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Generative AI is everywhere now. You see it in content, campaigns, customer experiences, and even internal workflows. It promises speed, scale, and efficiency, but there’s a harder question sitting underneath all that progress; Do your audiences actually trust it?

Trust in the Age of AI: What Consumers Really Think About AI Generated Content

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics? [Beginner’s Guide 2023]
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.

Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.

Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

The 2025 Philippine General Election was a campaign unfolding on two fronts: While candidates went around the country on campaign trails, a significant and equally intense effort was simultaneously underway online. A mix of satire, outrage, and hope converged in real-time through the 245,000 election-related posts, which had a potential reach of 5.9 billion. 

With more than 29 million engagement actions during this campaign period from April 15 to May 14, 2025, online feeds played a role in the election that was as significant as that of in-person rallies. 

The most visible content during the election period was satirical: Humorous posts associated with the #Bonggos hashtag reached over 12 million. These posts were characterised by memes and comedic formats that revolved around current Philippine Senator Bong Go. Although many of these posts were intended for laughs, the attention highlights how any kind of publicity can drive visibility; as a whole, he led all senatorial candidates with a total of 19,784 posts about himself.

Humor, in this case, served as a way for Philippine social media users to express their personal views. These come in many shapes and forms: sometimes extremely critical, and other times light-hearted, but consistently influential in extending reach and driving engagement. 

On the other hand, there was also a ​​more traditional political discourse that revolved around the potential return of ex-President Rodrigo Duterte, Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s presidency, and concerns about electoral integrity, all of which generated significant online chatter. This mix of satirical and serious conversation characterises the way Filipinos engage with politics across digital platforms.

Beyond all the heated debates, funny memes, and trending topics, the general election period marked a moment where the Philippines’ younger social media demographic rallied together with a shared message. Filipinos encouraged each other across social media to be informed about the candidates, understand relevant issues, and simply to vote. Top hashtags like #Halalan2025, #yourvoice2025, and #bilangpilipino2025 served as rallying cries for people to come together and make a difference. 

Advocacy organisations, everyday citizens, and even some of the candidates themselves did their best to make the process feel less intimidating and more empowering. These keyphrases constantly reminded people that a little bit of effort to vote can go a long way and translate into tangible real-world impact. In a system where people typically feel that a single vote doesn’t make a difference, the viral nature of these hashtags helped turn participation into something people believe could be powerful.

The Digital Campaign Trail: From the Streets to the Feeds

Once dominated by traditional forms of advertising, such as print ads and broadcast media, today’s political battles in the Philippines are increasingly won through news feeds. During the election period, social media penetration continues to drive high-impact engagement, especially towards the country’s highly active online population. Political posts surged across platforms such as X, Facebook, and Reddit, with some candidates turning to TikTok to tap into viral trends that connect with and relate to younger voters.

Using Meltwater’s social intelligence platform, we were able to map how candidate visibility online closely aligned with voter behaviour. The results speak for themselves: those who dominated engagement, measured by post volume, reach, and interactions, were the same names that secured Senate seats in the 2025 election.

A distinct pattern can be seen in the bubble chart, which plots candidates according to Engagement Actions versus Estimated Reach: Bam Aquino, Bong Go, Imee Marcos, and Kiko Pangilinan were the front-runners on social media. Each of them secured a seat through their online platforms, demonstrating that their online momentum could be an indicator of actual results rather than just noise.

Our data reveal that corruption, education, and public safety were the most discussed issues during the recent Philippine General Election. Not only were they trending buzzwords for this campaign period, but they also defined the discourse of the top-performing candidates.

Bam Aquino’s strong showing in the polls, which even he admitted was unexpected, is one of the clearest examples of how social media engagement can align with real-world results. He credits much of his popularity to youth voters, which makes sense given that millennials and Gen Z are the most active demographics on Philippine social media.

His alignment with anti-corruption reform and education, two of the most talked-about issues during the campaign season, helped drive his visibility. His online presence grew steadily, whether it was through natural discussions or issue-based content. As his candidate-leading 3.96 million engagement actions increased across platforms, so did his momentum heading into Election Day.

In addition to gauging popularity, Meltwater’s social listening platform allows you to learn where audiences are active and which narratives are going viral.

The 2025 Philippine General Election underscored the growing significance of internet engagement and demonstrated the potential for social media to influence public opinion. Those that showed up where it mattered, aligned with the key issues, and engaged in the relevant conversations were the ones who came out on top.

