The brand audit
A brand audit can be a very powerful tool in your brand strategy toolkit. The goal is to assess the brand both internally and externally before making any other moves.
If you don’t want to read the article, you can listen to the podcast episode below.
First, go check out this Twitter thread that started the topic. Lots of great people from marketing twitter chipping in.
Internally
Looking at the current brand strategy, if one exists. How does it hold up against the vision facilitated in the brand workshop? Is it a brand strategy or just a business vision?
Understanding how the brand management team works if there is any. Where does the brand live in the organization? Who is responsible? What are the KPIs related to the brand?
Looking at the current insights around consumer and category: What do they know about their customers? About the perception and reputation? About the competitors
Looking at the marketing funnel: how does the organization structure its marketing efforts? What channels are used? What channels aren't? Why? How does that affect brand awareness?
Assessing the strength of legal protection. How well is the brand name protected, the distinctive brand assets? assets?
Externally
Actually looking at competitive space and seeing how the brand is positioned, but also visually distinctive.
Share of search data.
Looking at the consumer and trying to understand their specific views of the category, of the company, etc...
Looking at the visual identity both internally and externally, how consistent is the style applied? What are the main distinctive assets? How do they hold up against competitors? What are the current brand guidelines and how do they hold up against the actual living brand?
Looking at the verbal identity, the messaging: what is the tone-of-voice? Is it consistent? What are the key messages? Do they match the underlying business strategy and brand strategy?
After a thorough analysis of all these aspects, I usually also include a bunch of recommendations, very often these can very specific but also top-level.
Brand-building mindset
For example in a lot of organizations, marketing is mostly focussed on in-market buyers, on conversion. Digital is more easily measurable so very often a lot more popular these days. In this case, recommendations around 'brand-building and the KPI's involved such as salience, fame, etc... can be very valuable to the organization
The work of Les Binet & Field is very interesting in this area, but also a lot of the work from the EB institute is crucial to show a different perspective on marketing
The brand team
It's also very often about giving the brand team some solid, externally validated fuel they can use to get more resources internally to build the brand - so work with the team - don't be opposed, make sure you truly understand their frustrations. I usually do a bunch of interviews with different people involved on the brand level.
Obviously, very often, there can be a follow-up project if the conclusion is that the brand is not distinctive enough, the messaging is not aligned, etc... But. In the brand audit phase, it's not about lining up a sale, try to detach yourself from any pure execution ideas and give recommendations that can be solved in different ways.
So not: “Your brand sucks - let me fix it” conclusions.
Another interesting follow-up can be setting up a baseline measurement for things like awareness, distinctive assets uniqueness (the grid) - so the brand team can keep working and measure those KPIs along the way.
To wrap it up, I usually use the five questions defined in the JWT planning guide. This is a great way to analyze the current status of the brand but also how to look forward.
Where are we today?
Why are we here?
Where might we be?
How do we get there?
Are we getting there?