What is brandformance?

Brandformance brings together two goals that organisations often keep apart: building the brand (brand) and generating measurable sales (performance). The principle is simple. Every communication action must strengthen awareness and preference, and every commercial result must link back to the actions that made it possible.

It is neither performance advertising dressed up with a brand message, nor an image campaign with a few links attached. It is a management system: the same levers, the same partners and one dashboard for awareness and for sales.

Why does pitting awareness against performance cost so much?

For a considered-purchase brand, the split between awareness and performance has a direct cost. Nobody buys a projector, a robot vacuum or an exercise bike on impulse. The consumer reads reviews, compares, watches demonstrations, then sometimes buys several weeks later.

When awareness and performance sit in two budgets, two teams and two agencies, three problems appear:

• Performance runs dry. Conversion campaigns harvest demand that nobody renews. Acquisition costs climb, volume plateaus.
• Awareness cannot defend itself. With no link to sales, the brand budget becomes the first line cut in any trade-off.
• Levers fight over the same sales. Each provider claims its share of the result, and nobody sees the full journey.

Brandformance closes that gap. It turns credibility into a measured asset and the sale into an explainable consequence.

How do Press Relations build credibility and get measured all the way to sales?

Press Relations are the first lever of brandformance. A review published by Les Numériques, a buying guide at Frandroid, a verdict from Tom's Guide in the UK or Tweakers in the Netherlands carries more weight than an ad: an independent third party is recommending the product. This content stays online, ranks on purchase searches and is read at the moment of choice.

The link with sales runs through media affiliate marketing. Reviews and buying guides carry tracked affiliate links to retailers or the brand's site. Every piece of coverage becomes measurable: clicks, sales, average basket, share of new customers. Coverage is no longer just counted; it is tied to revenue.

The JMGO case shows the awareness side of the mechanism: 209 pieces of coverage, including 89 tier-1 articles, in 7 months, a monthly reach of more than 120M and share of voice up 3x in two months. That editorial base supplies the content that creators, comparison sites and affiliate sites then extend.

This work takes time. A 6–12 month PR programme establishes the brand in buying guides across several peak moments, rather than a single launch. Formats and budgets are set out on our pricing page.

What role do creators play?

Creators bring what the press does not always deliver: real-life demonstration, closeness and repetition on the platforms where consumers spend their time. Creator Marketing extends every press moment with usage videos, comparisons and first-hand feedback.

In brandformance, the creator is also a measured partner. Tracked links and named codes, pay partly tied to sales: each creator's contribution reads in impressions and in sales. For Zycle, the creator affiliate programme generated more than 5M impressions and more than €180,000 in sales.

Consistency between press and creators matters as much as volume. The same messages, the same product arguments and the same calendar strengthen recall. A creator who quotes a press review gains credibility; a journalist who sees the product circulating among creators finds a story.

Which KPIs should you track together?

A brandformance dashboard pairs brand indicators with sales indicators. On its own, none is enough. Read together, they show how credibility turns into revenue.

• Share of voice: the brand's presence in the media against its direct competitors, over a given period and market.
• Tier-1 coverage: the number of articles in the category's reference media, and their tone.
• Brand searches: the trend in searches for the brand and product names, a direct signal of awareness and consideration.
• Clicks: qualified traffic from tracked links in articles and creator content.
• Tracked sales: sales attributed to each media outlet, creator and affiliate site.
• Share of new customers: the proportion of first orders, which separates demand created from demand captured.

The combined reading matters more than any single figure. A rise in share of voice followed by a rise in brand searches, then in tracked sales, tells the story of a mechanism. That sequence is what the report must make visible.

How do you set up a single report?

A single report is not just three files merged together. It rests on a few decisions made before launch.

• Shared objectives. Set awareness and sales targets for the same period and the same market: target share of voice, number of tier-1 pieces, tracked sales, share of new customers.
• Tracking in place from day one. Every media outlet, creator and affiliate site gets its own link or code. Without tracking from the start, the coverage you win cannot be tied to sales.
• A pre-campaign baseline. Measure share of voice, brand searches and sales before launch. Without a starting point, no progress can be proven.
• A fixed rhythm. A monthly review to steer, a quarterly review to reallocate budget between levers.
• A market-by-market view. France, the Benelux and the UK have neither the same media nor the same retailers. The report consolidates for headquarters and breaks down by country.

Which mistakes should you avoid?

• Judging Press Relations on article count, without looking at tier-1 pieces, share of voice or sales from links.
• Launching affiliate marketing with no editorial content or creators: voucher code sites then pick up sales nobody created.
• Choosing creators on audience size alone, with no tracking and no link to the stories the press is running.
• Cutting awareness at the first budget trade-off, then watching acquisition costs rise a few months later.
• Handing each lever to a different provider, with no shared objectives and no shared report.

To go further on measurement, see our article on measuring an influencer campaign.

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