Brand Audit

Find your WHY / Focus on the user / Analyze past and present / Do a Brand Sprint

• Visual audit - Particulary for brands already in existance; it helps all parties to "see" where they are and to appreciate and highlight issues.

• Verbal audit - The words and phrases a brand/company/organization uses; these can either act as a stepping stone to improve the language used, or to trigger a complete change of narrative.

• Behavioral audit - Useful for brands interfacing directly with their consumers; this looks at how employees speak and talk and interact, including the messages and signals they give off about a brand (consicously and unconsciously).

• Competition audit - This would normally take all the factors above - visual, verbal and behavioural - accross key competition.

• Peer audit - Not an audit of direct competition, but a look at the kind of organization that company might aspire to, or benchmark against, often across multiple sectors.

Step 1 - Brand Sprint

As our knowledge of the company is limited, we simply can not risk to start without a Brand Sprint. Whether you’re starting from scratch, or looking to do a major overhaul of your brand, a brand sprint is a fantastic way to develop a clear, concise, and compelling brand position and story that will bring your team together.

Business founders and / or responsibe managers are faced with designing logos, creating visual identities, and naming their companies — in other words, making a lot of big decisions. Its a lot of stress and an opportunity for many mistakes, if you're not a branding expert. That's why we invented the BRAND SPRINT brand exercises. The point of these exercises is to make the abstract idea of “our brand” into something concrete. Establish what needs your brand is addressing, what interactions it has with audiences, and what the business model, competitive landscape, and relative performance look like within this context.

After doing the exercises, the team gets a common language to describe what their company is about — and all subsequent squishy decisions about visuals, voice, and identity become way easier. And because the process is fast, you can easily involve all the people from the company who really need to be there - it takes one afternoon only!

What we will cover in the Step 1?
- 20 year roadmap
- What / How / Why
- Top three values
- Top three audiences
- Personality sliders
- Competitive landscape
- Findings synthesis

Step 2 - Investigate

Based on findings from the BRAND SPRINT, we carry on finding out where the brand stands (or, more importantly, doesn't stand) in a market. We tackle product and marketing challenges. You need to know why you’re in business — and talk about it. When a company has a strong motivation and that motivation shines through, customers buy the product. We focus on those moves that reframe customer expectations — actions that can sway the way people within or outside an organization think, choose, and behave — and create the most growth.

What’s your secret sauce? What technology or approach sets you apart from the competition? The why should reflect the core reason your company exists, and it won’t change much over time. You may pivot the business, launch new products, and enter new markets, but your why remains the same. Lots of companies list their values, but very few do the hard work to reduce and prioritize. And prioritization is essential.

If you don't investigate, immerse yourself and carry out proper research, then you won't understand the issues. You'll end up creating fantastic solutions - for the wrong problems. Step two can help to identify the correct problems to solve. When you really nail your brand, it’s not a fluffy veneer applied at the end. Instead, it’s everything: what you build, the way you build it, who you build it for, and how you do your work.

What we will cover in the Step 2?
- How to audit and research where a brand sits, or could sit, in a market
- How to use simple techniques such as 'obstacles / opportunities' and 'past / present / future'
- How to frame the questions you might ask internally and externally
- How to use mapping to unpick and understand a market
- How mapping and gap analysis can lead directly to great ideas and insights
- How company myths and product history can be exploited, or even created
- How consumer dissatisfaction and the identification of key problems can drive solutions