What Is a Brand Audit?
A brand audit provides a systematic way of understanding what brands are and what added values they offer, both to the consumer and the company. The following is a simple and highly effective approach that can be used to evaluate the business performance of your brand. The brand audit has three components. The first is the brand inventory, which is a brand-specific situation analysis and a description of all the marketing input. The second is brand exploration, which is a detailed description of the consumer perception of the brand. The third part is analysis. The analysis is a reaction to the first two parts, essentially what can be learned by comparing what management has planned, hoped, and done with what consumers feel, believe, and do. The specifics of a brand audit vary; here a general approach is provided, which can be used to guide you through a do-it-yourself brand audit.
Brand and Category Audit
Marketing managers started doing audits of marketing plans and market conditions soon after the modern-day disciplines were established in the 1950s and 1960s. As the approach to brand strategy and management has evolved, these audits have focused on more detailed measures of brand and category value, sustainability, and brand position risk.
Framing a Scorecard
While the importance of brand asset value and brand equity is widely accepted, the practical measures and operating issues that drive these end results are not always well developed. Here we’ve used five measures as scorecard foundations for brand and category management; other measures can be built on these:
01 Brand Inventory
What are the objectives for the brand and how has brand management performed to achieve these objectives?
What is the single most important challenge for the brand? Identify the competitive brands. Describe and forecast their brand marketing strategies.
________________________________
How have the competitive brands evolved over time?
________________________________
What is the nature and basis of brand customer relationships if they do exist?
________________________________
Who are the customers? How have customer perceptions changed over time and what shaped them? Identify any relevant drivers for suppliers, buyers, customers, technology, regulations, or other environmental factors that might be relevant to the brand.
________________________________
What products bear the brand name?
________________________________
What is the nature and what are the qualities of these products?
________________________________
What are the key attributes of the branded products?
________________________________
What is the brand structure? (Family, corporate, umbrella, etc.)
________________________________
What is the intended positioning of the branded products relative to their competitors?
________________________________
What does the price signal about the brand?
________________________________
What do the distribution outlets signal about the brand?
________________________________
How has the customer experience matched the customer perceptions or expectations?
________________________________
How has the brand manifested itself in the digital world?
________________________________
How has the interface reflected our brand personality?
________________________________
How consistent are customer communications across all channels?
________________________________
How has the brand message been communicated?
________________________________
What are the prominent brand themes in communication?
________________________________
What are the qualities of the media and media vehicles?
________________________________
Describe the management of brand elements—symbols, logos, packages, product design, style.
________________________________
Sources:
02 Brand Exploration
What is the overall likeability of the brand?
________________________________
What is the overall brand awareness level?
________________________________
What is consumer response to the brand?
________________________________
What is the channel partner response to the brand?
________________________________
What do they believe about the brand’s claims—its attributes and benefits?
________________________________
What other associations do people have to the brand?
________________________________
How much do consumers value brand equity?
________________________________
What are consumer motives toward or away from the brand?
________________________________
Consider the competition; what do consumers view as substitutes? Conduct a consumer perceptions analysis, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the brand.
________________________________
Describe consumer behavior with respect to brand–market share, places where the brand is bought, relevant information sources, and uses for the brand.
________________________________
What is the perceived brand identity?
________________________________
What is the perceived brand image/personality?
________________________________
What is the image of users of the brand?
________________________________
What is the image of the company behind the brand for customers?
________________________________
What is the image of the company behind the brand from the perspectives of the employees?
________________________________
There are two source types—baseline, or secondary, research sources and primary research sources. The former should provide general answers; the latter should be designed to address specific questions that you (a) think are important and (b) do not already have good answers for.
03 Analysis
Are brand management elements consistent?
________________________________
Do consumers have a clear and consistent image of the brand?
________________________________
Do employees understand what the brand means and how it is connected to how they do the job on a day-to-day basis?
________________________________
Is the brand being over-extended to different products and is being diluted?
________________________________
Are we doing enough brand-building effort to ensure we are still building brand equity?
________________________________
Are there any changes in leadership, management structures, or organizational design that are changing how the brand behaves?
________________________________
Are consumers responding as management expected/hoped? Identify and discuss the important successes and failures.
________________________________
Make suggestions for changes in brand management, opportunities, or threats in the marketplace that need to be addressed, opportunities for developing or extending brand equity, and possibilities for brand extensions or new brands.
________________________________
*Choice of primary data collection: The brand exploration should cover everything that is part of consumer brand knowledge, but it must definitively address all the aspects identified in the brand inventory. For example, if the brand inventory suggests a certain positioning strategy or assumes a specific purchase frequency, assess consumers’ perceived positions or consumers’ purchase frequency. Or, if you identify an opportunity that is not addressed in the brand inventory (e.g., an untapped segment), assess that possibility.
*Design of primary data collection: Your guideline is to conduct the research in the same way as the firm. A couple of aspects are flexible. One is sample size. Aim for a sample of 50, which is far less than practical but probably large enough to yield meaningful results. The other is data analysis. There is no need for fancy statistical tests. Frequencies and comparisons of scale means should cover everything. Make judgments about differences on the basis of practical, not statistical, effect sizes. Note, that you should make an effort to use an appropriate sample. Asking your fellow colleagues or your neighbors questions may be just fine for Harvey’s or Hershey, but probably not for Hermès.