Performance Tracking That Actually Improves Performance

In 2024, we asked over 250 licensing creatives a simple question:

Do you track and measure the impact of creative work?

80% said no.

It’s a revealing stat — not just because tracking is rare, but because it’s not even expected. This isn’t just about analytics dashboards or sales attribution. It’s about what gets valued, what gets improved, and what gets repeated.

Because if you don’t measure effectiveness, you can’t improve it. And if you can’t improve it, you’re likely wasting time, money, and opportunity.

Unused creative isn’t an accident

Anecdotally, up to three-quarters of creative developed for licensing doesn’t get used. Not because it’s poor quality. Not because it didn’t meet the brief.

But because there was no real clarity on what the brief was trying to achieve in the first place and no process to capture whether it worked. The industry’s response? Shrug. Start again. Repeat the same process. Hope for better next time.

This is what happens when creative is treated as a cost centre — not a driver of brand value. Without meaningful tracking, no lessons get learned. And the cycle continues.

What does better tracking look like?

Effectiveness is about more than sales. Licensing and brand extension projects have multiple stakeholders, each with different measures of success.

There isn’t a single KPI that can capture all of that. But that’s not a reason to ignore impact — it’s a reason to define success more clearly.

Start by asking:

• What’s this work meant to achieve?
• Who needs to be impressed or influenced?
• What would make this a project worth repeating?

And then track accordingly.

Here are three ways to start doing that.

1. Build ROI into the brief — even if it isn’t financial

Too many briefs are focused on outputs: style guides, packaging, creative territories. Instead, try building objectives into the brief. These could include:

• Increase asset usage among priority licensees
• Reduce rounds and accelerate time to market
• Improve retailer feedback or customer sentiment
• Drive brand visibility in a new category

When you define success early, it becomes easier to measure and act on.

2. Track usage and build on what works

If most creative goes unused, find out why. Start with simple questions:

• Which assets got picked up most often?
• Which ones got ignored?
• What feedback (if any) was shared with the team?

Even a rough view of usage can surface patterns you can learn from. You may find one design is getting overused while others sit untouched. Or that one format works consistently better in pitch decks and retail meetings.

That kind of insight doesn’t just validate effort — it makes the next brief better.

3. Include questions about performance in the process

Performance shouldn’t be a one-time review. It should be baked into the way you work.

Ask questions like:

• What do our partners actually think of the creative?
• Are we making life easier for them or adding noise?
• What’s making its way into social feeds and what isn’t?

Treat creative as a hypothesis to test, not just a deliverable to send. And make review and iteration part of your normal rhythm — not an afterthought.

Why this matters

In licensing, speed matters. Relationships matter. Brand perception matters.

Tracking performance helps you improve all three. It shows your partners that you’re serious about outcomes. It builds confidence across internal teams. And it gives creative teams the information they need to do better work next time.

Above all, it helps you stop guessing.

Let’s wrap this up

Here’s what to try next:

• Ask your partners for feedback on the last creative pack
• Track which assets were used, and which weren’t
• Start every new project with a clear definition of success
• Bake in a simple performance review for every brief

The aim isn’t to overcomplicate things. It’s to ask better questions, make smarter decisions, and stop wasting time on work that no one needs.

If you’re looking for a partner to help make this shift, that’s what we do. Skew is the only agency in brand extension focused on effectiveness. Yes we do ship world class creative assets but we also help define what success looks like, build in the measures that matter, and use what we learn to make every project better than the last.

We believe creative should drive value, not just deliverables and we’ve built our whole process around making that happen. If that sounds like the kind of agency you want at your side, get in touch.