How you measure decides the format before the brief.

Panda Express is keeping gaming on year round rather than returning to it each season. Marketing Dive reports the 2025 Roblox and Fortnite work moved brand awareness 3 points, with consideration going from 64 to 67 percent.

Three points is not a headline. It is exactly the kind of number that gets an activation quietly dropped at the next planning cycle, because activation budgets are built to justify a moment and a moment is supposed to spike.

Judged as a standing presence instead, 3 points a year compounds, and the question stops being whether it worked and becomes whether to leave. Rhiannon Apple of Super League put the test plainly: "Repeat investment only happens when the results are there."

The measurement frame picks the format long before the creative brief does. Most brands set that frame without noticing they have set it.