brand market testing: the When, why, and why nots

It is easy to fall into the trap of using brand testing as a vote, hoping the “right” direction will reveal itself through customer opinion. But testing cannot replace strategy. Its real value is in de-risking potentially polarising moves, or checking whether a clear brand direction is landing as intended. Here we'll look at how to use customer testing well, when not to use it, and the mistakes to avoid.

1. Customers are not your strategists

Strategy sets the direction: who you are, why you exist, what you stand for. Customers can tell you if you’ve missed the mark, but they cannot define your strategy. They may also push you toward what feels familiar, and homogeny is the last thing a brand needs. What you want from customer feedback is strong qualitative push-back, not consensus.

2. Test complete concepts, not ideas

Colours, fonts and trends should be guided by market understanding. Your job - and your agency’s - is to see where competitors cluster and then carve out space to stand apart. Customers cannot do that work for you. Research should test complete, strategic directions, not fragments of branding or a pile of colour options. Testing a brand is also not the same as testing a product. A website or an app has a clear job: either the path works or it doesn’t. That is why early testing makes sense in digital. Brand is different. You cannot measure it with the same binary clarity. Testing half-baked ideas only gives you emotional reactions to unfinished aesthetics - and risks killing a strong direction before it has matured. Have conviction. Develop the brand to a point where it can be tested properly, and only then bring in customers if there is genuine risk.

3. Keep it narrow

Use testing to sharpen your approach, never to hand over decision-making. Ten near-identical concepts being run past customers is not testing, it is abdication. Put forward one or two directions shaped by strategy, and only test if there is a real risk of strong push-back.

Customers can tell you if you’ve missed the mark, but they cannot define your strategy. They may also push you toward what feels familiar, and homogeny is the last thing a brand needs.

4. Avoid the crowd

You don’t need a hundred voices. Five well-chosen customers will surface most of what you need. Beyond that, feedback becomes repetitive and muddy. And if you are presenting a dozen options, you haven’t made the hard calls. Research is not a shortcut to clarity. Customers should only ever be asked to react to one or two clear, fully-formed directions - not to choose between half-baked ideas or endless variations.

5. Favour qualitative over quantitative

Tickbox surveys that tell you which option people favour rarely help. What matters is why. Branding is emotional. Even when people think they’re being rational, their feelings are leading the decision. Insight comes from patterns in qualitative feedback: “this feels trustworthy,” “this feels confusing,” “this is the worst thing I’ve ever seen". That is the material you can work with. “I like this one best” is not.

6. Test to de-risk, or don’t test at all

And just to hammer this one home: customer research has value when there is genuine risk. A sense-check can tell you how a bold move lands, but only if you are clear on what you are testing. Removing your most distinctive asset? Taking a 180 degree turn? Worried that one colour choice could jar in the market? These are moments to test.

What you should avoid is testing as a default step, or putting twenty colour options in front of people and asking them to pick. That is not research. It is an outsourced vote, and it tells you nothing about sentiment toward your brand direction. Testing should focus on one or two complete ideas - and only if there is a real chance of strong push-back.

The balance that matters

B2B Branding should always be led by the why, what and who of your business. Market research is always needed - it gives you the foundation by showing you where you sit against competitors, how stakeholders see you, and how customers already talk about you in the wild. Customer testing is different. It is optional, and should only be used when strategy is set and when there is real risk involved.

If your brand strategy is clear and you are not making a risky move, customer testing adds very little. What matters is conviction and clarity, supported by a strong strategy and grounded in market research. Customer testing should never replace that work - it is there only to sharpen and de-risk. The strongest brands know when to test, when to listen, and when to trust the strategy that led them there.

More thoughts

Branded Content

Marketing for long B2B sales cycles

Most B2B decisions take months, not moments. Marketing content needs to work across a long sales cycle.

TBC Minute read

In B2B, the final decision usually sits with a CMO or CTO. Of course, everyone knows that. What matters more though, is that they are almost never the first person engaging with you. They are not the ones booking the demo. They're not the ones reading your site in detail. And they're not taking hours to compare options side by side. That work happens earlier, inside their team, exploring the market and narrowing things down. A shortlist is formed before leadership is involved at all, and so by the time a decision maker sees you, the shape of the decision has already been set.

