. So you'll be all right. You'll be all right.

Rob: I'm like the middle finger 'cause even if you smile with the middle finger, it's still not a good thing. Okay, got it.

Elena: Alright, well Mary, thanks again for coming back on the show. We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news, always trying to root our opinions and data research and what drives business results. And I'm gonna kick us off as I always do with some research, and this was a very easy choice because Mary is joining us to talk about it today, which is Kantar's Diary of A CMO Report, and the premise is simple. If brand is one of your company's most valuable assets, why are so few marketers measuring it in ways that connect to financial performance? So across thousands of data points and seven clear lessons, the report lays out how the world's most effective CMOs are winning today.

From aligning marketing with business outcomes to pricing with power and breaking past category ceilings. At the core is this meaningful, different and salient framework from Kantar. Which links brand perception to commercial impact through metrics like pricing power, demand power, and future power.

So if you're still chasing vanity KPIs, or assuming all brand metrics are created equal, this report might change your mind.

Mary: Hmm.

Elena: I wanted to start strong here with one of the big, you know, maybe a takeaway from the report that has gone a little bit viral. It strongly supports the power of meaningful difference to drive growth, and that's a bold position in a world where Ehrenberg Bass really argues for distinctiveness over differentiation. So, would you mind unpacking the evidence that led Kantar to take that stance?

Mary: Very happy to do so. I don't know. So we, at Kantar, we believe that brands grow not just by being seen. But by being chosen and often then chosen again. And that's where meaningful difference comes in, because it's not about being unique, it's about being perceived as leading in a way that matters to people. So our data shows that brands that are seen as both meaningful and different, they're five times more likely to grow their customer base. And they don't just show up in memory. They show up with purpose. They show up with a reason for people to pay attention to them, and often to pay more to acquire them.

Now, the BA Institute has done a brilliant job of reminding us that mental availability is a non-negotiable thing. We're talking about distinctive assets, we're talking about logos, colors, taglines, and all of these help people remember brands. But here's the thing, being noticed isn't the same as being preferred. And then as being chosen, and our research across thousands of brands shows that distinctiveness alone explains around 25 to 30% of what makes a brand feel different.

So the consumers would be saying, oh, it's well known, or it has an iconic symbol. The rest is emotional connection. It's the perceived leadership, is the sense of what the brand is for each one of us, and that's what drives, to mention one of the powers that you mentioned before, this is what drives pricing power, for instance, loyalty and long-term value. So for me, actually, it's not a debate. If we were to put it under an umbrella of something, it would be a duet because distinctiveness gets you into the room and then meaningful difference wins the conversation.

Elena: That makes sense. I think Angela, actually, we've said that pretty much same thing on this podcast when we were talking about distinctiveness and differentiation, that distinctiveness gets you in the door, but then how could differentiation not matter once you're there?

Mary: Yes, and the most successful brands, the reality is that they do both.

Elena: Interesting. So not quite as dramatic as maybe it seems on LinkedIn sometimes, that point of view.

Angela: Everything's binary on LinkedIn, right? Black or white.

Elena: Speaking of brand perception, part of the report mentioned that it can account for up to 90% of a company's value, but a lot of marketers still struggle to tie this, you know, brand to your bottom line. So how does Kantar recommend that we can better quantify brand strength in sort of this financially more credible way?

Mary: So you're very right calling out this stat. Brand perception can account for a huge share of a company's value. And this specific one, it's from the famous Coca-Cola case that we have in the Diary of a CMO report that you mentioned before, analysts estimated that the brand alone made up 90% of its market cap. But that is, I have to say, a rare case. So what we see being validated year after year in our BrandZ data is that on average brand equity accounts for over 30% of value. And that's a huge percentage, right? That's a very significant percentage because that's a third of your business being tied to how people feel about your brand.

So that's too valuable to leave it unmeasured. And the beauty of the BrandZ metrics is that they can be predictive. They are predictive. So if, let's say your demand power rises, then you know that your market share will tend to follow. If your different or your meaningfulness drops, then that's a red flag for your future sales. And because these indicators move before the financials do, they come before, they act as an early warning system.

