It is very common to see brand logos neglected from brand survey questions. There is a benefit in doing so - using only brand names allows more space for longer lists of brands to be displayed side by side in one single question, which lends to greater efficiency in the survey overall. Effectively this means you can ask about more brands and ask more questions about these brands.

However, this technique can have significant drawbacks. Firstly, placing lots of items, like brand names, into one question or one screen could put a greater cognitive strain on the respondents being asked to recall them than it would to provide them with one brand at a time. This could lead to an information overload effect, resulting in lower-than-reality recall. Secondly, even if brands were asked in silo, not offering respondents a visual prompt, i.e. a logo, can also fail to provide them with enough information to make an accurate recall. Again, the result could be a lower-than-reality brand recall.

This can have a ripple effect on funnel KPIs, which are branched from brand awareness and therefore rely on an accurate capture of brand recall in the first place. If brand awareness is reported to be lower than reality, then the available sample size for metrics like brand consideration and perception is lower, making insights on these important measures less reliable and with higher margins of error. So something as simple as the survey design for a brand awareness question can end up skewing the overall picture of your brand health detrimentally.

Testing the impact of brand logos on awareness levels

Logos, as visual symbols, are more recognizable and memorable than brand names alone, and so could provide a crucial aid to respondents in recalling brands more effectively. People are exposed to logos far more frequently than brand names alone in the real world, as it's the most effective way of identifying a brand in advertising, packaging and digital media. 

We wanted to test this recall efficiency in our research, by including and removing brand logos in our aided brand awareness questions. We surveyed 2,000 respondents in the US across two randomly attributed surveys; in one we asked respondents if they were aware of 8 brands using the brand name as the only prompt, while in the other we asked about the awareness of the same 8 brands but included both the brand name and logo as prompts. 

Including brand logos increases brand recall by up to 50%

The aided awareness levels of all 8 brands were consistently higher when asked in a format using a logo prompt alongside the brand name.

For some brands this effect was considerable. The most well-known brand - Chase - sees awareness levels decrease by 24% without the presence of a logo in the question, from 83% awareness with the logo to just 67% without it. Similarly, Bic’s awareness recall declines by 50% with the logo removed, from 81% to just 54%, while Monster’s decreases by 49%, from 73% to 49%. 

The quality of a brand logo could directly impact recall efficiency

The variation of impact on awareness levels is not as linear as expected - that is, a respondent’s ability to recall a brand doesn’t necessarily correlate with how well-known that brand is. Some brands with mid-awareness, like Monster, see the biggest impact on reported recall when the logo is present. And that is likely due to the fact Monster has a particularly visual logo, which is more memorable than the brand name alone.

Some brands saw a much smaller impact on awareness levels when the logo was present, as is the case with Samsonite and Lululemon. In these cases, the logo consists mainly of text only, with little in the way of a visual cue for recognition. Despite this, the presence of a logo still improved brand recall accuracy by 7% for Samsonite, from 57% without the logo to 61% with it, and by 5% for Lululemon, from 42% to 44%. 

The variation of impact can make benchmarking a challenge

There is a wide variation of the impact that a logo presence can have on the resulting awareness data, and the consequence of this can skew results significantly. The awareness rankings of our 8 tested brands looked entirely different in the results of the survey without a brand logo compared to the one in which a logo was presented to the respondent. For those without a logo, New Balance showed the highest levels of awareness, while Bic and Monster were much lower, ranking in the 6th and 7th positions respectively. However, in the survey with logos Chase was the leading brand, with Bic in 2nd place and Monster in 5th place.

‍Final Thoughts

Logos are the visual link between a brand and the consumer’s most frequent interaction with it. We found that including them as a prompt in survey questions strengthened a respondent’s ability to recall a brand more accurately. For some brands, the impact was more significant and this seemed to directly link to the quality and style of the brand logo. Given the variation of impact on reported awareness levels, omitting logos from survey questions would likely result in skewed data, impairing the ability to accurately benchmark you brand against competitors.

By implementing brand logos as a default in all of our brand questions, we’re able to enhance our respondent’s ability to answer questions accurately and thus ensure that:

1 - Brand recall is authentic

Any misrepresentation of key metrics, like brand awareness, is frustrating and can lead to a skewed representation of competitor benchmarking. This is especially important for brands with lower awareness levels, where any misstep in the data is far more pronounced in the end result. 

2 - Funnel metrics are more accurate

Beginning with more accurate awareness will ensure that any following branched brand metrics are not also negatively impacted. If awareness is under-captured then metrics like consideration or perception are calculated on low samples, which undermines the reliability of the data.

3 - Competitor benchmarking is reliable

Some brand data is more impacted than others by the presence or absence of a logo in the survey question - and this variation alone means that results are inconsistent. This makes competitor benchmarking and positioning a challenge, without even knowing it! Ensuring that the respondent has the best ability to answer a brand question is the most reassuring way to benchmark against competitors accurately.