Many companies declare their brand to be fully invested in their logo – the graphic device that communicates direct to their market. True, the logo is an important component, but the brand itself is where the power is. It’s the brand that reaches out and grabs the market – emotionally, economically, ethically and philosophically. The brand is about perception and promise, connection and reputation. The brand shouts much louder than the logo itself. It even listens.

For clarity, let’s talk in terms of something more tangible and familiar, like the humble apple (the edible variety, not the Macintosh one). Where is the brand value of the everyday apple vested? Is it in the tradition or the health and well-being message? Is it in the convenience and shelf-ability, or is it purely the familiarity of the look, shape and crunch of the apple itself (the logo, if you like)? Brand managers know it’s an intricate combination of these factors. For each consumer (and potential consumer) there is a unique mix of brand values that build their perception of the product – a complex fusion of emotional, economical and psychological factors that create loyalty and drive purchase decisions. The brand management discipline is framed around coordinating these brand values to create positive and enduring brand equity.

A top-down, bottom-up, enterprise-wide approach is the key. If your CEO can’t define the brand, if your back-office can’t fulfil the brand promise, if your front-line staff don’t clearly communicate your brand proposition or if your product/service doesn’t hold up against your competitors, then even an exceptionally well-designed logo won’t carry through to your bottom line.

A functional brand strategy requires understanding, insight and the effort to deliver. It demands input from all levels, not just the marketing department. Every single part of your business needs to identify with your brand and accept responsibility for driving it.

What are the specific actions that reinforce, promote and develop your brand? Again, they are unique to every business, every sector, every product, every service. Staying with the apple analogy, a brand strategy might include engaging the consumer (key messages about health, taste, economy, versatility), leveraging from existing loyalty (think Granny Smith), offering new varieties/sub-brands that are distinct from the original but don’t differ dramatically from the intrinsic look and feel (think Pink Lady) and hearing and responding to feedback from your consumers. Add in seeking to maintain the brand reputation by providing quality and excellence, “keeping your nose clean”, and fostering an emotional connection between your market and your brand – a mutual sense of belonging and ownership built on familiarity. None of these actions is isolated from strong leadership, financial investment or front-of-line promotion. The brand is clearly an organisation-wide responsibility.

Branding is all about managing how people feel about your product, business and even sector. It occurs on all levels from customer service and consumer/media communications right through to how you answer your phone, merchandise your products or implement damage control. The “brand experience” is paramount – that’s where your brand’s potential is lost or won. A poorly or under-managed brand results in negative consumer experience, which quickly translates to negative brand equity.

In contrast, an intelligent brand strategy drives your organisation’s reputation and seeks actions that positively influence how your market perceives you. A genuine long-view brand management strategy transcends the immediacy of marketing tactics, the constraints of this year’s budget and the shortcomings of the sales department. If well-executed, your market (and bottom line) will react favourably to an improved brand experience and there will be measurable outcomes. Notwithstanding other variables, your brand equity will increase and drive increased sales or service uptake.

We are not out to diminish the value of the logo in your overall branding proposition. But if you believe your logo is all there is to your brand, you may well be barking up the wrong apple tree.

DDG has been managing business brands for many years. We promote and build brands that have meaning for our clients’ customers, staff and stakeholders.

Perhaps you would tell him: “I want it to look really cool, modern and a bit like the one next door but not like the one across the road.” You want doors and windows (of course) plus three bedrooms and a driveway, but he’s the expert. He can just go ahead and build it.

What sort of result would you expect?

Half-way through construction you might not like what you see. You might ask for the front door to be moved or decide you need a separate living area for the kids. So you ask the builder to move a few walls because it’s not what you wanted or expected.

How do you think your builder would respond? Would you expect to pay for these changes?

And would you even deal with a builder prepared to take on the project, based on such loose specifications?

Or would you trust the whole project to an apprentice or worse a well meaning friend who has a knack for carpentry?

Of course not! It’s a recipe for disaster … for both you and your builder.

Yet, we regularly encounter a very similar scenario when pitching competitive quotes for websites.

