If you’re like most business owners, you probably think your brand is doing just fine. You have a logo, a website, some social media accounts, and maybe even some loyal customers. But how do you know if your brand is really working for you? How do you know if it’s consistent, relevant, and memorable? How do you know if it’s helping you achieve your goals and stand out from the competition?
That’s where a brand audit comes in. A brand audit is a comprehensive analysis of your brand’s performance, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. It helps you evaluate your brand identity, strategy, messaging, positioning, differentiation, and customer experience. It also helps you identify any gaps or inconsistencies in your brand communication across all channels and touchpoints.
A brand audit is important because it can help you:
- Gain a clear understanding of your brand’s current situation and perception
- Align your brand with your vision, mission, values, and goals
- Identify and leverage your unique selling proposition and competitive advantage
- Enhance your brand awareness, recognition, and loyalty
- Improve your customer satisfaction and retention
- Increase your market share and revenue
- Optimize your marketing efforts and budget
- Avoid or resolve any potential legal or reputational issues
So, how do you conduct a brand audit? Well, it’s not as hard as it sounds, but it takes time to do it right. Follow these steps to conduct your brand audit:
- Define the scope and objectives of your brand audit. What do you want to achieve? What aspects of your brand do you want to examine? How will you measure your results?
- Collect data and feedback from internal and external sources. You can use surveys, interviews, focus groups, online reviews, social media analytics, web analytics, competitor analysis, and other tools to gather information about your brand performance and perception.
- Analyze the data and identify the key findings. Look for patterns, trends, gaps, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Compare your results with your objectives and expectations.
- Create a report and action plan based on your analysis. Summarize your findings and recommendations in a clear and concise way. Prioritize the most important and urgent actions to improve your brand.
- Implement the action plan and monitor the results. Execute the changes and improvements you’ve identified in your action plan. Track the progress and impact of your actions on your brand performance and perception.
Before we conclude, we would like to share examples of brand failures because, we are guessing, a proper audit was not done.
- The Gap logo redesign fiasco of 2010. The clothing retailer decided to change its iconic blue box logo to a bland Helvetica font with a tiny blue square on the corner. The backlash was so intense that the company reverted to its original logo within a week.
- The Pepsi logo redesign disaster of 2008. The soda giant spent $1 million to create a new logo that was supposed to represent “the Earth’s gravitational pull” and “the theory of everything”. The result was a squashed version of its old logo that looked like a smiley face with a belly.
- The London 2012 Olympics logo debacle. The organizers of the Olympic Games unveiled a logo that was supposed to be “dynamic” and “modern”. The result was a jagged mess that looked like a broken swastika or Lisa Simpson performing an obscene act.
- The Tropicana packaging blunder of 2009. The juice company decided to replace its classic orange-with-a-straw image with a generic photo of a glass of juice. The result was a 20% drop in sales and a lot of confused customers who couldn’t find their favorite product on the shelves.
- The Airbnb logo controversy of 2014. The home-sharing platform introduced a new logo that was supposed to represent “belonging”. The result was a symbol that looked like a certain area of male anatomy.
As you can see, these examples show how important it is to conduct a brand audit before making any major changes to your brand identity or strategy. A brand audit can help you avoid costly mistakes and create a brand that resonates with your audience.
Contact us today and let’s start a conversation around your brand audit.