Asian Integrated Media (AIM), which runs the Superbrands awards in six markets, has teamed up with Discovery Channel and Synovate to survey 1,000 consumers in each market, starting this month.
Consumers will be asked, unprompted, to pick their preferred brand in 15 categories, including home electronics, food and beverage, auto and travel. A short list of brands culled from consumers would then be presented for voting to the brand councils put together in each market for the final qualitative judging.
The brand council - founded based on their knowledge and expertise of branding - will judge the best of the best in each market.
"We will have a far more robust evaluation with this two-stage process," said AIM executive director Peter Jeffery, adding that the regional consumer research initiative would be the first undertaken by Superbrands in the world.
As an unprompted exercise, Jeffery expected that the consumers would mainly select brands that are top of mind.
"Top of mind awareness is incredibly important for brands itself. If you can achieve top of mind, you are on your way to creating a great brand," he added.
About half of the 1,000 consumers polled in each market will be affluent consumers as part of a Discovery Channel research package to draw unique insights on brand loyal consumers, covering a variety of labels.
On top of taking the judging process to the consumer, Jefffery said the research would enable AIM to "evolve Superbrands from a brand recognition exercise to a brand health monitoring programme" to enhance its value to marketers. He explained that AIM would use the research to create a document for participating marketers, which would detail the health of their brands, providing them with additional benefits beyond the use of Superbrands' logo, participation in the winners book and the accompanying PR benefits.
"With the research, we will be able to take a look at brand loyal consumers, build deep insights into the lives of consumers and provide brand marketers with their position within their competitive set."
The document will also include insights into a brand's market potential, using data purchased from Asia Demographics. "This is the type of research that would allow brand marketers to make well-informed marketing decisions," said Jeffery.
However, he insisted that the expanded judging process would not translate into higher costs for Superbrands' participants.
AIM has a Malaysian Superbrands edition in the works for a year-end launch.
Its next likely launch markets are Taiwan and Korea in early 2004 followed by Japan. Since launching Superbrands in the Philippines about six years ago, AIM has since expanded the awards to Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand and China.