More often than not, a website brief prepared by a (well-meaning) potential client is insufficient to enable us to quote accurately. Yet many web developers are prepared to quote on this basis. Who wears the loss when the scope inevitably creeps? What happens when you hear the dreaded words, “we can do that but it wasn’t in the original quote”?

Who wears the variation costs, you or the developer? Have you really won if the developer does make the changes without charge? What sort of business are you dealing with? How long will they be in business on that basis? What sort of relationship do you now have?

Surely there is a better approach. A website must not only look good and accurately portray your business and its brand. It must be functional. What do we mean by functional? It must:

• work!

• be easy to navigate

• be relevant to the demographic of your users

• be clear to users who you are and what you do.

We are well past the stage of a website being “cool”. If your web developer mentions that word run for the hills! Don’t let your site be a guinea pig or a folio piece for a graphic designer’s ego, a paid training session on the latest technology or a chance to use what they think is “cool”.

Imagine if your builder put some really “cool” windows in your house but no one could figure out how to open them.

Your website is not for the designer to use. It’s not even for you to use. It’s for your customers!

Put yourself in the users’ shoes!

Ask yourself these questions:

• Why do I need a website?

• Who is going to visit my site and why?

• What are they looking for?

• Why will they choose to visit me and why will (or should) they buy from me and not my competitors?

Think of your website as your virtual shopfront … your window to the world. It provides every potential customer’s first impression of your business and perhaps their last and only one.

Prospective customers visit your website because they want a solution. It makes good sense to engineer your site to help solve that problem as easily and efficiently as possible, and to make every visitor feel comfortable about your business and its credibility.

On your website, are your internal departments and products structured in a way that’s relevant to the user and how a user is likely to access/search them?

Imagine if your office entrance or store had 12 different solid doors, each labelled with a specific department. How would a visitor know which door leads to what they are looking for? And can they get back, if they choose the wrong way? It could be quite daunting and confusing, couldn’t it?

How many websites replicate this with meaningless (to the user) hierarchical menu structures which confuse the user and waste their time? Does yours?

A simple example – imagine you are a recent retiree looking for advice on investing your lump sum payout and superannuation.

You Google “financial planners” and start reviewing the websites returned by the search. Which website do you think would be more attractive to you, assuming all other things are equal:

• One that lists a whole menu structure of departments and services, and text pages of everything the business does?

• Or one with a prominent and clear button on the home page that reads something like – “Just retired, need help and advice for your financial future? Click here”

Remember … the user doesn’t care how you’re structured they just want their problem solved!

So what does this all mean for you? When undertaking your next web project, be sure to engage a business that thinks strategically and can engineer a site that caters to your users … one that is clearly scoped, defined and architected before it is given to a graphic designer to make it look good.

Be sure to engage a web developer that asks the right questions, to clarify what you want and what you are getting before they start designing it. The graphic elements come later.

Like all things … with websites, you get what (and who) you pay for………

“Brands are complex beasts,” says Jonathan Roberts, DDG’s Managing Director. “There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’. Every brand is unique in terms of the business it represents, the way it engages with its audience, how it builds its equity and longevity.”

“Brand’s are part art and part science, but mostly they’re about strategy. Certainly, the end-product combines quality design and technology, but it takes an intelligent strategy to really bring a brand to life so that it achieves its potential.”

Experienced brand managers firmly anchor their communications projects within a structured framework that minimises risks and maximises results.

The initial step is analysing the “now”- workshopping, reviewing and auditing to understand the business … where it was yesterday and where it is today.

“The findings of this process enable us to define both current position and the desired state – where and what we want to be, and why,” explains Jonathan. “You can’t move forward with a brand unless you know where it’s been and where it’s heading.”

The “moving forward” is achieved by developing strategic imperatives, objectives, goals, actions and solutions.

According to Jonathan, “An implementation plan then specifies budgets, resourcing, tasks and responsibilities, the marketing and communications plan, action plans and measurement criteria. That’s the how, when and who covered off.”

The implementation phase puts it all into action in a systematic, mindful roll-out of creative design, strategic web development, PR management, launches and stakeholder engagement.

