How Equality Media + Marketing uses Tracksuit to grow their clients' brands
"It's the brand tracking for dummies, but it's really for smarties."
That's how Leah Cioccio, Strategy Director at Equality Media + Marketing, describes using brand data to replace gut feel with strategic clarity. Her agency works across property's decade-long purchase cycles and skincare's crowded competitive set.
Equality Media + Marketing, opens in new tab is a full-service agency based in Melbourne, working across strategy, creative, performance media, organic social, and content production. What makes the agency unusual is where it operates: property, where a purchase might happen once a decade, and skincare, where challenger brands compete against category giants with a fraction of the budget. Two very different categories, both defaulting to short-term performance - and both needing a smarter approach to brand.
"Good brands build good businesses," says Leah Cioccio, Strategy Director at Equality.
Marilla Akkermans, Managing Director, frames it through the client lens: "What we want our brand to be and what it is to a customer are often two different things. But brand building can make those two things meet."
Keeping brand in every conversation
In property, the pressure to go short-term is relentless. The decision-making process stretches over two years, active research fits a three-to-six-month window. That leaves marketing teams under pressure to deliver leads this quarter, not build mental availability for the next three years.
"The amount of zigzags that we see in businesses and in boardrooms," says Marilla, “on something that takes the better part of three years for somebody to actually decide to do. Promos, all of these different messages with inconsistency in market - that is the thing that we want to be able to show within brand tracking."
In skincare, the challenge is different but the default is the same: spending on performance while brand takes a back seat. Bioderma competes in a category that is high interest and high involvement - but against players like Garnier and CeraVe who dominate share of voice. The pursuit isn't to outspend them - it's to earn attention in a space where consumers are actively engaged but brand loyalty is fragile.
Tracksuit changed how Equality has these conversations with clients. Instead of an annual report that sat on a shelf, brand health data now arrives monthly - and it's embedded into ongoing strategy, not siloed in a separate deck.
"What used to be a 150-page report at one moment in time - that was all we had to know whether brand was working," says Leah. Now the data arrives monthly, with rigour behind it.
For Marilla, the value is practical: "Being able to slice a percentage of their marketing budget out to have brand tracking that hits our inbox every month, so that we have that vision and understanding of what is actually going on, is actually priceless."
Understanding where you sit against competitors
Data replaced assumptions. For Burbank - a privately owned Australian home builder that has been around for more than 40 years - the assumption was that size equalled strength. They were a volume leader in their market. But Tracksuit told a different story.
"Just because you're one of the biggest from a volume perspective doesn't mean you're the biggest from a brand perspective," says Leah. "Still only a quarter of the market know about them, and then fewer people are considering them than those who would consider their competitors."
The funnel data sharpened it further. "One of the brands exceeded what we thought it might in terms of familiarity, but conversion through the funnel is actually underperforming in the context of the competitive set," says Leah. "So that opens up an area to explore." The data wasn't telling them to panic - it was showing them exactly where to focus.
For Bioderma, the data revealed a clear opportunity. Bioderma is a small brand with a big footprint thanks to national distribution through retailers including Chemist Warehouse and Priceline - but mental availability hadn't caught up yet. Consideration sits at a fraction of the competitor average, and in a category where so many purchase decisions happen at the shelf, the battleground of consideration was clearly the one to win.
Without Tracksuit, both brands might have continued operating on instinct. With it, the gaps - and the opportunities - were impossible to ignore.
Finding the growth opportunity
Seeing where you stand is one thing. Knowing where to focus is another.
For Bioderma, trying to close the awareness gap against category giants wasn't realistic - the budget simply didn't exist. Tracksuit data pointed to the middle of the funnel: consideration, information, and content. In practice, that means earning attention rather than buying it - leaning into branded partnerships to create and distribute content in a category where interest and involvement are high.
"We were able to see where the opportunity for growth is for Bioderma within the context of the resources they've got available to grow," says Leah. "We had to be more strategic and try and win share of community, essentially." Rather than outspending the competition at the top of the funnel, Equality focused on engaging, branded content that could build familiarity and consideration - working smarter within the budget available.
For Burbank, the growth opportunity was to determine a distinctive creative direction. Alongside qualitative research, Equality used Tracksuit's brand association data to identify territories that could anchor the brand in meaningful context. Two emerged: the ease of the building process, or the living that happens in the home once it's built.
"We used the data that we get from Tracksuit around what are the words that people associated with Burbank, as well as other competitors, to test which way we should go down," says Marilla. The answer was clear. They landed on "The Pursuit of Living" - a positioning rooted in what a home means beyond the build.
"We were able to choose the path we wanted to go down because we had the knowledge - we could see how the market sees the category, not just how we see it," says Leah.
From hunch to data-driven
The real test came when the property market wobbled and competitors pulled back. Equality kept Burbank in market - and Tracksuit validated the call.
"A measure of success has been stability, and that's what we've seen across our tracking results," says Leah. "The strategy is working because we're holding ground where other brands are losing."
That confidence to stay the course - backed by data, not gut feel - is what changes the conversation with leadership. Marilla's advice to marketers is direct: "Know how to talk to your C-suite… Because if you can build a business case that says you put this much money into marketing and you get this much return, that's a much better story than a CFO saying that marketing is an expenditure rather than an investment."
That's the shift Tracksuit enabled - from defending brand investment to proving it.
Key Takeaways
Brand data turns instinct into strategy. Equality Media + Marketing used Tracksuit's brand association data to choose Burbank's creative direction - making brand tracking a strategic input, not just a measurement output.
Know where you're leaking in the funnel. Burbank's familiarity was high, but conversion through the funnel underperformed against the competitive set. Without Tracksuit, the gap would have stayed invisible.
Find the realistic growth opportunity. For Bioderma, Tracksuit data showed that chasing the awareness gap wasn't viable - the middle of the funnel was where the growth sat, leading the agency to pursue share of community over share of voice.
Give your C-suite a business case, not a hunch. Monthly brand data embedded into ongoing strategy means marketers can speak the language of the boardroom - proving that brand investment delivers return, not just impressions.
Ready to prove your media strategy is building brand equity, not just delivering impressions?
Talk to Tracksuit.