And what we do, and I certainly do myself, we encourage marketers to integrate these powers, these dimensions, and then these powers into the dashboards, into the forecast and treat them as any other business KPI. So let's say it could be that your objective for the year, your target for the year, is that I need to grow, I will grow my brand, my demand power, let's say by five points. Because they know exactly what that means in terms of revenue. What increase in revenue they would expect to see after that. So it's about managing brand as a financial asset, not just as a creative value.

Elena: Yeah, so you're saying it's on average a third of your business performance or how your business is tied to how people perceive your brand?

Mary: The average brand is 30%, and for the most successful brands it can be over 50%. So the case of Coca-Cola from the nineties, I believe it says, so in the report it's a striking 90%, but on average, the average brand, yes, for a third.

Elena: It feels important to bring that into the boardroom if you can quantify it.

Mary: Absolutely. Yeah.

Elena: Well, you mentioned this framework a little bit. You've touched on it, but Kantar has this really helpful, meaningful, different and salient framework or MDS. It's central to the report and to how just Kantar as a whole approaches brand building. So could you walk us through that a little bit more in detail and explain why it's important for driving brand growth? Why should marketers be aware of it?

Mary: I often describe it as marketing magic. Obviously I'm a little bit biased, but I will, I'll try and explain it in a slightly poetic way and then I will explain the geeky way, right? So the three layers of meaning, difference, and salience explain what happens in the minds of people when functional benefits and emotional attachment overlap. So they're not just abstract ideas. They are the foundation of brand equity.

We have demystified brand equity, and we believe that when marketers understand how meaningful, different, and salient their brand is, that's when they can diagnose their current position and shape what's gonna come in the future. Now, from there, the action begins, right? Because knowing that it's not enough. And we released another report a little longer than a year ago. That's a big report, right? It's the blueprint for brand growth paper. Many pages within that, we identify the three growth accelerators.

We talk about predisposing more people, We talk about being more present, and we talk about finding more space, and each one of those accelerators help brands turn perception, right? The meaningful difference salience into performance. Whether it's about building predisposition to justify their price or showing up where the decisions are made, or stretching into new occasions, which is about finding new space.

These are all paths to growth. That's what they are. And they are backed up by the metrics of demand power by the metrics of pricing power, and future power. And they're directly linked to commercial outcomes. So these powers are effectively made up by the coming together of the three dimensions of meaningful different salience.

What we are saying and as an umbrella thinking is we need to start thinking of our brand and treating our brand as a value producing asset because if we use these metrics to guide our investment, then track the progress and we can unlock growth because when we build a brand that is meaningfully different and salient to more people. They don't just win hearts they win the market share, they win the margin, they win the momentum. So many, many benefits will come from it, not now, not just only now, but in the future as well.

Elena: Would you mind breaking down a little bit more? Like if I had never heard of this framework before, like meaningful, different, salient, how Kantar thinks about those three buckets?

Mary: Meaningfulness is about meeting needs, functional and emotional needs. Salience is about coming to mind during a crucial moment during the time of purchase. And then difference is about being relatively different in your category. We're not talking about owning any walls. No one can. And even if we could, we could only do it for a little bit of time, we are talking about being a little bit more standing out, a little bit more than another product, another brand in your category, in a way that would break consumers' expectations of parity.

And you can do that via experiences that are different by product features that are different, by connecting emotionally with consumers. But it's about offering that little bit more that make people think, oh, that's a special one for me, and I'm willing actually to pay a little bit more for it as well. And probably more frequently choose it when I see it on the shelf, you know, being showered with its distinctive assets.

Elena: So am I, is my product meeting the need of a customer? Am I coming to mind in a buying situation? And then am I meaningfully different enough to stick around to have them purchase me more often, to have them value me more?