Online chatter, whether in the form of a meme, a hashtag, or a trending topic, sparked curiosity and helped mobilize a generation of voters. When analyzed, this engagement can reveal patterns and insights that may help to gauge public sentiment and inform public strategy. This analysis is not just a message for politicians, but for anyone trying to connect with an audience. The same insights that may help shape election outcomes can guide brands, institutions, and communicators to know when to act, where to engage, and how to make their message resonate.

In a fast-moving digital landscape, real-time social intelligence is not just helpful. It is a valuable tool for gaining an edge. Because, as this election showed, social media is a critical arena for shaping narratives and gaining support, though it is not the only factor that determines the final outcome.

Want to uncover similar insights for your industry or next campaign? Contact us today to learn more about Meltwater's social intelligence solutions.

Philippine Election 2025: Digital Insights & Social Media Impact

What if you could predict how a single change in your marketing strategy would directly impact your sales? That’s the power of causal research. While other forms of competitive intelligence research tell you what’s happening, causal research tells you what’s likely to happen if you make a change.

Marketers are swimming in data. It’s easy to get stuck in analysis paralysis when you’re tracking things like clicks, impressions, open rates, and conversions. But numbers alone don’t drive decisions; insights do. And if you’re relying only on observational data, you might be mistaking correlation for causation. 

Causal research filters out the noise so you can make smarter, evidence-backed decisions. Here’s how you can harness causal research for a serious competitive edge.

How Causal Research Provides Actionable Business Insights

How Causal Research Can Be Used for Competitor Research

Advantages and Limitations of Causal Research

Real-World Examples of Causal Research in Action

Integrating Causal Research for Smarter Business Decisions

Causal Research definition: A type of market research that determines whether one variable causes a change in another. 

Causal research helps marketers test hypotheses and identify cause-and-effect relationships through controlled experiments, not just observations. The goal is to find cause-and-effect relationships, where a change in one variable directly leads to change in another.

Simple causal research examples could be:

Changing a product’s price directly leading to changes in buying behavior

Altering a product’s placement directly affecting sales performance

A different email subject line directly causing higher open rates

Compared to formal research methods like descriptive or exploratory research, causal research is more focused and precise:

Descriptive research tells you what’s happening. 

Exploratory research shows you where to look and what questions to ask. 

Causal research answers the critical “why” behind the behavior. 

All three methods use structured, systematic approaches. But causal research is the most rigorous when it comes to isolating variables and validating hypotheses. It’s especially valuable when you’re ready to act and want to use data to minimize risk.

TIP: AI can help immensely when it comes to market research. Check out our blog on AI in market research to learn more!

Causal research uncovers insights you can actually use. Marketers need to make decisions quickly and confidently. Causal research gives you the data-backed clarity to move forward without second-guessing. 

Here are some areas where you can jumpstart causal research insights.

Gain customer behavior insights through informal surveys

Informal surveys are a low-lift way to gauge customer behavior and attitudes. They help you identify possible causal relationships worth testing, like whether customers who read your blog are more likely to convert. 

Surveys themselves aren’t causal. But they do help frame hypotheses for future experiments and direct your attention to the behaviors that matter.

Observe trends in social media and online communities

Platforms like Reddit, TikTok, or Twitter/X are goldmines for finding new trends or themes. Causal research takes those observations a step further. 

Let’s say you notice a spike in engagement when your brand posts behind-the-scenes videos. With causal research, you can test different content types and measure their direct impact on engagement or sales. This turns anecdotal buzz into concrete, usable insight.

Test ideas and gathering feedback quickly

Causal research doesn’t have to take months or require a massive budget. A simple A/B test, a pilot program, or even a geo-targeted rollout can help you test new ideas fast and gather feedback based on real behaviors. 

That kind of agility can make the difference between staying ahead or falling behind.

There are several ways to conduct causal research. Each technique offers its own strengths, but they all aim to uncover cause-and-effect relationships you can act on. 

Below are some of the most common and effective methods marketers and business teams use.

Surveys and polls explore customer perceptions, preferences, and intentions, which can help inform hypotheses for causal testing. They don’t prove causation on their own, but a well-designed survey or poll can highlight behavior drivers.

For example, if customers say they’re more likely to buy after watching a product demo video, that insight might lead you to test how demos impact conversions.