“Finally we evaluate the success of the brand to check that it’s delivering on its promise back to the enterprise,” explains Jonathan. “That helps establish a brand awareness culture within the business, too, of ongoing monitoring and vigilance.”

To recap on the above, when developing a strategic brand framework, the focus should be on:

• NOW – The current position (where we are now)
• NEXT – The desired state (what we want to be)
• WHY – the gap between NOW and NEXT (the reason for the voyage)
• HOW – The strategy (what has to happen to close the gap)
• WHO & WHEN – The implementation plan (plotting, resourcing and measuring the course)

This methodical approach to building brands ranks the strategy first and foremost, as the core process setting the parameters for all the subsequent deliverables (including the art and the science!)

As Jonathan sums up, “Some brands are built ‘hit and miss’ style or by retro-fitting template-style deliverables into business types. The best brands are built on strategy first.”

Our Strategy Report explains how you can re-design your print and online communications to optimise their performance, build your brand and return value to your bottom-line.

Investment or expense?
Perhaps you see your communications budget as an expense, a “have-to” that isn’t required to return direct income to your business. Expect more! Let us demonstrate how to transform your communications spend into an investment that pays off in real, practical terms – revenue you can measure.

Your brand as an asset
Your brand is the identity that sets you apart from your competitors. It incorporates and communicates your core business, your market position and your values. Developing and maintaining the integrity of your brand across all your communications is paramount.

Branding is all about managing how people feel about your product, business and even sector. It occurs on all levels from customer service and consumer/media communications right through to how you answer your phone, merchandise your products or implement damage control. The “brand experience” is paramount – that’s where your brand’s potential is lost or won. A poorly or under-managed brand results in negative consumer experience, which quickly translates to negative brand equity.

An intelligent brand strategy drives your organisation’s reputation and seeks actions that positively influence how your market perceives you. A genuine long-view brand management strategy transcends the immediacy of marketing tactics, the constraints of this year’s budget and the shortcomings of the sales department. If well-executed, your market (and bottom line) will react favourably to an improved brand experience and there will be measurable outcomes. Notwithstanding other variables, your brand equity will increase and drive increased sales or service uptake.

With DDG’s Strategy Report we can help you achieve the optimum value from your brand.

The right brand
If you don’t make money by selling large volumes of low-margin products, your marketing communications should not resemble an online bazaar!

If you’re not in the entertainment business, your communications shouldn’t showcase design wizardry or gimmicky Flash animations. Most organisations rely on printers, media reps and web developers to design their brand communications. In contrast, a brand communications specialist will identify your underlying business model and translate this into a best-fit map for your brand and visual communications program.

A new perspective
Our research findings may challenge the way you think about business and brands. Our Strategy Report introduces two deceptively simple principles that can make such a difference:

• Why it’s essential to align your communications model with your business model
  Is your core business a transactor, an innovator or a collaborator? Use this one piece of knowledge to re-focus your marketing efforts on essential elements and extract incredible revenue from your communications investment.
• Why your communications must fit seamlessly within a carefully designed business process. Are you wasting budget on communications that don’t contribute to your business process? Your brochures. Your website. Your advertising. Find out if they are all really necessary. How to synchronise your communications with your business operations. Exploiting the successes of your off-line or bricks-and-mortar operations by integrating them into your print and digital communications.

Learn more about our philosophy
Of course, you want to know more about how your organisation can benefit from our findings. We invite you to download a complimentary copy of our Strategy Report. We also offer an excellent report of Online Strategy featuring SEO and Web 2.0 advice. Download here.

It’s a simple maxim. Yet many organisations fail to achieve brand potential by failing to align the language which articulates their internal and external communications.

There is no doubt that strong, corporate brands generate superior performance and endurance. Those that “live and breathe” the brand from the inside-out build a competitive advantage that’s hard to beat.

The most powerful and authentic brands are those that align three key elements: strategic vision, corporate (or internal) culture and external brand image. The reasons are obvious – the brand values are not skin deep. Nor are they meaningless boardroom rhetoric. They are an integral part of the culture and directly impact how everyone inside and outside the organisation perceives it. They’re reputation-builders extraordinaire.