Mary: Correct. Correct. You do the three together. Your brand, let's say over indexes in these three and, bang, you will be chosen or you tilt the chances of you being chosen. You push them in the right direction.

Elena: Another message in the report is that marketers, we often rush to promotions when growth slows and we kind of overindex on one of the five Ps. I know Mark Ritson talks about that a lot. Marketers love promotions, but sometimes we neglect the other parts of what is marketing. So what does it look like when marketers take a more balanced approach and how does that change the outcomes that we achieve?

Mary: Yes, this, in fact, the first chapter in the Diary of a CMO report talks about this, because I used fictional characters this time, and Carol gets a message from the top, the leadership group, where they tell her that they, we need to do something to reverse the trend, the decline of our revenues. And of course, the temptation is very real for Carol. She's thinking about it momentarily, right? That she should be reaching for promotions. But she knows very well from the past that it will only give her a quick uplift.

The reality is that when growth slows, this is the temptation that's very real for all marketers. Promotions are like a sugar rush. We've seen it time and time again. That they spike volume and they crush the margins. And the worst thing is that they train consumers to expect discounts and cheaper way at the very thing that makes our brand valuable, which is our equity.

So we've seen brands many times unintentionally enter what we call the spiral of discount where you lose margin, then you cut investment, then you lose equity and then repeat. You're going into that circle of things and it's unsustainable and in fact, it's self-destructive as well, but it's very hard. It's very hard to rationalize things at that moment when you have to act.

But the worst thing, actually, you know what the worst thing is that half of the people who buy on promotion would have bought anyway. So you're not getting anything, you're just giving away a lot. So to your question, the better, in fact, the much better approach would be to reframe our brand again as a value producing asset, and that means investing in the three layers of equity, the ones that we mentioned before in being more meaningful, more different, more salient. Because in this case you are neglecting the other Ps, you're neglecting price in all likelihood and you're rushing to promotions.

We know that by investing in these three dimensions, you will build, you can successfully build your pricing power. And pricing power is gold. It's what lets you hold your price even when there are shaky microeconomics around us, even in inflationary times, and in fact our data shows that people are willing to pay up to double for brands with higher pricing power. And in fact, there's another stat that is very interesting that bargain hunters will pay 40% more for brands that they see as meaningfully different. So we shouldn't default to price, we should default again to and look at our brand as a value producing asset.

Angela: It is such a powerful insight, Mary, when you think about marketers just trying to do well by their role, all well intended, just a simple tactic like pricing strategy, as you know, from the work in this area. A decision around promotion and just pricing strategy in general is a really big decision.

When you think of pricing power, you call it an attitudinal metric that shifts slowly, but that ultimately shields a brand from price sensitivity. What have you learned about how brands actually build pricing power and what separates a brand that succeeds from those that don't practically, right? If they're struggling to hit their lead counts or hit their unit counts, what does that look like in the day to day?

Mary: So it's a very good question. Pricing power, first of all, just to be a hundred percent clear, it's the ability to increase your price and lose less customers or, if you can't lose any, then you have built a really strong pricing power. And we can visualize it as a moat around our brand. Right? The stronger and the wider this moat is then, the more freedom we have as a brand, as a business to grow our profitability.

Now, with regards to what builds it, if I was to speak in a very simple way and going back to the three dimensions that we talked about before, our data shows that 94% of pricing power is driven by the two dimensions. By being meaningful and different. Salient plays a role, but less overall. Now, what separates the brands that succeed from those that don't, with regards to building their pricing power. It's not their size, it's not their budget. It's the ability to show clarity in everything that they do. Consistency.

