Brand influence has never been particularly easy to measure. Organizations can track media coverage, social engagement, website traffic, sales, and other concrete outcomes, but knowing what can be measured is different from knowing what matters. The measures that are easiest to track may not tell you whether you’re having the desired effect.
PRGN explored these issues in its 2026 Global Survey on Brand Influence. Trust and reputation emerged as the two brand characteristics respondents consider most important to driving influence, with 60% and 57% of respondents, respectively, rating them extremely important. Nearly half (47%) say the same of authenticity. The findings also point to the complexity of measuring influence: Respondents rank customer loyalty and brand equity ahead of media visibility, share of voice, sales, and social engagement.
What Are You Trying to Influence?
Nearly nine in 10 survey respondents say their approach to building brand influence has changed over the past year. As those approaches change, so may what organizations are trying to influence. For some, that may mean driving a purchase or business decision. For others, influence extends beyond the brand itself. A company’s investments, affiliations, or public positions can affect how people view the organization and the decisions they make.
The survey results reinforce the connection between influence and action: 84% of respondents say an influential brand should have an extremely or very significant impact on consumer behavior. But the evidence of influence will depend on what an organization is trying to accomplish. Customer loyalty may matter more than share of voice for one company, while another may need to understand whether perceptions are changing among a particular group of decision-makers.
Activity and Influence Aren’t the Same Thing
The metrics respondents value suggest that measuring influence requires looking beyond communications activity. Customer loyalty ranks first among the measures they believe should be used to assess brand influence, with 28% selecting it as the most important. Brand equity follows at 19%, ahead of media visibility, share of voice, sales, and social engagement.
Reach, coverage, and engagement still tell organizations something useful. They help show whether communications reached an audience and how people responded. But they are better at describing the activity surrounding influence than demonstrating the effect that activity ultimately had. A widely seen campaign could generate substantial visibility with little effect on reputation. Social engagement may reflect enthusiasm or criticism, and media mentions can rise because a brand is having a very good week or a very bad one.
The measures that get closer to relationship strength and brand value can be harder to track consistently. Only 12% of respondents say their organizations always measure brand equity, while 29% do so often and 26% rarely or never do. More than a third of respondents also say they would like more guidance on measurement and analytics.
Measurement Needs to Keep Up With Influence
Reputation can be especially difficult to assess because it may not move in the same direction across audiences. Misinformation can alter how an organization is perceived, and 18% of respondents say it is directly damaging their brand reputation. A decision that builds trust with one group may have the opposite effect with another.
Authenticity can also be difficult to assess, particularly as AI changes how content is created. AI is making it possible to produce more content more quickly, but 29% of respondents say its rapid evolution is raising concerns about authenticity and trust with their audiences.
Neither reputation nor authenticity is shaped by communications alone. Business decisions and public positions may affect how people view an organization, and the communications surrounding those decisions are part of how influence and trust are built.
Influence also extends beyond the communications team. Just over half of survey respondents say C-level executives own influence inside their organizations. At the same time, 30% say economic uncertainty is making long-term brand investments harder to justify. Understanding what those investments are accomplishing becomes particularly important when resources are under greater scrutiny.
Organizations have access to a wealth of communications data, but strong communications performance and strong brand influence are not necessarily the same thing. The real measure of influence is whether the organization had the effect it intended.
