Branding Strategy Insider

Brand Audit: Guardian Of Brand Health

The health of a brand needs to be critically maintained and managed if it’s to contribute sustained value to customers and brand owners over the long term. Of the many tools available for brand owners and managers to assess the well being of their brands, the brand audit is the most widely used and misunderstood. 

When brands reach the inflection point where revenues begin to slide because customers no longer resonate with the brand’s value proposition, it’s time to put your finger on the pulse of your brand and determine the long-term outlook for brand health. 

Conducting a comprehensive brand audit is how brand owners determine the health of their brand. Yet for some brand owners and managers, the insights gathered from brand audits can be much like reading tealeaves or making faces out of cloud formations. The results of such an effort are extremely insightful, often surprising, even difficult to accept.

The Brand Audit: Key For Determining Brand Health

When brands reach the tipping point where sales begin to slide because customers no longer resonate with the brand’s value proposition, it’s time to put your finger on the pulse of your brand and determine the long-term outlook for brand health.

Brands have life cycles. They begin with excitement and promise, enter their growth phase, reach a plateau, and then slowly lose relevance as customers move on to the latest and greatest new thing. This is as natural as life itself. That’s why it’s a good idea to monitor brand health along the way–before sales slip.

Brand managers these days are heads down managing the urgent daily business of the brand. Rarely are they offered the opportunity to step back and make an informed high altitude assessment of brand health.

Completing a brand audit is a chance to take a fresh and objective look at your brand from a number of critical perspectives.

A comprehensive brand audit will often reveal new grow opportunities for your brands, and new ways to make your brand resonate with a new generation of target customers who will represent your brand’s bigger future.

If you believe your brand could use a check up, take the time to make a close examination of the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats facing brand health. A comprehensive brand audit will include a thoughtful examination of the following:

Brand Audits: Choosing The Auditor

More thoughts on brand audits and auditors. Brand auditors should assess the strength of an organization’s mission and vision and the strength of its brand’s essence, promise, and personality (especially in relationship to the organization’s stakeholders’ perceptions of the organization).  As part of the process, the auditor should investigate how congruently each of the following groups or sources articulate or manifest these organizational and brand attributes:

•    Its leaders
•    Its official documents
•    Its internal and external communications
•    Its marketers
•    Its salespeople
•    Its customer service employees
•    Its other employees
•    Its business partners
•    Each and every point of contact the brand makes with its clients/customers

Ideally, the company performing the audit has broad and deep experience (as line managers and as consultants) in each of the following areas:

•    Brand research
•    Brand strategy & positioning
•    Brand identity standards and systems
•    Brand advertising
•    Organization design

Audits will vary from company to company based upon the company’s unique needs, organizational complexity, marketing competency and other factors.  Given the large amount of work, to complete the audit in a reasonable period of time, the audit team should consist of at least three people.  The more marketing experience each team member has, the better.

Audit costs may vary from a low of

The Brand Audit

Last week I began taking a closer look at brand audits. Picking up the topic again today, you can expect a qualified brand audit company to investigate the following areas of brand management:

Brand Research

•    Does this company have a deep understanding of its consumers’ values, attitudes, needs, desires, hopes, aspirations, fears and concerns?
•    Has this company rigorously analyzed its competition?
•    Which of the following types of brand research has the company conducted: brand positioning qualitative and quantitative, brand asset studies, brand equity measurement and monitoring, brand extension, logo recall, and recognition?
•    How robust is each of these research studies?
•    How are the company and each of its competitors positioned in the marketplace?

Brand Strategy

•    Is there a marketing plan?
•    Is there a brand plan?
•    Are those plans aligned with and integrated into company business plans?
•    Does the company have a future vision and a well thought out plan to get there?
•    Is it clear which marketing objectives, actions, and vehicles will provide the greatest leverage in achieving the long-term vision?

Anatomy Of A Brand Audit

A brand audit provides an analysis of an organization’s brand and its brand management and marketing effectiveness. It assesses a brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It identifies brand growth opportunities including those achieved by brand repositioning and brand extension. The audit should result in recommendations to improve brand equity, brand positioning, and brand management and marketing effectiveness.

The following are typical components of a brand audit:

Strategy review

•    Business plans
•    Marketing plans
•    Brand positioning statement
•    Brand plans
•    Creative (or agency) briefs
•    Media plans

Marketing research review

•    Brand positioning research
•    Brand asset studies
•    Brand equity measurement system (awareness, preference, usage, value, accessibility, relevance, differentiation, vitality, emotional connection, loyalty, associations, personality)
•    Brand extension research
•    Product/service concept testing
•    Logo recall & recognition testing