BRAND AUDIT

Sophisticated brand audits are carried out by the likes of Interbrand and Brand Finance. They aim to measure brand strength based on the drivers of demand that lead to the purchase of a product as well as the anticipated future brand revenue and profits. These brand audits seek to put a dollar value on a brand as well as show its strength.

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Many companies want a brand audit that simply shows its strengths and weaknesses. Here there are four important things to think about:

 

1.   Awareness and usage: A strong brand achieves high scores on the components of the AIDA model - awareness, interest, desire and action. These measures would be assessed by market research for brands in the competing sector. Awareness and usage are important measures of brand strength but on their own they are not enough. It is possible to have a well known brand that is failing because it is suffering quality problems or because a competitor's product is seen to be much better.

 

2.   Brand position: A strong brand should stand for something. It should have values that make it distinct from other brands. It should have "brand essence". For this take a look at the Bullseye for brand positioning. The strength of a brand position can be assessed by testing word associations with the brand and assessing to what extent it is differentiated from other brands in the market.

 

3.   Brand delivery: A definition of a brand is "a promise delivered". The brand delivery strength is measured by asking customers who use the brand, their satisfaction with it on various dimensions and also their likelihood of recommending the brand (a measure of advocacy leading to the Net Promoter Score).

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4.   Internal brand alignment: External measures of brand strength are important. However we shouldn't forget that it is also crucially important that people within the company are aligned to the brand for otherwise they won't ensure its consistency. They also need to be trained and empowered to apply the necessary branding rules.

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The various scores in the four components of the brand health wheel can be added up to produce an overall brand score (where the maximum is 100). The scores shown in the diagram are by way of example.  The awareness and usage score of 75% is an average of the two components of awareness (90%) and consideration (60%).  The brand positioning score of 63% is an average of the value associations and differentiation. (And so on).  The score of 73 in the centre is an average of the four main metrics around the edge. You can see how a brand wheel such as this could be produced for different brands competing in a market to show which is strongest. The scores will indicate what a brand needs to do to improve its position.