How FrieslandCampina Turns Brand Data into Growth

How can you make brand measurement not only more transparent but also more useful for strategic decision-making? FrieslandCampina is collaborating with Validators on a Brand Power framework that brings together mind, heart, and wallet. Mylène Guilonard (left), Guido Weisfelt, and Amy Ly explain how brand data is evolving from a reporting tool into a compass for growth.

For FrieslandCampina, the transformation began with simplification. Amy Ly, Global Insights Strategy Manager at FrieslandCampina, noticed that brand tracking too often got bogged down in a multitude of KPIs. “You can track brand health using dozens of indicators, but we deliberately chose four KPIs that matter most: mental market share, differentiation, needs meeting, and willingness to pay,” says Ly. “According to research, these are the most predictive of long-term brand success.”

By translating “mind, heart, and wallet” into a single Brand Power score, we created greater internal focus. “We moved from a long list of metrics to a limited number of levers we can pull to drive brand growth,” says Ly. “As a result, teams understand more quickly how a brand is performing and where they can take action to stimulate preference, pricing power, and growth.” The question then is how such a framework works in different markets. Ly emphasizes that FrieslandCampina operates on the same basis worldwide: “One framework, one set of KPIs, a shared fieldwork partner, and centralized dashboards and reports with Validators.” At the same time, there remains room for local nuance, such as defining competitors or category entry points. “The real difference lies in interpretation. We focus primarily on relative performance: how is a brand performing compared to competitors or category leaders?”

Growth ambitions

For Guido Weisfelt, Media Manager Europe at FrieslandCampina, the value of brand tracker data does not lie in direct media planning. “To be honest, a brand tracker doesn’t directly guide your media choices; we use other data points for that. What it does, however, is sharpen the brief for media.” He cites growth ambitions around “Enjoy Moment” and “On the Go” as examples. “Those are consumption moments that you can translate into media contexts: on the go, impulse, convenience.”

Not everything that can be measured is equally relevant

According to Weisfelt, brand measurement only becomes truly useful if it is clear in advance which metrics matter and when a change is significant enough to warrant action. “Not everything you can measure is equally relevant,” he says. “And threshold values prevent you from reacting to noise or, conversely, missing a genuine signal.” That broader perspective also influences campaign evaluation. “Without such a framework, you mainly judge a campaign based on reach and sales,” says Weisfelt. “But those don’t tell you what’s happening to your brand in the eyes of consumers.” At the same time, he warns against jumping to conclusions: “Product, distribution, price, competition, and category trends all play a role. You can rarely attribute a KPI shift to a single campaign.”

Tension

According to Mylène Guilonard, Insights Consultant at Validators, a brand tracker only becomes a decision-making tool when it is directly linked to brand choices. “The real value comes when a tracker is set up as a strategic compass,” she says. “So it’s not just: here’s the score. But rather: here’s the pattern, and this is where you, as a brand manager in strategy, media, or creative, can take action.”’ According to Guilonard, the biggest challenge lies not in the data, but in its interpretation. ‘Strategy, creative, and media each recognize different signals in the same data,’ she says. ‘But that’s also where the greatest opportunity lies. If a tracker is designed around the brand’s growth mechanisms, it can serve as a shared compass for all disciplines.’

Curious about how the Mind, Heart & Wallet framework is being applied? Come to the Validators x FrieslandCampina presentation during NIMA Marketing Day on June 11 at DeFabrique in Utrecht.

https://www.validators.nl/nieuws/nima-marketing-day-2026

Photography: Zuiver Beeld

This article was previously published on MarketingTribune: https://www.marketingtribune.nl/algemeen/nieuws/2026/06/hoe-frieslandcampina-merkdata-vertaalt-naar-groei/index.xml