Tools like heatmaps, click tracking, and social listening platforms let you observe how users interact with your brand or content in real time. These observations help you identify patterns, such as where users are dropping off or what messaging resonates. 

Observational data alone can’t confirm causality. But it can set the stage for deeper testing. You might spot a behavior trend, then design an A/B test to see what’s behind it.

A/B testing allows you to isolate one variable at a time, like an email subject line, landing page layout, or CTA button color, and measure the direct impact on user behavior. 

Market experiments (like offering a discount in one region but not another) help determine the real effect of marketing actions in the field. 

Controlled comparisons like these are the gold standard for identifying causation. They’re key to making smarter, more confident decisions.

Causal research can also be a powerful tool for understanding what’s driving success (or failure) for your competitors. You can identify changes in their strategy and watch how customers respond to it, allowing you to find patterns and even learn from their mistakes. 

Analyzing competitor activity through social media

Social media is often the first place competitors test new messaging, campaigns, and offers. Using social listening tools, you can conduct competitive intelligence: Monitor how often their brand is mentioned, what people are saying, and how audiences are reacting. 

For example, is their latest campaign driving excitement or falling flat? Look at changes in engagement and sentiment to connect the dots between their actions and public response.

Monitoring competitor content and online presence

Competitors’ websites, blogs, and product pages are full of strategic signals. For example, you might pick up on whether they’re doubling down on SEO for certain topics, launching new features, or changing their pricing model.

These moves may reflect shifts in strategy. When you pair them with performance outcomes like traffic trends, share of voice, or customer reactions, you can reverse-engineer their playbook.

A social listening solution like Meltwater can help you quickly gauge your competitors' online presence so you can benchmark your team's strategies and performance against them. That way, you can make more informed decisions when refining your own tactics.

Gaining insights from competitors’ customer reviews and feedback

Public reviews are a treasure trove for causal clues. Analyzing what customers praise or complain about helps you uncover patterns in how competitor experiences translate into real satisfaction (or a lack of it). 

For example, if a competitor’s ratings tank after a product update, there’s likely a cause worth investigating. 

Monitoring this kind of sentiment helps you better understand what your customers expect and gives you the chance to outperform competitors.

The Meltwater Suite analyzes billions of data points to provide insights that can supercharge your research efforts. Click here and fill out the form below to request a demo!

Anyone can conduct causal research with the right set of tools. Here are a few must-have tools to support your research processes and digital transformation in marketing.

Social media monitoring tools and sentiment analysis tools

Social monitoring tools like Meltwater allow you to track brand mentions, monitor competitors, and analyze sentiment across social platforms and news outlets. You can watch how audiences respond to specific campaigns, product announcements, or messaging in real time, then link actions to specific marketing outcomes.

This kind of insight helps you craft more informed hypotheses and see what’s resonating or backfiring. The real-time element gives you a faster way to react and respond, instead of waiting for the data to roll out days, weeks, or months later.

Google Analytics is a go-to for tracking user behavior on your website. It’s especially powerful when paired with causal testing. 

For example, you might want to know if a homepage layout change increased conversions, or if traffic sources affect bounce rate. 

Google Analytics gives you behavioral data, which you can use to analyze patterns and outcomes. When you combine them with A/B testing tools, it becomes even more useful for pinpointing what’s causing performance shifts.

Feedback tools like Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, or built-in Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys help you collect the voice of the customer. These datapoints aren’t inherently causal, but they can point to trends that you can test more formally. 

For example, if customers say they’re confused about the checkout process, you can redesign the flow and see whether it results in more sales and fewer abandoned carts.  

Feedback guides experimentation and keeps your causal research marketing grounded in real user experience.

Causal research is one of the most practical tools marketers have for making confident  decisions. But like any method, it comes with trade-offs.

Benefits: Speed, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness

You don’t need tons of planning to run causal research. In many cases, you can test an idea on the fly and start collecting data. 

Causal research is also highly adaptable. You can apply it to everything from email subject lines to landing page layouts, product offers, or even customer service scripts. That makes it a go-to method for teams who want to experiment quickly, learn fast, and optimize on an ongoing basis.

Potential drawbacks: Bias and lack of depth

Causal research isn’t perfect. It can be easy to misinterpret results if your test isn’t well designed. Bias, conflicting variables, or small sample sizes can all skew findings. 

