Branding
What a brand audit actually finds (it is rarely the logo)
Businesses ask for a new identity and usually need three specific fixes. The list that comes back from most audits.
People book a brand audit expecting a verdict on their logo. The logo is almost never the problem. Here is what actually turns up, in roughly the order of how often we find it.
1. The promise is missing
The site describes what the company does but never says who it is for or what changes for them. Visitors cannot self-select, so enquiries arrive from people you cannot help and the ones you can help never write. This is a copy problem that looks like a design problem.
2. The same message in four different tones
The homepage is formal, the LinkedIn is chatty, the proposal PDF is corporate boilerplate, and the invoice email was written in a hurry two years ago. Each is defensible alone; together they read as three different companies. Consistency of tone does more for perceived quality than any redesign.
3. Proof is thin or absent
Claims without evidence. "Trusted by leading brands" with no names. No numbers, no named clients, no before and after. Buyers discount unverifiable claims completely, so the space they occupy is worse than empty.
4. The system does not exist
There is a logo and there is a colour, and everything else is decided fresh each time. Every new asset costs a small design decision, which is why producing anything feels slow and why nothing quite matches.
5. The technical surface undermines the brand
A slow site, a broken mobile menu, an SSL warning, an old year in the footer, a contact form that silently fails. This is not pedantry — it is the single fastest way to lose a buyer who was otherwise convinced. We have found more silently broken contact forms than broken logos, by a wide margin.
6. Search returns nothing useful for your own name
Someone hears about you and searches your name. If the first page is a Facebook profile from 2019 and a directory listing, the referral leaks. Owning your own name in search is the cheapest brand work available.
What a good audit hands you
Not a mood board. A prioritised list with an estimated cost against each item, honest about which ones will move revenue and which are tidiness. If an audit ends with "you need a rebrand" and no list, it was a sales pitch.
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