At first blush, it seems a daunting task to align messages that have very different points of origin. The boardroom is generally responsible for the strategic direction, HR looks after the internal culture and marketing churns out the external communications. So, how do you get everyone on the same page?

By understanding that what really matters to top level managers, also matters to the sales team, to the marketing division, to the HR team, to the people who deal with your clients … and to your clients themselves.

How they “feel” about your organisation will determine how hard they work, how energetically they sell, how positively they communicate, how long they stay or, in the case of customers, how enthusiastically they take-up your offers, products or services.

You can help accomplish that “feeling” by developing some language “rules” that prescribe how key messages are communicated in and outside your enterprise, and then equipping everyone (including the board, HR and marketing) with the tools they need to achieve unified brand expression.

While a style manual protects and reinforces your visual brand (by prescribing how to apply your logo, company colours, corporate font), development of a corporate language resource ensures that what is said or written by anyone within your organisation is also consistent with the brand.

Translating strategic direction (from the high-level corporate-speak in which it may have been shaped) into easily-understood key messages for internal use in newsletters, emails, memos, intranet, manuals, training materials, presentations and meetings:

• builds employee engagement and cross-cultural practices
• strengthens employees’ ownership for delivery of the organisational goals
• fosters a sure sense of belonging.

Equipped with clear, concise phrasing and positive vocabulary, your team can embrace the strategic goals and put them into everyday use in their written communications and conversations. They can frame their upstream, downstream and peer interactions in terms of collective objectives.

Your team (who, afterall, deliver your brand) can share the same understanding of the brand promise that the boardroom and the customers have. There’s no smoke and mirrors. You said what you meant in the boardroom and now your people are meaning what they say to your customers.

By taking the next step, and interpreting the same key messages into language that suits your external audience, you bridge the gap between what your brand promises and what it delivers. The customised external language will depend on the demographics of your target audience and getting the right pitch and emotional connection levels are critical. Just keep the essence congruent with the internal messages and you will be rewarded with all sorts of synergies in terms of brand consistency, reinforcement and purpose.

Say what you mean, and mean what you say. It’s authentic. It’s powerful. It’s pure branding, inside and out.

Choosing a font can be bewildering. The digital revolution has delivered to our desktops more fonts than most of us know what to do with.

Sure … you can capitulate and just run with the default font setting in your computer application (usually a good generic option). Or you can be proactive and select a typeface that suits your purpose, your audience, your medium. So where do you start?

“Understanding that different fonts suit different applications is a good starting point,” says DDG’s Creative Director, Fred Thompson. “What is right for a logo is not necessarily right for a long block of text in an annual report or a navigation menu on a website.”

For designers, font selection and the way fonts are used (typography) are critical to the creative process. “There are many issues to consider with choosing a typeface,” said Fred. “Legibility, readability, reproducibility, impact, reader preference, image … it goes on. Is the typeface the right size, the right weight, the right style? We look to tick as many boxes as we can.”

“As professionals, we have accepted guidelines and best practices that merge with the creative process to achieve the optimum typographic result. But I’d recommend beginners focus on keeping it simple by sticking to some basic principles,” suggested Fred.

Here are a few tips for the typographically challenged:

• contrast – avoid mixing two very similar typefaces on the one page; think contrast rather than clash
• less is more – use a maximum of 3-4 different typefaces in the one document
• consistency – once you choose the fonts for your headings and body text, stick to them throughout the document
• continuity – don’t make sudden font changes mid-paragraph, mid-sentence or mid-word
• congruency – match the typeface to the content and the spirit of the text.

“That last one is probably the most difficult to achieve,” cautioned Fred. ”Letterforms have their own expression and can evoke emotions, memories or images in the reader’s mind.”

Consider the modular, unicase letterforms that define the machine age or the organic, fun fonts that reflect the pop art of the 1960s. Think about the friendly classic scripts of the 19th century compared to heavy gothic fonts. Decorative. Serious, Casual. A font can say it all without saying a thing.

