The brand audit checklist: five places we always look first

Every organisation’s drift is unique, but it almost always surfaces in the same places first. After twenty-five years of audits, we can usually predict where the worst findings will come from before we start. Use this as a self-audit checklist: inspect these five touch points honestly and you will have a fair preview of what a full audit would tell you.

1. Sales presentations. Pull the last ten decks that actually went to clients — not the master template, the decks reps really sent. Check fonts, logo versions, colour values, and whether the claims and pricing are current. These are the most-seen, least-governed documents in any company; if you check nothing else, check these.

2. Email signatures. Ask ten colleagues to screenshot theirs. In our experience ten staff members typically means five or six signature formats, three logo versions and at least one improvised font. Customers see signatures more often than they see your website. 3. Supplier-produced materials. Ask your printer, signage company and promotional-goods vendor to send back the artwork files they currently hold for you. What they have is what they will print next — and it is usually what you sent them years ago.

4. Regional and departmental documents. Request a current proposal, letterhead and internal form from your furthest office or least-marketing-adjacent department. The further from head office — organisationally or geographically — the older the templates. This is where retired logos live forever. 5. Social media profiles. Not the posts — the profiles. Cover images, avatars, bios and pinned content on every platform, including the ones you stopped posting to in 2021. Abandoned profiles still represent you.

If this checklist made you wince, treat that as data: the visible corners of a brand estate are rarely its worst ones, and a full audit covers ten times as much ground with a score attached. Talk to Druff about auditing yours properly — or start with the five checks above and send us what you find.