Startup Confidential · 2026-07-01 · 8 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
44 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Dr. James Richardson addresses a critical blind spot in consumer brand marketing: most founders measure the wrong metrics and expect immediate sales lifts from brand investments that operate on entirely different timelines. Rather than obsessing over units per store per week when launching TikTok campaigns, brands should track awareness and household penetration - metrics that require 6-12 months to shift meaningfully. Richardson breaks down three concrete practices: stop conflating brand marketing with performance marketing (which belongs in e-commerce), measure incremental lift by establishing baseline trajectories using survey data from tools like TrackSuit, and crucially, set up awareness tracking 2 years before spending material sums on out-of-store consumer marketing. The episode is essential for CPG operators managing $5-15M+ marketing budgets, retail buyers imposing BOGOs at launch, and finance teams demanding ROI on brand spend - all of whom need to understand that awareness building requires statistical modeling of baselines, not short-term sales velocity analysis.
Brand marketing requires multiple impressions to drive trial purchases, and the lag between spending and actual household penetration can stretch 6-12 months. Immediate sales bumps don't reflect brand-building effectiveness - that's what performance marketing and e-commerce are for.
Incremental lift measures sales growth above baseline using statistical modeling. You establish the baseline trend, subtract it from promotional results to get net lift, and check whether the baseline permanently shifts upward after the campaign - if not, you've just created temporary demand like a promotional drug.
TrackSuit is a service that collects awareness data from category buyers, smooths it, charts it, and analyzes incremental changes - making it feasible for brands with $5M+ marketing budgets to afford continuous awareness tracking without building measurement infrastructure in-house.
You should set up baseline tracking 2 years before spending material amounts on out-of-store consumer marketing, so you have a statistically meaningful baseline to subtract from campaign results and measure true incremental awareness lift.
You must measure out-of-store marketing effects using out-of-store survey data - not in-store velocity metrics - because that's where the impressions actually happened (screens in living rooms and beds), so you're measuring in the same reality where the marketing worked.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode delivers three genuinely useful and sequenced tips on measuring brand marketing effectiveness - measuring awareness over velocity, applying incremental lift logic to awareness data, and starting baseline measurement 2 years pre-spend - but the runtime is short and there is notable repetition and throat-clearing between points that dilutes density.
the lag between when the marketing dollar gets spent and when the leading indicator awareness changes and the lagging indicator household penetration changes. I mean, it could be six months, nine months, could be a freaking year.
you need to take the same incremental analytic mentality, you need to apply it to your s to your rolling awareness data
The transfer of incremental lift methodology from trade promotion analytics to brand awareness tracking is a non-obvious and useful reframe, but the broader argument (brand marketing has a long lag, don't measure it like performance marketing) is a familiar practitioner point rather than a truly contrarian or first-principles insight.
if the baseline doesn't move up permanently after you did your BOGO, then you have just injected heroin into your veins
Out-of-the-store effect, measure out of the store on a survey. And you're measuring in the same reality.
This is a solo monologue by the host, Dr. James Richardson, who is a CPG consultant and author - a credible practitioner voice, but there is no guest, and Richardson's authority rests on consulting rather than having scaled a brand himself at significant revenue.
With your host, best-selling author of Ramping Your Brand, Dr. James Richardson.
Get the books CPG founders keep talking about, and visit my website for tips, coaching, and courses.
The episode earns some credit for naming concrete tools (TrackSuit, Nielsen, SPINS), specific budget thresholds ($5M, $10M, $15M), a lag range (6 - 12 months), and specific promotional mechanics (BOGO, P1/P7), but there are no named brand case studies, actual data outcomes, or quantified campaign results to fully substantiate the claims.
there's a service called TrackSuit, which will collect this data from your category buyers, smooth it, chart it, analyze it for you
you can afford it if you can do a$10 million marketing budget. You can afford it even if you're doing a$5 million marketing budget
This is a solo monologue with no guest, no interviewer questions, no pushback, and no dialogue; the format precludes any conversational craft, and the delivery includes frequent restarts and filler that would ordinarily be caught by a skilled host.
Gotta measure the right thing. I can't emphasize this enough.
Alright.
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Send us Fan Mail Don’t confuse anything I’m about to talk about with Marketing Mix Analytics, an old BigCo statistical machine designed to distinguish which of 15 marketing buckets had the most influence on sales growth in the past year. Just mentioning the topic makes me want to rage at the naivete with which people purchase its promises. Separate video required. Your Host: Dr. James F. Richardson of Premium Growth Solutions, LLC Please send feedback on t...
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
1 - > SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Startup Confidential. 2 - > What industry insiders will never tell you that you need to 3 - > know if you're building a consumer brand. 4 - > With your host, best-selling author of Ramping Your Brand, 5 - > Dr. 6 - > James Richardson.
7 - > Let's do this. 8 - > SPEAKER_01: Today I want to share a few advanced tips on 9 - > marketing effectiveness. 10 - > Because those of you who are new to the industry doing it all 11 - > wrong, you're staring at your units per store per week, and 12 - > you're expecting them to just bump up once you turn on your 13 - > TikTok channel, just like your sales tend to bump when you do 14 - > BOGOs. 15 - > And that's not how this works.
