How a brand audit can grow a business
Why do a brand audit?
Whether you’re considering a transformation or have already been through one, a brand audit is essential for making informed decisions. If it’s not meant to guide decisions, it’s better not to do it at all.
Your brand is your most valuable asset.. Even though it’s intangible, its value can be measured. In both scenarios, a brand audit should be conducted with a clear purpose: to support decisions that increase brand value – a value that ultimately translates into dollars.
What are the risks of a brand audit?
You have conducted a brand audit to support a decision – whether to start or continue a rebranding process. This means you’re preparing to make new investments to manage something abstract, yet with high potential value.
And here lies the biggest risk: Is the audit valid? Does it reflect reality? Was it done properly? The decisions you’re about to make – and into which you’ll invest money, time, and effort – do they rest on a solid foundation?
A well-executed brand audit lays the groundwork for a strong, healthy growth strategy.
A poorly conducted audit, on the other hand, creates false assumptions that can lead to misguided investments – wasting time, money, and energy in the wrong direction.
Who is qualified to conduct a brand audit?
A brand audit must be carried out by a team of professionals with experience across diverse projects, solid know-how, and a validated methodology.
Why is an external team the only real solution?
- Objectivity: External specialists have no personal stake in the outcome. They seek the truth, not validation.
- Proven methodology: They use tools, interviews, and both qualitative and quantitative evaluations that have been successfully applied in similar organizations.
- Direct experience: They’ve led dozens of brand audit processes and can identify patterns, weaknesses, and genuine opportunities.
- Trust factor: Paradoxically, people inside the organization tend to be more honest and open with an external interviewer – because there’s no internal agenda.
Relevant benchmarking: From the outside, they can compare your brand’s positioning and perception with other players in your industry.
The risks of conducting a brand audit internally
An internal brand audit may be considered – with significant risks– only if there is a team with proven experience in brand strategy, which is rarely the case. In most organizations, the marketing team is not equipped for such an undertaking: it lacks specialized expertise, a validated methodology, and the necessary objectivity.
The main risks include:
- Incorrect conclusions: There’s a high chance the findings will be far from reality, leading to poor strategic decisions.
- Longer timelines: Internal processes are often slower, lacking structure and clear direction.
- No actionable plan: Without expertise in brand strategy, it’s difficult to create a coherent, effective action plan.
- Low credibility: Internal assessments are often met with skepticism by external stakeholders (agencies, investors, consultants) and may undermine future branding efforts.
- Lack of objectivity: Results are rarely seen as impartial by the team or the board, making them a weak foundation for any meaningful transformation.
Can’t I just run an internal survey and a few interviews?
That’s not the point!
A brand audit is a complex process in which questionnaires and interviews are only one component — specifically, part of the research that gauges the gap between identity and image. These tools alone are not enough.
What matters is how they’re designed, which assumptions underpin them, how the answers are interpreted, and what strategic conclusions are drawn. A poorly worded question can skew the answers. A wrong assumption baked into the questionnaire can send the audit in the wrong direction. A superficial analysis can lead to completely false conclusions.
For a reliable diagnosis you must keep an external, top-down perspective,with objectivity and distance. Experience is what makes the difference: it helps you structure the process properly, ask the right questions, separate truth from noise, and draw the conclusions that really matter.
A brand is not a logo
This distinction is also essential when conducting a brand audit after a rebranding process. The goal is not to check whether the new logo has been properly applied, but to evaluate the extent to which the imagined, documented, designed, and implemented transformation has truly taken place.
In other words, the audit seeks to understand whether real changes have occurred in behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs. Of course, the consistent use of the new visual identity is important — but it represents only a small step in the broader process of brand transformation.
What truly matters are the changes in behavior and values, because these shape how the organization is perceived — both internally and externally. That’s what defines real brand evolution.
It is important to understand that brand identity is a much broader and deeper concept than visual identity.. The visual is simply an expression of the transformation — not the transformation itself.
What happens during a (re)branding process?
- Identity: We define who we are, why we exist, who we exist for, and what value we bring to the market.
- Actions: Everything each individual in the organization does as a result will actively contribute to building the brand image.
- Expression: The actions will build a system — a shared expression of the vision.
- Experience: Ultimately, what matters is the experience lived by the audience, which is directly influenced by the previous three stages.
What our brand audit entails – Toud
Our brand audit conducted after a rebranding includes 2 main stages and covers 4 essential components:
- Brand identity analysis – We evaluate the rebranding process: how it was organized, what method was used to achieve the results, how relevant these results are, as well as the proposed transformation plan and how it was implemented. If there was no clear plan, we analyze the specific actions taken – this part corresponds to step 1 above.
- Brand positioning analysis – We will analyze the brand’s positioning, evaluating to what extent the elements of the brand identity make it distinct and strong in the competitive landscape (SWOT analysis).
- Visual identity and communication analysis – We will evaluate the visual identity and how the organization communicates in its main channels, to understand the consistency and relevance of the message.
- Evaluation of real transformation – We assess to what extent the intended transformation has actually occurred — through internal and external interviews, internal surveys, and direct observation (Stages 2 and 3) — as well as how that transformation is perceived externally (Stage 4).
Brand audit with a team of professionals
It is the only way to obtain objective, well-founded conclusions that can support strategic decisions with major impact on the brand — and, by extension, the entire business.