Week 1
Collect
Everything published in the period, from every channel and every team. The gathering is the slow part and is usually revealing on its own.
Creative direction · Brand audits · Sydney
Brand audits
Nobody inside a brand can see it clearly, because they saw every asset arrive one at a time and each one seemed reasonable. Laying two years of work out together is usually the entire finding.
Grab the snowball. Give it a spin, and watch it grow as you scroll. Just like the evidence.
2years of assets, laid out together
5layers assessed, not just the logo
Evidencenot opinion about taste
Actionableranked by what to fix first
The short answer
What is a brand audit, and what does it find?
A brand audit is a systematic review of everything a business has published, assessed against what the brand is supposed to be. It reports what is consistent, what has drifted, where the drift came from, and what to fix in what order.
What it nearly always finds is not a design problem. It is a decision problem: assets made by different people at different times against rules that were never written down, each reasonable alone and incoherent together.
The value is in the laying out. Most clients need no persuading once they see two years of their own work on one wall. It sits inside our wider creative direction service, and because our Snowball SEO platform automates the search heavy lifting other agencies bill by the hour, more of your budget goes into the assessment.
The difference
What does an audit actually assess?
Five layers, and the answer is rarely uniform. Most brands are consistent on two and drifting badly on three, and knowing which is the point.
What an audit covers
- Every published asset across two years, laid out together rather than sampled
- All five visual layers, not just the marks
- Voice and tone in the writing, which is audited far less often than it should be
- Where each asset came from, since drift is usually traceable to a supplier
What it will not do
- Tell you your brand is fine when it is not
- Judge taste, which is not what consistency means
- Produce a redesign, which is a different job with a different brief
- Blame the people who made the assets, since the rules were usually missing
An audit produces a diagnosis. The treatment is usually visual direction or guidelines.
The cost
What drives the price of a brand audit?
How much you have published and how many channels it spans. The assessment is a fixed piece of thinking; the collection is what scales.
A visual audit
The assets
Everything published across two years, assessed on the five visual layers and ranked by what to fix first.
Visual and verbal
Assets and words
The same, plus voice and tone across the writing, which drifts as much and is audited far less.
Audit and roadmap
With a plan
The findings plus a sequenced plan of what to fix, in what order, and what it will cost, so the report becomes a decision rather than a document.
We quote by volume and channels after a free consult. The audit stands on its own and frequently recommends less work than expected, which we would rather tell you than not.
What moves the number, in order
- How much has been published, which is usually more than anyone remembers
- How many channels and surfaces are in scope
- Whether the writing is audited as well as the visuals
- Whether there are existing guidelines to assess compliance against
- How many suppliers produced the work, since each is a source of drift
- Whether a sequenced roadmap is included
The wall is the deliverable
The most persuasive part of any brand audit is not the report. It is the moment everything is laid out together and somebody says, quietly, that they had not realised.
Nobody inside a brand can see it, because they approved each asset individually and each was defensible. Incoherence is invisible one asset at a time and undeniable all at once.
So we lead with the evidence rather than the analysis, and the conversation that follows is usually shorter and more decisive than the one a written report would have produced.
The scope
What you receive
Evidence first, then findings, then a ranked list of what to do.
The full inventory
Everything published in the period, collected and laid out together, which is often the first time it has existed in one place.
Layer-by-layer findings
How the brand is holding across all five visual layers, with examples of both consistency and drift rather than assertions.
Voice findings
How the writing is holding, where it varies and what that variation seems to correlate with, which is usually the author.
Where drift came from
Traced to suppliers, teams or periods, because knowing the source is what stops it recurring.
A ranked fix list
What to address first, ordered by how visible it is and how cheap it is to correct, rather than alphabetically by element.
A one-page summary
For the people who will not read the full report but who have to approve acting on it.
The return
What should you fix first?
Not everything, and not in the order the report lists it. Two things decide priority: how many people see it, and how cheap it is to change.
Stop the leak before mopping
The instinct after an audit is to fix the existing assets. The better first move is to fix whatever is producing new inconsistent ones, which is usually a template, a supplier brief, or the absence of both.
Otherwise you correct fifty assets over a quarter while sixty new ones arrive against the same missing rules, and the audit gets repeated in two years with the same findings.
So the roadmap always starts with the sources of drift rather than its symptoms, even though the symptoms are what everybody wants to talk about.
The process
How an audit runs
Two to four weeks, most of it collection rather than judgement.
Week 1
Lay it out
All of it together, which is the moment most of the finding happens and most of the persuasion is done.
Week 2
Assess the layers
Five visual layers plus voice, with examples of both consistency and drift attached to each judgement.
Week 2
Trace the drift
Which supplier, team or period each inconsistency came from, since that is what makes the finding actionable.
Week 3
Rank the fixes
By visibility and by cost to change, starting with whatever is producing new inconsistent work.
Week 4
Present
Evidence first, findings second, plan third, with a one-page version for the people who have to approve it.
The brief
What to ask before you commission a brand audit
An audit is only worth buying if it can tell you something you will not like.
Will you show us everything, or a sample?
Everything, laid out. A sampled audit produces opinions; a complete one produces evidence, and evidence is what makes the conversation short.
Does it cover subject matter and voice?
Or only logos and colours? The layers with written rules are rarely the ones drifting, so an audit that stops at the marks will report that things are fine.
Will you trace where drift came from?
Naming the supplier, team or period turns a finding into a fix. Without it you get a list of symptoms and no way to stop them recurring.
What will you tell us to fix first?
A good answer starts with whatever is producing new inconsistent assets, not with correcting the old ones. Mopping before stopping the leak is the most common wasted quarter after an audit.
We are happy to answer all four before you commit. The audit stands on its own, and where the honest recommendation is a smaller piece of work than you expected, we will say so.
Start here
Ready to see it all at once?
Send us access to what you have published in the last two years. The free consult is a working session, not a sales call, and you leave with three things whether or not you book us.
- A first look at your last twenty assets, laid out together
- The layer we think is drifting most, with the evidence for it
- A fixed price for the full audit, with the roadmap costed separately
Good questions
Brand audit FAQs
What is a brand audit?
A systematic review of everything a business has published, assessed against what the brand is supposed to be. It reports what is consistent, what has drifted, where the drift came from, and what to fix in what order.
What do brand audits usually find?
Not a design problem. A decision problem: assets made by different people at different times against rules that were never written down. Each was reasonable on its own, which is exactly why nobody caught it.
How much does a brand audit cost?
We quote by volume and channels. What moves it is how much has been published, how many surfaces are in scope, whether the writing is audited as well as the visuals, and whether a sequenced roadmap is included.
Why can we not do this ourselves?
You can, and the hard part is not expertise, it is collection and detachment. Nobody inside a brand sees it clearly because they approved each asset individually, and incoherence is invisible one asset at a time.
Does an audit include a redesign?
No. It produces a diagnosis and a ranked plan. Whether the treatment is visual direction, guidelines, a system or a redesign is decided from the findings, and the audit deliberately does not presuppose it.
What should we fix first?
Whatever is producing new inconsistent assets: usually a template or the absence of a supplier brief. Correcting existing assets while new ones keep arriving against the same missing rules is the most common wasted quarter after an audit.
Should we audit our writing too?
It drifts as much as the visuals and is audited far less. Voice inconsistency is usually traceable to individual authors, which makes it one of the more fixable findings once it is named.
How often should a brand be audited?
Every two to three years, or after any period with several new suppliers or a change of marketing leadership. Both are reliable predictors of drift, and both are moments when nobody is looking.