“Our modern fonts draw their inspiration from all the others that went before. We can use them to express friendliness, openness, strength, tradition, innovation or any number of values that we want to ascribe to a document or brand image,” said Fred. “The choice of font can be just as important as the words themselves, or even the images that sit alongside.”

Consistency is one of the most critical drivers in brand expression, especially with fonts. Fred explained, “We encourage our business clients to adopt a corporate font. The creative team selects a suitable typeface (or two) from the thousands that are available and then we set some standards around how and where the typefaces can be applied to the various applications within the business. This ensures a consistent image is projected and saves individuals within the organisation wrestling with decisions about fonts.”

Fonts differ greatly … some obviously, some subtley. Chosen well, they have the capacity to set the mood of what’s written, to convey a brand value, to invite readership or to spark an emotional cue. Beware – if blundered, they can have the reader turning the page or hitting the back button faster than you can say “times new roman”.

So think carefully about what your font selection says about you and if in doubt … default!

It follows that a marketing strategy that effectively leverages loyalty to maximise revenue from existing customer relationships is worthy of consideration. You might think of it as an extension of the “do you want fries with that?” theory. We think of it as the Brick Wall Strategy. Keep reading and you will understand why.

Imagine a spreadsheet-style diagram that lists all your customers (yes, every one of them) on a vertical axis. On a horizontal axis you see all your business’ products/services (yes, every one of them). If you took the time to populate the chart with your annual return for each product/service against each client, you could sum the columns at the bottom to show your total revenue. Overall, it would look a little like a brick wall – with blocks missing all over the place.

Now, imagine if you filled in all those blank spaces … if you could build a solid wall, with a brick (dollar figure) in every hole. Picture how your total revenue would look then. Very solid, indeed.

The Brick Wall Strategy, with its logical and methodical approach, makes that a real possibility. It lets you manage the current trend to vendor consolidation to the advantage of your business and it encourages you to invest in one of your business’ most lucrative assets – your existing customer base.

Sure, encouraging Customer #1 who currently purchases products A and B, to also purchase products C, D , E and F, requires a proactive and well-considered marketing program. But (as we know) that’s easier (and cheaper) than attracting a new customer who is unfamiliar with your business.

Every success slots another brick in the wall and generates revenue at your bottom-line, while strengthening your customer relationships and helping build you a better brand.

To discover more about how the Brick Wall Strategy can build your business better, contact a DDG Brand Consultant at our Melbourne Office on 03 9682 9388 or our Geelong Office 03 5226 9600.

1. Choosing non-distinctive brands
In devising new brands, marketers are frequently attracted to names that are highly suggestive of the nature of the goods or services. While these names have a superficial appeal, protecting them can be difficult, as the Trade Marks Act prevents registration of trade marks that are not sufficiently distinctive. A name such as APPROVE-FAST (for home loan services) instantly conveys a characteristic of the services to potential customers, but its descriptive quality makes it difficult to protect, and easy for others to legally imitate.

2. Not conducting trade mark availability searches
It is vital to conduct an adequate trade mark search before settling on any new brand, name of a business, a product or a service, a logo, or even a slogan. Businesses that fail to search, or that search inadequately or inexpertly, risk wasting significant sums invested in a brand that they may be forced to abandon because of the prior rights of an earlier trade mark owner.

3. Failing to register brands as trade marks
Businesses that fail to apply for and register their brands as trade marks find it more difficult to prevent third parties using the same or similar marks than those who have trade mark registrations. Businesses without trade mark registration must establish that they have used their brand to an extent that they have acquired a reputation in the mark to bring an action. The required level of reputation may be difficult to establish, or may be confined to a small geographical area. Trade mark registration, by contrast, gives national rights (and can indeed provide international rights). Businesses that expand into new countries should seek registration in each country where use is proposed or occurring.

4. D-I-Y trade mark filing disasters
D-I-Y trade mark applications can be disastrous. The trade mark application process is full of traps waiting to catch the amateur filer. Commonly, trade mark owners that file their own applications nominate the wrong classes of goods or services or describe their goods and services in ways that, while appear reasonable to the layperson, in fact provide inadequate or inappropriate protection.

