The same five questions, applied to every brand.
Every Simmon read follows the same diagnostic structure. The questions are fixed. The answers are grounded in evidence specific to the brand. You can challenge any claim and trace it back to a signal.
We publish the method because methodology you can see is more trustworthy than a black box. If you can see how we read a brand, you can judge whether we are right.
What is actually going on with this brand right now?
Name the forces. Specific companies, products, channels, input costs, or structural shifts. Develop the picture — show the reader the pattern, then name what it means. No category-level filler. If you cannot name a specific thing, it is not in the read.
What does this brand say about itself versus what is actually true?
Every brand carries a gap between narrative and reality. Name the specific gap, explain why it exists, and show what it costs. This is the heart of the read — the thing the brand's own team might not want to hear.
What force is building underneath that almost nobody is talking about?
Regulatory, demographic, channel, input-cost, technology-substitution, cultural. Name the mechanism, explain how it works, and show where it leads. If you cannot name the mechanism, say what is visible and what it suggests.
What move is this brand not making that it should be?
Name the specific shape of the opening and explain why it is credible for this brand specifically. Show why competitors have not taken it. The whitespace must be real — not a conceptual art project, but something a team could scope.
One specific action a leadership team could brief on Monday.
Stay close to product, pricing, packaging, distribution, channel, messaging, or partnership. A VP of Marketing could read this and immediately assign someone to scope it. No runway fantasy — one move, this quarter.
Each source layer contributes something different.
Simmon reads across six signal layers. Each layer answers a different question about a brand's position.
SOCIAL + DISCOURSE
Cultural velocity. What people are saying, how fast it spreads, and whether the conversation is growing or shrinking.
SEARCH + WEB
Active demand. What people are looking for, what questions they ask, and how a brand shows up when they search.
CONSUMER VOICE
Lived experience. What buyers and employees actually say after using the product, working at the company, or leaving.
AI PLATFORMS
Emerging citation. How AI systems describe, recommend, and position a brand when asked directly.
FINANCIAL + REGULATORY
Structural position. Revenue patterns, filings, patent activity, and regulatory exposure.
INTERNATIONAL
Cross-market signal. How a brand performs in China and APAC markets where Western tools have no visibility.
Observation alone is not strategy.
Between reading a brand and recommending an action, there is a step most tools skip: identifying how the brand's position has shifted. A tension is only useful if you can name what moved, in which direction, and what that means for the competitive set. Simmon makes this explicit.
01
WHAT MOVED
Which signals changed, and in which direction. A score shift is only meaningful if you can point to the evidence behind it.
02
WHERE IT PUTS YOU
The brand's position relative to its competitive set. Accelerating, converging, differentiating, or stalling.
03
WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
A specific move scoped to this quarter, grounded in the shift. Not a strategy deck. One decision a team can act on.
Four dimensions. One score.
Every tracked brand is scored on four axes. The scoring is deterministic — same inputs, same score, every time. No model calls in the math. The dimensions measure different facets of competitive position.
DRAW
How strongly this brand captures attention. Search volume, mentions, cultural presence. The pull.
SURGE
Growth velocity — how fast the brand is gaining or losing momentum in the current window.
WEDGE
Competitive differentiation. How distinct this brand's position is from its direct competitors.
HOLD
Retention strength. How well the brand maintains its position against competitive and market pressure.
See the method in action.
Type any brand into Simmon. You get back a read that follows this exact structure, grounded in the evidence available for that brand.