The real sale happens before you are involved

Although the people doing the early evaluation are not the buyer, they do control access to the buyer. They decide what gets discussed internally and how it is framed. So when they bring an option forward, they are the ones explaining what it is, why it is relevant, and how it compares to alternatives.

In effect, they are your internal sales advocate.

At that point, your website, decks, and materials stop being “marketing” in the usual sense. They become source material. They are skimmed, forwarded, lifted from, and paraphrased. The language you use is the language that gets reused. The emphasis you place is the emphasis that carries through.

If that material is built only with the final decision maker in mind, it often fails the people who need it first. Not because it is wrong, but because it does not help them do their job, which is to advocate for you clearly and competently.

It is not just about attracting interest or signalling credibility. It's about supporting internal conversations you will never hear.

Marketing as internal sales enablement

This shifts how B2B marketing should be thought about. It is not just about attracting interest or signalling credibility. It's about supporting internal conversations you will never hear. The job is to give teams enough to work with so they can explain you accurately, and move you forward without loss in translation.

That does not require cleverness or heavy messaging, but being conscious of how your story will travel when you are not there to tell it. What can be easily picked up and passed on is what survives the process.

Long B2B sales cycles are shaped upstream. If your marketing helps teams do the early selling for you, you are far more likely to be the option that reaches the decision maker in the first place.

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Brand Development

What is a Brand Sprint Workshop?

How we put the whole team on the same page before brand development begins.

TBC Minute read

Great branding can only be built on strategic clarity: knowing why you exist, who you are for, and how you want to show up. That clarity cannot be left to find it's own way – it has to be built top-down, with intention. Brand sprint workshops create a space where all stakeholders are present, and the big questions get answered in real time. Often for the first time, people hear each other’s perspectives – friction can often be part of the process – debate hard truths, and resolve the differences that would otherwise resurface later. Clarity and team alignment is key, and for that reason it's how we start all our branding work at Otherfolk®.

When you're appointing stakeholders, be clear on exactly why they're there beyond an additional opinion, and what unique view they bring to the table.

Who Needs to Be There?

Your agency/studio, and key decision-makers: founders, senior leadership, marketing leads, and anyone else with a stake in the brand. If someone is missing, decisions made in the sprint risk being undone once they weigh in. That said, it's important to keep the stakeholder group small – like any project, too many voices risk pulling the project apart, and creating more noise than neccesary. So when you're appointing stakeholders, be clear on exactly why they're there beyond an additional opinion, and what unique view they bring to the table. Attendance is non-negotiable for this group – it only works if the people who will see the project through is present to avoid suprises later on. Also: no devices, no distractions.

What Happens in a Brand Sprint Workshop?

The workshop runs through a series of structured exercises over the course of approximately three hours (with breaks). Each exercise exists for a reason:

1. The Five-Year Roadmap: This forces the team to think beyond today’s targets. Where does the brand need to be in two, three, or five years? What needs to be true in order for those targets to be met? Is it the same brand, products, or something different? This exercise sets ambition and ensures the brand is built with the future in mind, not just the present quarter.

2. Why / What / How: Starting with why you exist as a business defines the brand’s reason to exist beyond revenue. What problem are you here to solve for your customers? What impact do you want to have? What do you offer? How is that delivered? Are these clear and differential?

3. Values: Every brand claims to have values. A brand sprint cuts the list down to the three that genuinely guide behaviour. This makes them usable in practice, rather than wallpaper.

4. Audiences: You can't be everything to everyone. This exercise forces prioritisation. Who are the three groups that matter most? Decisions get sharper when you are clear who you are talking to.

5. Personality: Is the brand playful or serious? Modern or classic? Bold or understated? These simple scales spark debate and create agreement on tone and style.

6. Competitive Landscape: By mapping competitors, you see not just who you are up against but also where the gaps are. It is a visual way to decide where your brand should sit, and where it shouldn't.

Each exercise pushes the team to make choices, often tough ones. The point is not to avoid disagreement but to use it productively.

Summary

A brand sprint is three hours of focus that can save three months of drift. It gives you clarity, direction, and alignment, and it does it in a way that energises teams rather than drains them. The outcome is a clear foundation for brand development, websites, and content that everyone has a hand in shaping. If you're kicking off brand work, there is no better way to start.

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