5. Inadequate protection for all branding elements
Good branding can involve a number of elements. Trade mark protection can be obtained for words, logos (graphics), and items such as packaging designs, shapes and colours, even sounds and smells! Maximum protection is afforded by protecting each of these elements separately.

6. Not securing underlying copyright rights
Branding elements that include logos or other graphic material may attract some protection under the law of copyright, as well as being potentially registrable as trade marks. Unfortunately, many businesses incorrectly assume that because they have commissioned a graphic designer to create branding elements for them, that they will own the underlying copyright in the artwork.

7. Allowing uncontrolled use by third parties
Any use of a trade mark by a person other than a trade mark owner, be it a franchisee or other user, should be made strictly under an appropriately drafted trade mark licence agreement which permits the owner to ‘control’ the use of the brand. Uncontrolled use can lead to dilution of the value of the brand, inconsistent application of brand values and even potential loss of registered trade mark rights.

8. Not using the trade mark as registered
A trade mark may be removed from the Register for non-use if it is not used in the form in which it is registered, hence it is important to use the mark as registered, and register the mark as used.

9. Failing to renew registered trade marks
Australian trade marks are registered for 10 years initially and can be renewed for further 10 year periods. Once a trade mark’s renewal period has expired, registered rights are lost and a fresh application must be lodged to secure the rights.

10. Failing to monitor the market
Brand owners need to vigilantly monitor their market for any third parties using similar trade marks . To preserve their rights, they need to take legal action promptly to prevent unauthorised use and trade mark owners should arrange monitoring services through qualified trade mark practitioners. If those uses are not detected and/or action not taken against the unauthorised users, the third party may acquire its own rights through use, paving the way for significant confusion in the marketplace and loss of value of the original brand.

Article written by Daniel Kovacs, Senior Associate, Kliger Partners, www.kligers.com.au

A brand is much more than just your logo or your name. Your brand is a dynamic and complex set of elements which, if well-managed, can generate considerable customer loyalty. An intelligent positioning statement can drive consumer understanding and help develop a meaningful point of difference. It offers personality and “stand-out-from-the-crowd” impact. Where a logo lets you be seen, a positioning statement lets you be understood.

Just a few carefully configured words can communicate your key message/s to customers, convey your existing or desired market position and/or engage your audience via humour/empathy/emotional connection. It can even be a focus point for your staff, in the manner of a mini vision statement.

An effective and well-communicated positioning statement will fuse with your brand and be easily recalled even where it is not articulated, when just the brand-mark or logo are present.

Most of us can readily recall the statements related to big players such as Nike or Coke. (Just do it / The real thing.)

Some connect so well that they grow legs and move into common use: “it’s your money, Ralph” (CBA) “where can we take you today?” (Microsoft Windows) “so where the bloody hell are you?” (Aust Tourism).

Flick through any magazine or newspaper, or check-out a couple of TV ad breaks and you’ll see positioning statements at work. In effect, they work on any or all of your marketing collateral: print advertisements, business cards, letterheads, promotional brochures, newsletters, radio ads, vehicle livery – even corporate uniforms and giveaways like calendars, bumper stickers and key tags. In fact anywhere you want to reinforce your brand communications.

Positioning statements can be developed with longevity in mind or just for a single campaign, a website launch or an exhibition display. They can evolve as your business evolves, re-focussing to reflect a shift in emphasis, management or direction, or to launch a whole new identity.

So how does your brand manager set about developing a powerful positioning statement for your business? In much the same way as they develop any marketing collateral – consulting with you to understand your business and identifying what you want to say to your marketplace. Do you want to tell your customers or prospects what you do? How well you do it? How you do it differently? Your core values? How big you are? Where you are? That you lead? That you put in effort? That you can be trusted?

You may well say “all of the above”. The key is defining the most important aspect you want to communicate (or at least narrowing it down to two or three elements).

For example, to assure the market that their organic food products were a healthy choice, Ladybird Organics adopted the tagline “Crawling with natural goodness”.

