Tracksuit's Michael Rochon on testing which brand claims actually move buyers, before the budget meeting decides for you.
Every marketing team has had the same meeting: research wants more survey budget, distribution wants wider shelf presence, and pricing wants to stay competitive. Each team is certain its priority is the one pulling customers in, and the budget usually follows whoever makes the strongest case out loud.
Michael Rochon sat in that meeting for years, mostly on the performance side, skeptical of the brand-driven initiatives clients wanted to chase. Now, as US Head of Growth at Tracksuit, he spends his days with the data that settles those arguments. What they’ve landed on is a way to test which brand claims actually move buyers before anyone commits a dollar.
The loudest theory in the room might be convincing at the moment. But what actually pulls customers down the funnel is a correct, data-backed brand statement.
Key Takeaways
- Brand claims can be tested against funnel movement before budget gets committed
- The claim customers act on isn't always the one that argues best internally
- Marketers who measure brand are far likelier to keep that budget when cuts come
Conviction is not a data source
Most teams understandably sdebate which claim deserves funding without ever checking which one customers respond to. , then argues internally about which of those things deserves funding.
But Rochon has also seen that argument go a dozen different directions. "There's going to be a camp of people saying the most important thing is that we have the most innovative solution, so you need to up the research budget," he says. "There's going to be another camp saying we need to make sure easy access is the most important thing, so we need to work with outside partners."
Both camps might be right, but only one is going to get funded first, and conviction is doing most of the work in that decision.
In fact, the wider pattern shows up in the numbers. A March 2026 study from MMA Global and Wpromote surveyed 102 senior marketers and found 82% said they aren't confident in measuring brand impact, and what capability marketers wanted most was linking brand metrics to business results.
Test the claim, not the department's case for it
The move here is to put the brand claims themselves on trial, in front of customers
Rochon's team works with brands to define a short list of core statements, the specific sentences a customer might attach to a brand, then measures which of those statements track with people moving down the funnel.
"A brand will have statements like: provides easy access, is a brand I trust, has effective solutions, has innovative solutions, is worth paying more for," Rochon explains. Those statements go to real customers, who rate the brand on each one. The output is a ranking built from buyer responses rather than just internal opinion.
"If you want to move your awareness or your consideration or usage, we run a regression to tell you which of these statements are actually driving people towards your brand.”
The output is a ranking built from buyer responses, not internal opinion. This sits between two habits worth avoiding: Ignoring brand claims entirely leaves the decision to whoever talks loudest, and treating every claim as equally important spreads budget thin across all of them.
In that same MMA and Wpromote study, the roughly half of marketers who used measurement to defend brand budget were 2.6x more likely to be aligned with finance, and more likely to grow those budgets and hold onto them when cuts came.
The useful part is that putting the claims under a microscope usually gives an answer that tends to surprise people. Claims that sound impressive in a planning deck often rank low, but claims that sound almost boring may be carrying the funnel more than you realise.
Running the test
Most teams can start with what's already on their whiteboard.
Step 1: Write down the claims worth testing
Before any data comes in, the actual sentences go on paper. Rochon isn’t talking category descriptors or mission language, but the specific things a customer might say:
- “This one is easy to get”
- “This one works”
- “This one is a brand I trust”
- “This one is worth paying more for”
Step 2: Rank them against named competitors, through customers
A claim means nothing in isolation. "We're gonna measure those vis-a-vis other competitors in the space," Rochon says.
Ranking against a real competitive set shows where a brand already owns a point of view in customers’ minds and where it sounds like everything else on the shelf.
Step 3: Match the claims to funnel movement
This is where the test earns its keep.
Each statement gets checked against where customers actually sit, whether they're aware, considering, using, or preferring. Some claims rise and fall in step with people moving closer to buying. Others get broad agreement and move nothing.
Rochon makes it simple. "That's really what people are after," he says. "That's what's driving awareness, that's what's driving consideration, and conversion into preference."
Pressure testing your assumptions
Often this funnel test will contradict a brand’s internal theories about “what works.”
For example, these two ran the same test against the same kind of question and walked away pointed in completely different directions:
- A telehealth company in the weight loss category assumed innovation was its strongest card, although the data pointed elsewhere. Trust and effectiveness were what people actually responded to, which reshaped how the brand talked about its results and who it partnered with.
- A peer-to-peer car sharing marketplace found something even stranger. The claim moving people down funnel was availability at the airport, a place customers associated entirely with the legacy rental counters. That answer sent the brand into operational territory, from airport presence to airline partnerships, well outside a messaging brief.
Step 4: Move the money toward what's working
The number points somewhere specific, and acting on it usually means redirecting spend. "If you're jacking up your research budget and you're expanding to be available in every single city in America and you're trying to be the cheapest, that doesn't work," Rochon says.
While it seems obvious—spend where it’s working—it’s almost impossible when you don’t know how to measure it.
We've sat in plenty of rooms where one number from this test ended a debate that had been running for months. Evidence on the table changes who gets to make the call, and it makes the call faster.
Why data wins
It’s easy for a room full of theories to become a single confident budget number. Without data to back up your claims, there’s no guarantee you won’t be back in that same room, fighting it out a month later.
Running this test gets you to a number that will hold up long after the loudest voice has moved on. And will cost a fraction of putting budget behind the wrong one for a year.
When it comes to brand claims, being right matters less than being able to show it.
FAQs
What is a brand statement?
A brand statement is a specific sentence a customer might associate with a brand, such as "this is a brand I trust" or "this is worth paying more for." Testing them means measuring which ones correlate with customers moving toward a purchase.
How is this different from message testing?
Message testing usually evaluates creative execution. This tests the underlying claim itself against funnel data, so the output points to where a company should invest rather than only how it should phrase an ad.
How do companies actually measure brand?
New tools make this easier than it used to be. Platforms like Tracksuit provide always-on measurement across the funnel, and standards like the Care Index give brands a way to benchmark investment against performance. Brand measurement is turning into a baseline expectation for companies, the same way performance tracking already is.
Can a claim rank well and still not be worth putting spend behind it?
Yes. A claim can get broad agreement from customers without predicting whether they buy. The test looks for funnel movement, not customer approval.