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Winston Churchill said, “however beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” Those words have taken on greater weight over the past 75 years, as making predictions tends to be a far more frequent and popular pastime than actually checking back on their accuracy.

Today the most important question brand marketers should be asking is, “Was research we based our strategy on, predictive?” Asking that before you commission the research can help when the time comes to answering the ultimate question of marketing life, “What happened?”

Some of problem has been that predictions of consumer behavior and brand performance are more often based on counting “likes” and tallying tweets, summing up social network shares or measuring how entertained consumers were by a brand’s efforts. Happily, prediction of consumer behavior becomes remarkably less risky when one relies, instead, on emotionally-based, validated engagement metrics. Those point the direction to what people will actually do, instead of what they say they are going to do.

As our own annual test, Brand Keys once again examines how closely what we said during the year on our blog, in our LinkedIn posts and in TV, radio, print, and online interviews about strategies brands were – or were not taking – matched up with actual market results. In short, to see what happened?

We invite you to click on this link: What Happened?

And listen to some recorded answers to that question, along with some consumer insights, market realities, and brand practicalities we hope you’ll find both useful and enlightening. We’ve tried to make them entertaining, too, so feel free to share them with your friends and colleagues, or even tweet about them!

This year our look-back examines predictions we made about Super Bowl advertisers and Presidential candidates, Fast Food, Casual Food, and Natural Food, loyalty leaders, loyal Millennials, pizza loyalists, bourbon drinkers, and all manner of smart subjects from smartwatches to smarter brands. And, in case you missed them, we’ve also included a recording addressing key Trends for 2016 to give you and your brand a head start on success.

Churchill also noted, “men occasionally stumble on the truth,” but when it comes to today’s consumers, that’s not really good enough. No matter how many views and likes your marketing efforts obtained.

So pull up your computer or mobile device and join us again this year, or for the first time, and give a listen and find out, What Happened?

Find out more about what makes customer loyalty happen and how Brand Keys metrics is able to predict future consumer behavior: brandkeys.com. Visit our YouTube channel to learn more about Brand Keys methodology, applications and case studies.