When E&S Trading wanted to promote the positive lifestyle benefits of their homemaker appliances they positioned themselves with “feel at home”.

“The right people in the right jobs” not only explains what Matchworks (a recruitment/placement agency) does, but also that they do it well.

Now you know what you want to say, how do you say it? Do you use corporate, emotional or familiar language? Do you go dynamic with strong verbs, descriptive with power adjectives, quirky with word plays or triple-up with a rhythmic three-worder? The answer is simple – choose the style that suits your business style.

Occasionally a possibility emerges from a simple brainstorm, but the best solutions are derived via collaboration between your brand manager and a professional copywriter. That’s how these gems were developed:

eat | meet | be seen (Wool Exchange Function/Event Centre)

your special place (Riviera on Yarra Restaurant)

dripping with pool ideas (Gordon Avenue Pools and Spas website)

Look around and see what other businesses are saying about themselves. Then look closer to home … what does your marketing say about your business?

Because in today’s marketplace, you probably can’t afford not to. Find out how a communications audit can return surprisingly positive bottom-line benefits to your business.

The branding audit – can you afford not to do it?

It is commonplace for organisations to conduct audits. These are usually in response to meeting compliance requirements of one sort or another, as in the areas of finance and OH&S. They are givens and the cost and time they take is considered a necessary part of carrying on business. So why would your organisation invest in conducting a branding audit, which is not demanded by any regulatory body? Because in today’s marketplace, you probably can’t afford not to.

A branding audit is designed to track how a company relates to the environment in which it operates and is a mechanism to help identify strengths and weaknesses as they relate to external opportunities and threats. In a nutshell it takes the guesswork out of writing marketing plans by enabling companies to select a position in an environment based on known factors.

By conducting a systematic, critical and unbiased review of the environment and the company’s operations you can answer the three critical questions of: Where is our company now? Where do we want to go? And, How do we get there?

Economic climates change so rapidly these days and to ignore change you run the risk of falling behind and missing a change in customer trends. By conducting an annual audit of your branding communications you can keep pace with change.

An effective branding audit quantifies the efficiency of your branding and sets a benchmark from which to judge the value of future efforts. So, even through organisational change or the loss of key personnel, there is a point of reference to measure against.

The notion of evaluating communication efforts is a process most organisations conduct intuitively as part of smaller to medium projects. A systematic, documented and enterprise-wide approach is the intelligent way to ensure validity and integrity of large-scale projects.

The benefits are high – cohesion of disparate corporate materials, coordination of efforts across multi-site or de-centralised organisations and clearly defined objectives. It’s all about being proactive and getting your marketing ducks in a row across the organisation, rather than taking a piecemeal approach so often adopted by companies in reaction to a crisis such as falling sales.

How exactly does an audit work? The benefit is that you can set your own “terms of reference” for a communications audit. It can be as simple or as comprehensive as your needs (or budget) demand. It can be carried out entirely by creative agency staff or jointly with your own personnel.

The core element is an objective examination of all your organisation’s communications, from brochures right through to emails and the look of your premises. Materials are reviewed for consistency and quality, according to a points value system. It’s all about how your customers and external contacts see you.

An identical process looks at your competitors’ communications, using the same criteria. The competitor review can be as widespread as is appropriate to your market.

Interviews with employees and clients add more depth and highlight areas worthy of attention.

An independent analysis of the overall audit findings is prepared and presented in report format. It pinpoints weaknesses and strengths, and lists recommendations to address these.

The result will always be more focused objectives, more clearly defined strategies and a basis for prioritising activities. Whether you choose a one-off audit or lock into a yearly review, your company will have a much clearer path.

Of course, not everything an audit turns up is positive. In the same way a financial audit might uncover an unfavourable tax anomaly or a sales analysis could demonstrate that the CEO’s nephew is the only one in the sales department not meeting targets, a branding audit might present you with some nasty findings. But at least you’ll know what is happening. The first step in problem-solving is identifying the issues.

While some organisations are comfortable running with the old “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy, when it comes to your marketing systems you have to ask yourself: How do I know if it’s broke? Without an audit, you probably won’t … not until it’s too late, anyway.