Basis Signals
An expert read on what people say when nobody's asking.
When brand love belongs to an older product…
Other brands aren’t the only competition. Sometimes the hardest benchmark to beat is one you’ve already set. When it comes to headphones, Sony’s customers aren’t comparing its latest models with a rival’s. They’re comparing them with Sony’s older ones. “And the hinges are indestructible because Sony used a higher quality type of plastic in the xm3 vs later models. My xm3 is still going strong after 7 years of heavy use while I have a graveyard of later models” “Sony should have kept this sony wh xm4 design then improved the hinges durability. Instead, they went with a whole new design on wh xm5 and much more unreliable hinges. 😭” Another puts it more directly: “Why would you buy these when the hinges break very easily?” Three comments, one consistent theme: the hinge. Across a single month, more than a hundred Sony comments prefer an older product to the current one. Read as sentiment, most would look like praise for the brand. And it is, for products from years ago. It also carries a verdict on what came after. This isn’t simply nostalgia. Customers are making comparisons between what they got before and what they’re getting now. The old product has become the benchmark, and a new release has to live up to it. Estée Lauder shoppers do it with a formula. One asks a group what to switch to: “Am using the old formula double wear but haven’t read good feedback on new formula." Another suggests asking the brand’s own counters for “any old stock of the old formula as it’s literally the last of them.” Of the Estée Lauder conversation that is about loyalty (nearly 6% of the total), 11% is loyalty to the original formula specifically, a product that has been replaced. What this means Positive comments about a brand can contain criticism of what it sells today. Understanding which product or version people mean helps distinguish affection for the brand’s past from confidence in its current offer. For brand tracking, that raises a useful question: do customers’ ratings reflect the products you’re selling now? The question to ask When customers say they love your brand, which product are they picturing?
The Latest Reads
Charlotte Tilbury’s defense against dupes became their next promotion.
Charlotte Tilbury told the BBC that dupes “do not perform the way that my products do.” A creator replied: “challenge accepted Charlotte, I’m sharing all of my fav Charlotte Tilbury dupes besties.” It got over 332k engagements. The top reply, with 42k likes, wasn’t about the product: “the way Charlotte acted in that interview just made me not want to buy any of her products now.” The defense became the content, and the heat landed on the brand. Across more than 10,000 mentions of beauty dupes, about one in ten is negative. Within negative comments that mention both dupes and Charlotte Tilbury, three quarters are aimed at her brand, not the dupe. For premium brands, that makes the response part of the risk. Telling shoppers a dupe isn’t as good invites a creator to prove otherwise, and the audience ends up judging the brand’s tone as well as its product.
Say what you want about your brand. Your shoppers might not repeat it.
The words your brand wants to own aren’t necessarily the words shoppers use. In the online Adidas conversation, posts are mostly listings and promos, and they’re full of brand language. The comments, where shoppers actually talk, are not. Comments outnumber posts almost four to one, but you’d never know it from the language. A listing or promo post is about 140x more likely to call something “timeless” than a shopper’s comment is, and “iconic” follows the same pattern. The brand’s words are everywhere in the posts and barely show up where shoppers are talking. That doesn’t mean shoppers don’t think Adidas is iconic. It just isn’t their word. What shoppers do talk about is how things look and fit on them. For every one comment that says ‘iconic’, about 17 say ‘style’ and about 15 say ‘fit’. On a TikTok about the Adidas Superstar, one shopper writes: “I have these but idk how to style them 😣”. On Reddit, another says: “Evos (and most adidas in general) fit super narrow across the forefoot.” Both are about the shopper wearing the shoe. The problem is that brand measurement often starts from the qualities a brand chose for itself. The question for a tracker is whether it captures what shoppers bring up themselves, alongside the qualities the brand wants to own.
Secondhand’s value shoppers are up for grabs.
Secondhand got cool, and that’s started to pull its value in two directions. For one group, it’s now about the vintage find, the clout, the sustainable story, or the chance to flip it for a profit. For the other, it’s still just the cheaper way to buy. Both are shopping the same racks, and the first group is making it harder for the second. Resellers and trend-driven buyers get to the best stuff first, and shoppers who came for a bargain are left fighting over what remains. You can see the strain in the data. Nearly a quarter (24%) of comments in Reddit’s thrift and resale conversation are negative. The mood is still mostly warm, but nobody is made to shop secondhand, so for something people choose, that’s a lot of complaint. The Reddit comments show where it’s coming from. One user says thrifting has “been ruined for me” and they “can’t even walk into a Goodwill outlet without immediately being pushed around by resellers”. Another says their favorite shop was “hijacked by reseller volunteers” who are given the first opportunity to buy whatever they want. The frustration is about access: who gets first look at the bargains. What could you offer the shopper who keeps arriving after the resellers?
Every Signal is one piece of a much bigger picture.
Signals reveal what’s changing. Organic Intelligence connects the dots across your category, so you know what’s driving the change, what happens next, and what to do about it.