Through our audience intelligence service, we can track perception shifts across audiences. Using social listening, we can segment social mentions of a brand, product or service into certain associations and spot movements over time.

Perception can be tracked against increased or decreased positivity or negativity, or against brand specific associations; your brand is associated with being green, purposeful, helpful, etc. Through these detailed perception associations, we can build bespoke halo impact reports for clients, specific to the perception or association their campaign is working to improve or enhance.

Let’s take the example of Trade & Invest (T&I) Wales. One of the brand’s goals for 2021 was to increase the positive perception of Wales on the world stage. By comparing perception data across bespoke associations pre- and post-campaign, we were able to report on how impactful the omnichannel campaign had been on increasing perceptions of Wales. To gain this view, we proposed a halo impact report incorporating perception monitoring – a completely novel concept for T&I.

For T&I Wales, segmenting mentions meant bucketing all online mentions of key Welsh industries that referred to a desirable association (e.g., innovation) and comparing the volume of these mentions to that of other desirable associations (e.g., sustainable, talent, fast-growing, etc.). As a result, we not only gained an understanding of the worldwide perceptions of Wales, but had a benchmark to monitor any movement in the future.

We expect to see shifts in perceptions depending on focus within recent content, campaigns and PR. When we conducted another halo report in Q1 2021, T&I had run a large sustainability campaign at the end of 2020, showcasing Wales as a nation committed to a greener future and positioning itself as an eco-friendly business destination. This is the kind of activity that should impact perceptions of T&I, specifically how sustainable people perceive Wales to be.

We compared the number of mentions for each association from the initial time period analysed (pre-campaign) to the most recent time period analysed (post-campaign) and showcased the % change. We found perceptions of the sustainability of Welsh industries had increased by 19% in the UK, and by 32% globally.

Not only did our halo report track the impact an omnichannel campaign had on the longer lasting perceptions of Wales, but it helped showcase the kind of campaign activity that is effective in producing such a shift. This helps identify priority messaging and formats for future campaigns aiming to shift perceptions in this manner.