Every Touchpoint
Including invoices, emails and error messages.
Brand Audit
Brand Audit Establishing What Your Brand Actually Is in Practice
Every organisation has two brands: the one in the guidelines and the one a customer encounters across the website, the invoices, the social accounts and the support replies. A brand audit documents the second one, which is usually the first time anyone has looked at it all together.
We Look at Everything, Including the Unglamorous
The gap between the intended brand and the encountered one is where the findings are.
Visual and Verbal
How it looks and how it sounds, which frequently disagree.
Outside In
What a customer actually encounters, in sequence.
Compared to Guidelines
The gap, with reasons rather than blame.
Ranked Findings
By what a customer notices, not by severity of the breach.
Brand Audit, Explained
What Does an Audit Cover?
Four areas, and the third is where most gaps appear.
Request an Audit →- 1
Visual Consistency
Logo, colour and type across everything.
- 2
Verbal Consistency
How the organisation sounds across channels.
- 3
Operational Touchpoints
Invoices, confirmations, support replies. Rarely branded, always seen.
- 4
Market Position
How you are described relative to alternatives.
What a Brand Audit Covers
Everything a customer encounters, compared to what was intended.
Where an audit finds a deeper problem, brand positioning is usually the next step.
How We Audit a Brand
Follow the customer journey and collect everything they see.
Map the Journey
Every point where a customer meets the brand.
Collect the Evidence
Screenshots, documents, emails, accounts.
Compare
Against the guidelines, and against each other.
Find the Causes
Why the gap exists, which is usually process rather than carelessness.
Rank and Recommend
By what customers actually notice.
Scope
Why the Invoice Is Part of the Brand
It is seen by every customer and designed by nobody.
What do operational touchpoints communicate?
Competence, or the absence of it. An invoice with a stretched logo, a confirmation email in a default system font, an automated message written by a developer — each is a small signal and every customer receives all of them.
They are also the touchpoints with the highest reach. Marketing materials are seen by prospects; invoices and confirmations are seen by everyone who actually bought something.
They fall outside marketing's ownership, which is precisely why they are never audited and why they are where the gap is largest.
Why do brands drift?
Not through carelessness. Through the absence of a process: someone needs something, the correct asset is hard to find, they use what is available, and that version propagates.
Each instance is a rational local decision. The cumulative effect is an organisation with four versions of its logo in circulation and no record of how that happened.
Which means the fix is usually process and asset availability rather than retraining or enforcement.
Questions,answered.
A brand audit documents how a brand actually appears and sounds across every touchpoint a customer encounters, and compares that to what the guidelines intended.
The largest gaps are in operational materials — invoices, confirmations, automated emails, support replies. They have the highest reach and sit outside marketing's ownership.
Usually because the correct asset was hard to find at the moment someone needed it. Each substitution is a rational local decision, and they accumulate into several versions in circulation.
By what customers actually notice and how often, rather than by how serious the breach of guidelines is. A minor inconsistency on every invoice outranks a major one on a rarely-seen document.
No. An audit establishes the current state. Where it uncovers a deeper problem, brand positioning is the separate piece of work that follows.
Still deciding if brand audit is right for you?
Talk to UsEvery Customer Sees the Invoice
Brand reviews look at the website, the campaign work, the brochures and the social accounts — everything marketing owns and can point to.
The invoice belongs to finance. The order confirmation belongs to whoever configured the ecommerce platform. The support reply template belongs to customer service. None of them is in the review.
All of them reach every single customer who ever bought something, which is a considerably larger and better-qualified audience than the campaign work will ever have.
Free Initial Review
Find Out What Your Brand Actually Looks Like
Give us your website and a few operational documents. We will show you what a customer encounters end to end.
Claim Your Free Marketing Audit
Enhance Your Brand Potential At No Cost!
- Expect a response within 24 hours
- NDA available upon request
- Dedicated product specialists