CoreBrand Recognized for Pioneering Science of Marketing

NEW YORK, Jan. 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- CoreBrand, a leading brand strategy and communications firm, and creator of the Corporate Branding Index®, which provides continuous benchmarking data, insights and corporate brand valuation for over 1000 companies, across 49 industries, announced today it is the first brand measurement firm to have the methodology underlying its "Brand Power Ranking" system independently audited for validation and causality by The MMAP Center of MASB (Marketing Accountability Standards Board).

"The role of MASB is setting the standards for evaluating marketing measures as they relate to financial outcomes, in a manner that insures credibility, validity, transparency and understanding," commented James Gregory, Chief Executive Officer at CoreBrand. "It is gratifying to receive affirmation of CoreBrand's 20 years of original, proprietary research into understanding how the investment in corporate brands connects to financial performance. CoreBrand takes a very pragmatic approach to this work and offers tools to help companies get the maximum return on their marketing investment by measuring, managing and growing brand value over time."

"Tying marketing metrics to financial performance in a reliably predictable, transparent manner is the critical, heretofore 'missing link' between the marketing and financial communities," said Meg Blair, President of MASB, which devised a rigorous process of "validation" – MMAP (Marketing Metrics Audit Protocol) – to assess and compare marketing measurement models.

MMAP is a formal process for connecting marketing activities to the financial performance of the firm. The process includes the conceptual linking of marketing activities to intermediate marketing outcome metrics to cash flow drivers of the business, as well as the validation and causality characteristics of an ideal metric.

CoreBrand was the first brand measurement firm to submit its measures for the MASB audit, which required almost a year to complete. "CoreBrand has advanced the science of marketing," said Rick Abens, President at Foresight ROI, Inc., a charter member of MASB.  "I believe that this represents an important step towards the goals MASB has set for advancing the industry and the accountability of marketing. CoreBrand's metrics were evaluated with an objective process to determine whether those metrics measured what was promised and whether the results are reliable when replicated. Both of these concepts are critical for marketing to help finance understand and believe in the return from the marketing investment."

"I have been working with this issue my whole career and I've never seen anything quite like CoreBrand's approach. It explains an aspect of future cash flow that published studies are clearly missing," said Leigh McAllister, Professor of Marketing at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas, Austin, also a charter member of MASB.

"The MMAP validation and causality audit verified something that we've known for quite some time – that there is value in building and maintaining strong brands – value that can be quantitatively measured.  MASB is leading the charge to help the market understand this connection and to ensure that marketers get the credit they deserve in creating corporate value," said Timothy Robinson, Managing Director at CoreBrand.

"The audit revealed that CoreBrand's 'Familiarity' and 'Favorability' metrics align well with MMAP characteristics.  This reflects CoreBrand's longtime commitment to maintaining measurement quality and to relating its marketing metrics to financial performance, in this case, stock price," said Allan Kuse, Chief Advisor to the MMAP Center.

To learn more about the CoreBrand Methodology, please follow the link: http://www.corebrand.com/brandpower/methodology-overview

About CoreBrand
CoreBrand, an independent branding firm based out of New York, is the only firm that links brand identity to financial performance through data and analysis. CoreBrand helps organizations understand, build, express and measure their brands.Thanks in part to its unique CoreBrand®Analysis, the company is able to gauge the impact of a brand initiative upon the success of an organization.  CoreBrand is the creator of Corporate Branding Index®, a 20 year old index that provides continuous benchmarking data, insights and corporate brand valuation for over 1000 companies, across 49 industries.   To learn more about CoreBrand please visit http://www.corebrand.com.

About Marketing Accountability Standards Board
The Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB) is the independent, private sector, self-governing body authorized by its membership constituency to establish marketing measurement and accountability standards across industry and domain, for continuous improvement in financial performance and for the guidance and education of business decision makers and users of performance and financial information. To learn more about Marketing Accountability Standards Board please visit http://www.themasb.org.

Contact: Dan Rene of Levick Strategic Communications, +1-202-973-1325 or [email protected]

SOURCE CoreBrand