16 - > And you're measuring the wrong thing. 17 - > You gotta stop worrying about velocity when you're investing 18 - > in brand marketing. 19 - > If you only want to spend consumer marketing dollars out 20 - > of the store to generate an immediate sale, then you need to 21 - > get into the e-commerce biz. 22 - > And then you're gonna call it performance marketing.
23 - > So the first thing you need to understand, the first tip, is 24 - > you've got to measure growth and awareness, not sales velocity. 25 - > Because your brand marketing investments out of the store, 26 - > they're gonna require multiple impressions per new consumer to 27 - > generate the first trial purchase. 28 - > And then you're gonna have to wait even longer depending on 29 - > the purchase cycle in your category to see whether or not 30 - > you actually generated a new household.
31 - > Oops. 32 - > So the lag between when the marketing dollar gets spent and 33 - > when the leading indicator awareness changes and the 34 - > lagging indicator household penetration changes. 35 - > I mean, it could be six months, nine months, could be a freaking 36 - > year. 37 - > Who knows?
38 - > Gotta measure the right thing. 39 - > I can't emphasize this enough. 40 - > The other way to look at it is if you're trying to spend 41 - > millions of dollars out of the store, you've got to measure. 42 - > Where do you want to measure?
43 - > Not in the store, you want to measure out of the store where 44 - > all that happened. 45 - > That includes somebody's screen in their living room or in their 46 - > bed. 47 - > Out-of-the-store effect, measure out of the store on a survey. 48 - > And you're measuring in the same reality.
49 - > Tip number two. 50 - > How you're gonna measure has to change. 51 - > And you learned how to do this. 52 - > I hope.
53 - > If you ever bothered to take one of those spins or Nielsen's 54 - > webinars on trade promotion analytics, they're all sitting 55 - > on there for no added fee, and you probably haven't clicked on 56 - > a single one. 57 - > But there's this thing, there's this concept of incremental 58 - > lift, right? 59 - > So I did a BOGO because the buyer forced me for the launch, 60 - > first launch clod, P1, or P7. 61 - > I did it, I got a sales bump, and I want to measure the 62 - > incremental lift.
63 - > In other words, what was the lift on top of the baseline 64 - > growth that was already happening in my business? 65 - > Well, that requires statistical modeling of the baseline. 66 - > You subtract that from what happened during the promo and 67 - > you get the net incremental lift. 68 - > You can also look after the promo ends to see how much the 69 - > baseline has moved.
70 - > That's a better way of doing it. 71 - > And if the baseline doesn't move up permanently after you did 72 - > your BOGO, then you have just injected heroin into your veins. 73 - > Okay, my point is you need to take the same incremental 74 - > analytic mentality, you need to apply it to your s to your 75 - > rolling awareness data. 76 - > You need to smooth quarterly or monthly awareness data from a 77 - > survey data set you've invested in, not cheap, but you can 78 - > afford it if you can do a$10 million marketing budget.
79 - > You can afford it even if you're doing a$5 million marketing 80 - > budget. 81 - > And it's gonna be more useful then. 82 - > In fact, there's a service called TrackSuit, which will 83 - > collect this data from your category buyers, smooth it, 84 - > chart it, analyze it for you. 85 - > But I don't want to get lost in the weeds of how to do the 86 - > measurement, other than that you have to measure the incremental 87 - > change later in your baseline trajectory of awareness based on 88 - > campaign work that happened in the past, not the present.
89 - > Alright. 90 - > Tip number three. 91 - > If you're still with me, tip number three is that you've 92 - > actually got to set up tracking years in advance of when you're 93 - > going to want to measure the effect of consumer marketing. 94 - > So here's the thing that just drives me crazy.
95 - > You've already been doing this. 96 - > Nielsen and Spence have already been doing this for you because 97 - > they've been collecting, as long as they have your UPCs logged, 98 - > they've been collecting your data, your promotional data to 99 - > calculate promo incremental lift without you even asking because 100 - > it's built into their entire bureaucratic structure. 101 - > So you've already had that going on. 102 - > You didn't even realize it.
103 - > But see, the awareness stuff isn't happening automatically. 104 - > You gotta make that deliberate intentional investment, and you 105 - > need to do it two years before you're gonna spend a material 106 - > amount on consumer marketing out of the store that scares you 107 - > shitless. 108 - > And you really need to do it if you're one of these how can 109 - > finance ROI jackasses last to measure return on everything. 110 - > Because I've explained to you how not to measure the return in 111 - > this video on awareness building long-term brand marketing.
112 - > But you've got to start the measuring of the baseline early 113 - > enough to produce a meaningful number. 114 - > Then you can subtract the baseline growth during a 115 - > specific period and see the incremental fact of your 116 - > playbook on the awareness trend and should be bending it up, 117 - > should be elevating the baseline, should be accelerating 118 - > awareness build. 119 - > Especially if you're spending, you know, five, ten, fifteen 120 - > million on consumer marketing out of the store.
121 - > Gulp. 122 - > And some of you are spending even more of that and not doing 123 - > this measurement. 124 - > Start early, collect the rolling data on awareness, know your 125 - > damn baseline by planning in advance. 126 - > That's all I got for you this time.
127 - > Get the books CPG founders keep talking about, and visit my 128 - > website for tips, coaching, and courses.
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