And I'll actually say a fair amount of commitment because the brands that win are the ones that they know what they stand for. They show up time after time. And of course, you know, they do that even when it's tempting to chase short term gains, talk about promotions. McCain for instance, when private labels started eating into their market share, they didn't panic, or at least not visibly they invested in brand building. They celebrated. They continue to celebrate the real family teatimes and the result was an impressive 47% drop in price sensitivity and consumers' price sensitivity, 44% rise in base sales. So they didn't just win by selling more to everyone. They won by making each sale more valuable. More examples. I mean, Magnum, now Magnum, they again, private labels. Magnum were faced with copycats and they launched their stick to the original campaign and they reminded people that only Magnum delivers that indulgent premium experience. And it worked. They had the best, it was launched in the winter. The best ever winter season in the UK specifically. Right. And not just premium brands. So Yorkshire Tea grew from a regional player to a market leader by leaning into their consistent storytelling, not price cuts.

We saw Nivea as well, thriving in skincare despite the cheaper alternatives. They actually believe they're worth it. Pricing power is not claimed. It's rather earned actually. You need to earn pricing power. It's not something you can claim. This is not, promotion is not gonna get you that far. It's about being perceived as more valued. It's about being valued by consumers. Yes.

Angela: Yeah, you can see how short termism and just being too reactive in general can be really damaging to a brand. We often talk about gaining credibility in the boardroom, and I think a conversation around pricing strategy really helps us get there. But even more broadly, I'm curious what you've found to help a CMO gain credibility with the CEO, the CFO, or even the board when it comes to advocating for brand investment.

Mary: You mentioned Mark Ritson before, and he talked about this in one of his articles and he stayed with me because he said that many CMOs are trying to talk the language of finance, and then they end up presenting econometrics and speculative returns. And in fact, they make their CFO more uncomfortable. And the irony is that they're going in there because they wanna sound credible using these things, and they lose their credibility. So we've observed this as well, the marketers who succeed take a different path to that.

They go beyond the typical advertising metrics. They look at the health of the business in a way that a CFO does, in a way that an investor does. And they use validated metrics like Future Power, Demand Power, pricing power that we mentioned before. And they show how their brand equity links directly to metrics like penetration, margin and future growth. And their mentality is not to walk in and defend their budget. They are there to make a business case for growth, right? And their deck doesn't have complexity because that's not gonna make it gain credibility. They show with clarity how brand investment drives value creation. There you go. Value we are coming back to value again. And that's the way they massively dial up the chances of being trusted in the boardroom by the C-suite.

There are three things, right? Effective creative does three things brilliantly. And these three things are like, it captures attention, it drives emotional engagement. And the third one is that it creates a strong memorable link to the brand. So as you say, we've done a lot of work with Effie. In fact, my colleague, Raul Silva leads that partnership with Effie.

And we have analyzed many sets of award-winning creative campaigns at, and then at the same time, we see exactly this, that they don't just come through because they show their distinctive assets every second of the way. They build the success through their tone, their story, their storytelling, and even a unique perspective that they present. And the brand is not just present, it is central to the experience. So what we see is that they tell a story, right? And the story can be traumatic, it can be funny, it can be deeply human. These are the campaigns that don't just win awards. They win attention, they win affection, and then ultimately they win the market share too.

The first one for me is if you're choosing your brand metrics that don't actually reflect business performance because it's easy to get distracted by something that looks good on the dashboard, like instant awareness or social. But you need to use those metrics that have a proven link to outcomes like sales, market share or pricing power.

I'm mentioning it again, it's really important because it can help us make better decisions. Another problem is when they look at the brand data in isolation. Brand is just one part of the puzzle. We need to be connecting, I suppose, the brand data with sales, with customer experience with the data that comes from that, because that's where the Google call it, the mess. The mess is the say do gap. This is where the say do gap lives and the tension between what people think and what people do. So we need to put the light on that and figure out what to do next. And if I'm allowed, there's another common mistake that we often find advising our clients not to do, is that they define their competitive set too narrowly.

They track their brand performance within a tightly drawn category. We need to really think we're a toy. Are we competing for leisure time too? Yeah. Because that shifts the perspective. And that changes everything from that point on because you benchmark against whoever you have to to find growth.

