Branding guide · Decision tool
Use a brand audit before a redesign, rebrand, campaign, or major page rewrite. The audit should find the real break: recognition, category clarity, proof, trust, search, voice, surface consistency, or offer fit.
preserve · adjust · rebuild · stop
Collect intended rules and actual evidence before recommending change. Every finding should identify the observed gap, business consequence, severity, accountable owner, and smallest corrective decision.
| Audit field | Evidence to capture | Decision test | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strategy | Current audiences, buying situations, category frame, position, promise, proof, architecture, and tradeoffs. | Can teams explain and apply the same choices? | Confirmed rule, unresolved choice, or contradiction with an owner. |
| Verbal system | Names, headlines, claims, voice, terminology, sales language, support language, and machine summaries. | Does language communicate the intended choice accurately and consistently? | Keep, clarify, substantiate, retire, or govern each pattern. |
| Visual system | Marks, color, type, imagery, motion, packaging, interface, environment, files, and accessibility. | Are assets recognizable, usable, reproducible, and correctly applied? | Asset-level repair list separated from strategy findings. |
| Customer surfaces | Search, web, product, sales, onboarding, service, billing, support, retail, partners, and exit experiences. | Does the delivered experience support or contradict the promise? | Prioritized touchpoint gaps with consequence and owner. |
| Perception and behavior | Buyer language, recall, recognition, associations, objections, lost reasons, repeat behavior, and search demand. | Do intended meaning and observed response align? | Evidence limits, baseline, and questions requiring new research. |
| Governance | Decision rights, approvals, asset location, training, exceptions, version history, measurement, and review cadence. | Can the organization keep a corrected system coherent? | Control changes, accountable roles, deadlines, and follow-up check. |
Fictional exercise. This shows how one finding becomes a bounded repair; it is not a client case or a claimed result.
| Observation | Consequence | Action | Close when |
|---|---|---|---|
| A product page says delivery takes two days; its shipping policy says five to seven days. | The buyer receives conflicting delivery expectations. | The operations owner confirms the actual service, then the page owner updates both claims from that source. | The two surfaces state the same supported delivery promise and the dated source is retained. |
An audit register connecting each observed gap to evidence, consequence and action.
These findings provide context for the choices above. Their original dates and scope remain visible; they are not measurements of your business.
Follow-up questions and the limits of the method.
Collect the current strategy, guidelines, asset locations, offers, channel inventory, performance baselines, customer research, sales and support patterns, previous change records, and known constraints. Label missing evidence instead of filling gaps with assumptions.
Score the size of the gap, buyer or business consequence, frequency, reach, compliance or trust risk, dependency, effort, and reversibility. A visible design inconsistency may rank below a quiet promise or ownership failure.
Use existing customer and prospect evidence whenever available. If the decision depends on recognition, meaning, trust, or choice and no reliable evidence exists, the audit should recommend focused research rather than treating internal opinion as perception.
Yes, if it separates evidence collection from self-approval, includes cross-functional surfaces, records uncertainties, and gives contested findings independent review. Familiarity can hide contradictions that an outside observer notices quickly.
Include the evidence register, severity and consequence, preserved equity, decision by finding, owner, dependency, due date, baseline, and verification method. A redesign concept is not a substitute for this control record.
If a name, color, mark, message, voice, or page is starting to affect sales or trust, get the public-facing decision checked before rollout makes it harder to change.