Causal research also tends to focus on narrow questions, which means you might miss the bigger picture. For example, while a test might show that changing your pricing improves conversions, it won’t tell you why customers are more willing to buy. That’s where deeper qualitative methods come in. 

Ideally, you’ll use causal research alongside other methods so you can confirm what works and explore the "why" behind it.

Causal research happens every day in marketing teams, product departments, and customer experience groups across industries. Here are a few real-world ways businesses are using causal research to their advantage.

A/B testing is one of the most direct and effective forms of causal research. Let’s say you want to increase sign-ups for a free trial for a SaaS business. You might create two versions of the same landing page: one with a short form and another with a longer, more detailed one. 

You split the traffic evenly and measure the conversion rate. This lets you clearly see which format performs better. The winner becomes the new default, backed by data instead of guesswork.

Analyzing customer reviews for insights into product features

Customer feedback (both positive and negative) can lead to impactful change. Customers tend not to hold back their honest thoughts in reviews, which can help companies make changes for the better. 

How Causal Research Provides Business & Insights

Whether your company is a long-standing consumer business, B2B enterprise, or nonprofit, there may come a time to reinvent your public image. Knowing when and how to implement a full rebrand, however, is a challenge. Wait too long and your brand may already be irrelevant to current audiences. Do it too soon and the new brand image may not resonate with customers or prospects. 

3 Examples of Successful Rebranding Efforts

Summary: What to Know When Considering a Rebrand

The basic definition of a rebrand is when a company fundamentally changes their corporate image in some capacity. This could be through a logo redesign, a shift in their product offering, or something even more dramatic like a name change or mission change.

It can be hard to know when it's time for a change. After all, rebranding is a risk. It takes research, creativity, and often outside resources. Plus, your taking a huge leap that could shift your audience, resulting in a temporary hit to your profits. When is it worth the effort? 

Let’s look at three companies that took the plunge, why they knew it was time, and how they made their rebrands a success:

As a B2B organization, Reed Elsevier has always been known as an academic publisher. For nearly 120 years, the company focused on providing research material and content analysis for clients like physicians, scientists, lawyers, and insurers.

However, in 2015, executives decided it was time to rebrand. They changed the name to RELX Group. CEO Erik Engstrom said in The Financial Times that the business “had chosen a ‘shorter and more modern name’ to reflect the company’s transformation to a ‘technology, content, and analytics driven business.’”

The leadership team also simplified the company’s corporate structure and worked on delivering clearer messages about what the business offered stakeholders. The brand soon transformed from stuffy academic organization to cutting-edge media and analytics company. 

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a non-profit organization that has been around since 1920. It’s a public interest law firm dedicated to preserving and defending individual rights and freedom. 

Although its previous visual identity, including its logo, was recognizable and admired, in 2017, ACLU leaders felt it was time for a change. They saw more and more young people using their voices as a call to action and an American society becoming highly diverse. This political and social climate spurred the ACLU to create a bolder look for new generations who could embrace and support what the organization stands for. 

Leaders wanted to avoid alienating older constituents who still looked to the ACLU for its expertise. So, they decided to work with a design agency to help visually maintain some of the previous look while updating it for newer generations of advocates.

3. Domino’s Pizza Becomes Domino’s and Reaps Success

The rebranding effort went deep and took years. Executives knew they needed a total overhaul, much more than just a new name and logo. They transformed the company completely, from upgrades to the quality of the food, to menu expansion. Domino’s actually took “pizza” out of the name, to be seen as more of a food delivery company than a pizza maker. 

Leaders invested more in technology that appealed to customers and improved operations. They launched new apps and delivery options. The marketing team made visual branding changes to reflect the new focus on good food, service, and value. Domino’s simplified its logo, redesigned stores, and altered the packaging. 

As part of the massive brand rebuild, Domino’s also made a bold move to acknowledge past failures, including pizza quality. The company went as far as making fun of itself in its own national ads to highlight its improvements.

Amazingly, these efforts paid off and the company made a big comeback. Bloomberg reported that Domino’s went from a nine percent share of the market in 2009 to a 15 percent share in 2016.

Sometimes, despite best intentions, rebrands go awry. Often due to a lack of understanding of their audience, on the brands part. Here are some times when a rebrand didn't go quite right:

Many unsuccessful rebrands occur because a brand makes a seeming arbitrary or out-of-the-blue change to their packaging. This is often done in effort to stay up-to-date and modern. 