I am gonna sound like a broken record, right? I suppose my most contrarian opinion is that pricing power deeply matters. Deeply matters, not just as a financial leader, but as a strategic signal of brand health. And yes, I've had my fair share of, I would call it friendly fire from Byron Sharp and those that challenge that view. But the thing is, that is not my opinion. It's the outcome of decades of empirical research, thousands of brands, hundreds of categories across dozens of markets, right? So it might sound contrarian in a world that often celebrates reach and frequency alone. But I see it, we see it as complimentary pricing. Power does not replace the fundamentals it builds on them.

Elena: Yeah. Mary, I am thinking about just what Rob just said, the start of this conversation, where we started off with something that could sometimes be a misunderstanding in marketing, and I like that. We sort of clarified today that Kantar is not saying distinctiveness or Berg Bass principles are wrong.

You're building on them and you're saying that they compliment each other, which is I think sometimes something people misunderstand about the data and the reports that you share. So I wanted to wrap up with something a little personal, but related. What's the perception people often get wrong about you you'd love to rebrand?

Mary: Everyone thinks I'm an extrovert, and that I feed on social media, but I'm gonna say to you, and this way, I'll say it to the industry as well. Deep down, I was designed as an agoraphobic introvert, I find comfort in quiet corners. And I avoid the spotlight, or I used to anyway. The showing up online did not come naturally. It still doesn't, I take a lot of deep breaths like I do now, but I've learned to navigate it. I'm not naturally good at putting myself out there. As I often hear, I've worked really hard at it.

Elena: I definitely, I resonate with that too, Mary, and you don't come across that way, so you've built a strong personal brand.

Mary: Yes. Yeah.

Angela: We're perhaps gonna have a theme. I feel like I paid you to say that just to soften mine a little bit. But I think, you know, as a leader of an agency, a thought leader in the space, you're expected to share a vision and engage people and talk, talk, talk on stage here and there. And would be that, you know, quiet doesn't necessarily mean shy when I'm not speaking. I really like to listen.

Mary: Yeah.

Angela: It doesn't necessarily mean I don't wanna talk to people, but I should have asked Rob. We should have had to bring one first for another person. Rob, what's one perception people often get about you that you think we should rebrand?

Mary: You don't come across as scary.

Elena: Okay, so Rob, you're saying that you think there's a perception at large that you smoke weed? Mm-hmm. That's what you're saying.

Mary: There you go. Great. Okay.

Angela: Elena, what's yours?

Elena: Yeah, I can bring us full circle please. Um, yeah, it's funny, mine's kind of similar, just being someone who posts a lot on LinkedIn and stuff as assuming that you like attention or something like that. I actually hate attention. I like to avoid it whenever I can, but I think, and Mary, you and Angela probably also feel similarly, that sometimes you're brought into a career path and you have opinions and like your role just turns into something that's not natural to you. But I think that sometimes that can make you good at it too, because you're able to like sit and observe and

Mary: Right.

Elena: Things personally can be hard, but I also think it makes you better at what you do because you are listening to feedback and trying to adapt. But I'm definitely jealous of people that can just throw stuff onto the internet and just take it back. And maybe everybody's sensitive, but it seems like some people are better at that than others. Well Mary, this was really fun. Thank you for coming on today. I have a lot of takeaways.

Mary: Thank you. Oh, thank you so much for saying that. It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you for inviting me again and no, I really, I really enjoyed my time with you.

Elena: Love it. Mary, so we'll include a link to the report to your LinkedIn. Is there anything else you'd like to plug or, you know, where can people follow you, learn more about Kantar and obviously read the report?

Mary: No, you're doing everything that I would have suggested, so, no, that's it. Let's all add to the conversation in the most natural, friendly way. And I will add that actually, because sometimes it gets really heated out there and I probably don't handle it because I stay quiet or I say one thing, but I don't like to get involved. But I just find that there's a lot more for all of us to learn if we put forward our ideas as something that our data has led us to believe, without attacking anyone.

Elena: Yeah. It's a great place to end it.

Angela: Thanks so much, Mary.