Branding
Benchmarking card, MethodKit for Branding
Card 5 of 64 · MethodKit for Branding
  • ThemeProcess & Planning
  • CardCard 5 of 64
  • Questions5 to explore
Process & Planning

Benchmarking

The brand how it performs compared to others

You cannot know whether your brand is working if you have no idea where it stands relative to others competing for the same attention.

Benchmarking gives you context. It tells you whether your brand awareness, perception, loyalty scores, or visual distinctiveness are above or below the range for your category. Without it, a 40% brand recognition score sounds arbitrary. Benchmarked against your competitors, it becomes meaningful.

The trap with benchmarking is copying what others do rather than understanding why they do it. Competitive research should reveal the space that is not yet owned, not a template to follow. The most useful insight from benchmarking is often what no one in your category is doing well.

How strong brands handle it

The same building block, handled well. These are approaches and illustrations from how brands tend to work, not rules, and never a ranking of companies.

Track perception gaps

Strong brands use benchmarking to find where customer perception of them diverges from perception of competitors on dimensions they care about. Oatly identified a gap in environmental values in the dairy alternative space and built their entire brand voice around it.

Visual distinctiveness audits

Category design conventions tend to converge over time. Apple's consistency in visual language makes their work instantly recognizable in a way most consumer electronics brands are not, which is partly a result of auditing and defending that distinctiveness.

Share of voice vs share of market

Brands like Monzo track how much of the conversation in their category they own relative to their market share, using the gap as a proxy for brand momentum or vulnerability.

Questions to explore

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

  1. How does our brand recognition compare to the other options our target audience is aware of?

  2. On which brand attributes do customers differentiate us from competitors, and are those the ones we want to own?

  3. What are the visual or tonal conventions of our category, and are we reinforcing or deliberately breaking them?

  4. Where does our brand underperform category benchmarks, and is that a problem we want to solve or an asset we want to reframe?

  5. How often do we actively research what competitors are doing with their branding, and what do we do with that knowledge?

Things to notice

  • Benchmarking against the wrong peer group leads to wrong conclusions. Define your competitive set carefully: who your customers consider when they could choose you.
  • Chasing competitors rather than your own positioning is a common failure mode. Use benchmarks to understand the landscape, not to set your direction.
  • Brand perception shifts slowly. Benchmarks from a year ago may reflect where a competitor was, not where they are heading.