Audit
Audit. Now there's a fun sounding word.
To you, a Professional Marketer, "Audit" probably sends shivers down your
spine as you picture days, weeks, or even months of sitting with an
accountant reviewing your spend. But, a Brand Audit is really much more
fun, and is the key to understanding what you've been doing with your
branding efforts, and what you should focus your branding efforts into the
future.
Brand
What is your brand? It is more than just the list of
things you need to ensure look good: your company's colors, the fonts you
use in your signage, and the shape of your logo.
Your brand is the
sum of your customer's:
-
Perception and experience with
your product or service,
-
Interactions with
people representing your company,
-
Observation of your place
of business and advertising,
-
Exchanges with other people about all
of these things, and
-
"Then some".
Brand Audit
The Brand Audit is a holistic process
that begins with learning about what your senior managers and customers
think about your brand. The full project looks something like:
-
Understand: Review
documentation and perform interviews with senior leadership with respect
to what the "brand" means (e.g. marketing and brand plans,
and integration with company's business plans). Outcome =
Understanding of
the desired
expression of the brand.
-
Research: Internal and Customers of your
brand and your competitors to determine what you stand for in your
constituents' eyes and how they believe that you support the brand
promise. This part of the project includes formal research and may
involved 3rd parties (such as a market research organization).
Additionally, this may involve reviewing social networks and so forth
with respect to your brand and your competition. Outcome =
Understanding of how you are perceived, and how your competition
is perceived, & recommendations and / or
a workplan to close the gaps between desired expression
of the
brand and Customers perceptions.
-
Review Brand Identity
Standards: Wide variety of elements including visual
presentation, customer interaction points such as the look and feel of
an in-store experience and the colors on your websites, packaging, etc.
Outcome =
Understanding of
gaps in brand book & recommendations and / or
a workplan
to mitigate the gaps.
-
Review Brand Expression at
Touch Points: Understand each customer interaction point with
your employees and how they support the brand: telephone, in-store, web,
email, direct mail, returns, etc.. Outcome =
Understanding of
gaps in employee behavior & recommendations and / or
a workplan
to mitigate the gaps.
-
Review
Advertising: Ads from all media, integration, credibility,
actionable, how they stand out and how they communicate the brand.
Outcome = Understanding
of gap between desired branding and existing
advertising, and / or a recommendation to create an
"Advertising Toolkit"
consistent with the branding.
-
Evaluate positioning and
differentiators:
Review desired positioning statement versus reality. Outcome =
Understanding
of where the product or service is
"off brand", and a recommendation and / or workplan
to bring
it back to brand.
-
Review brand
extensions : Brand assets, processes and
rationale behind extension, opportunities for contraction. Outcome =
Understanding of sub- and co-brands, and / or a
recommendation on
extending or contracting brands.
** Of course the scope will be
customized for your specific needs.
Contact Market GoGo for help with your Brand Audit.
|
Market GoGo 