But what so many brands fail to realize is the importance of staying recognizable. 

Particularly for busy grocery shoppers who want to quickly be able to scan for their favorite products in order to complete their grocery-shopping chore.

In the case of Tropicana, they opted to update their signature packaging, moving away from the more literal and straightforward orange and straw and towards a "sleeker" and "refined" image of a glass of orange juice.

Needless to say, the move backfired. Unable to quickly spot the classic packaging, or recognize the new cartons, consumers made different choices. The rebranding effort resulted in an estimated 20% loss in revenue for the company.

Sometimes a brand makes a change that it deems necessary, without fully understanding their customer base from an emotion standpoint; without understanding the why behind customers desire to frequent their stores or buy their products.

In 2025 the 55-year old brand Cracker Barrel decided it was time for a change. They opted to update their classic logo that featured an older man in a chair next to a barrel, and and old-timey feeling font style and coloring. The move came as part of a multi-faceted rebrand that included updating the look and feel of their stores, and overhauling some of their product offerings.   

However they failed to fully comprehend how much stock consumers placed in the brand for it's nostalgia. A nostalgia that many feel being stripped away with this new logo and store experience.  

A rebrand that goes out of its way to alienate an entire demographic is certainly a choice. This may be the one and only time when you'll hear us say perhaps TOO much customer research was done. 

Here's what happened: Dr. Pepper saw that their sales for their diet soda were down. After digging into consumer insights, discovered that men were not buying as much as women, due to men feeling that diet sodas weren't "manly".

Instead of taking that fact and formulating a campaign targeting women, to encourage even more sales from that demographic, Dr. Pepper went the other direction. They launched a campaign aimed at attracting more men to buy the diet soda product by branding it as "manly". In doing so, they effectively alienated the female customers they already had...(the ad campaign literally said "it's not for women.").

So how do you know if it’s time for your company to rebrand? As we’ve seen, even perennially well-respected organizations, like the ACLU, have found the need to rebrand and connect to new audiences.

One of the best ways to keep track of your brand perception — and your competitors — is to actively listen to your audience on social media. Perhaps your company needs a name or visual change, or dramatic operational improvements. You won’t know unless you’re in tune with your audience. 

Paying attention to what people say about your company and its products not only gives you insight into their feelings, but reveals areas where improvement is needed. Social listening also helps you learn where your company is facing irrelevance. Knowing these things about your customers, competitors, and industry helps you create a roadmap for what a significant rebranding may look like.

Learn more about how Meltwater can help you gather important insights about your audience! Fill out the form below to schedule a demo.

Where does your brand stand within your industry? Read the tipsheet from Meltwater and Regan on benchmarking your brand to better understand your strengths, weaknesses, and market opportunities.

Brand Reinvention: How You Know It’s Time to Rebrand

Remember the days when you could count the world’s social media platforms on one hand? Those days are over. In 2025, there are likely more social networks in existence than ever before, and users of larger platforms are taking notice. 

For marketers, this calls for careful consideration of all the new options. This includes the offerings of globally recognized companies like Meta’s Threads and ByteDance’s Lemon8, as well as open-source and decentralized options like Mastodon and Bluesky.  

We used our social listening solution to learn more about which alternative social networks are generating the most buzz and what marketers and brands should have on their radars.

The following analysis is based on data from January 1 to August 18, 2025, pulled from nearly two dozen traditional, digital, and social media sources, including X, Bluesky, Reddit, YouTube, and more. 

The Meltwater Blog

Philippine Election 2025: Digital Insights & Social Media Impact

How Causal Research Provides Business & Insights

Brand Reinvention: How You Know It’s Time to Rebrand

Bluesky vs Threads vs Lemon8: What Marketers Should Know About Niche Social Networks

The Global Buzz Around KPop Demon Hunters

Brand Storytelling: What It Is and Why It's Important

Discover LLM-Driven Brand Perception with GenAI Lens

What the Gen-Z Stare Can Teach Marketers About Digital Discussions

Guide: Create Staff Brand Ambassadors With Social Media Guidelines

What Are Brand Ambassadors and Why Are They Important?

What Is a Competitive Matrix? How to Analyze Competitors

The Ultimate Guide To Finding Your Brand's Tone of Voice