How to Conduct a Communications Audit
by Susan Beversluis
Brands never sleep. Electronically, in print, in person, a
brand is on display 24/7 in an ever-shifting landscape. A
company’s leaders must be constantly alert to identify
challenges and opportunities as they arise and to
ensure that appropriate action is taken.
Although monitoring the brand environment never
leaves the leader’s to-do list, conducting a formal
Communications Audit provides essential insight as to
how your brand’s current efforts are performing
relative to defined criteria and how they can be
improved moving forward. This paper takes you
through the steps of a successful Communications
Audit.
Establish Goals
As a brand leader in your organization, it is your responsibility to ensure that all communication on behalf of your
brand is as clear, as consistent and as focused as it can possibly be. Your territory covers clearly defined items --
proper display of the logo, for example -- as well as critical subjective concerns such as messaging that reflects the
qualities of the brand. [A swimming pool sign, for example, that says, “Guests Must Be at Least 36” Tall to Swim
Here” says something different from a sign that says, “No Children Allowed in Pool.” A relatively minor difference,
but reflective of very different brands.]
First, determine what you want to know:
•
How do you identify best practices? You will want to know what type of response rates, positive feedback and
complaints, FAQs, etc., your brand receives from its constituents and you will want to know how many of each.
•
How do you develop more impactful sales and marketing messaging? You will want to know why maverick
marketing pieces were created in your corporate hinterlands, how effective they are and how you can
incorporate those effective messages into brand-compliant items.
•
How do you create standards for primary and secondary signage? You will want to see everything that’s out
there, how it looks, how it’s made, what it’s made of, what it costs and what types of local sign ordinances you
will run into (and create Plan B standards for those).
•
How do you create paper/print efficiencies? You will want to know how many of each item is printed, how it’s
printed, how many are thrown away, if it’s date-sensitive and what it costs.
•
How do you evaluate the vendors being used? You will want to know what ad agencies, design groups, print
houses, web developers, etc., worked on each item and contact information from each, along with cost/item.
Whatever it is that you want to do, be sure to articulate that goal and to incorporate into the audit exactly what
you will need so you get the answers you need to fulfill it.
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www.jrobinsongroup.com
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Communications Audit vs. Brand Audit
•
A Brand Audit is a highly strategic process in
which you determine or adjust brand identity,
brand positioning, brand filters, key messages,
service promises, etc., based on changing
market conditions.
•
A Communications Audit is a process in which
you review and evaluate your success at
execution and implementation of these
already-defined brand qualities.
Review Brand Standards
Your first task is to establish a basic library of what exists today. This gives you a benchmark from which to grow
your brand, define further standards, inform your employee communications, assist your sales and marketing staff,
communicate more effectively with customers and let your shareholders know more about the brand in which
they’ve invested.
Begin with a review of your Brand Standards Manual.
Take a good look at how you’ve defined and described
your brand. You should have, at minimum:
•
Adjectives that describe your brand and define a
copy tone (a brand filter)
•
Graphic standards that show how to display your
identity (business cards and letterhead, brand
hierarchies, logos, font and image requirements)
•
Production standards that stipulate output
standards (print, video, electronic)
•
Service standards
You should also have a copy of your legal standards for
registration marks and any other specific issues on
which your legal department has given direction.
Create the Audit Package
Once you have established goals and reviewed brand standards, it is time to create your audit package. This package
consists of a list of items you want to audit, an information sheet or questionnaire for each item, a page of FAQs,
and a cover letter or memo from you or a member of the organization’s senior management requesting assistance
and compliance with the audit.
The list of items will be those you specifically want to audit at each location. Start by listing all the ways in which
your brand is referenced. A partial list, for example, could be:
External
•
Signage (storefronts, directional, sales/marketing locations, reception)
•
Vehicles
•
Stores/Sales locations (Sales script, design/decor, presentation materials, multi-media displays, greeters script,
etc.)
•
Product (packaging, directions, guarantees, menus)
•
Product brochures
•
Uniforms and name tags
•
Business cards
•
Letterhead
•
Industry trade shows (booths, giveaways, presentation materials)
•
Telephone scripts (800#s, main reception, hold messaging)
•
Direct Mail
•
DRTV, television ads, video
•
All websites (Do a search, print out home pages of everything you find. You will likely find domains of which
your legal department was unaware!)
•
Electronic communications (e-newsletters to customers and potential customers, Facebook page, Tweets, etc.)
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How Often?
A formal Communications Audit is a relatively
simple and straightforward process but it often
takes much longer than you anticipate because not
only do you conduct a time-consuming audit, but
then you must follow up on everything you found
amiss and make corrections. For this reason, I
recommend that it be done every two years at a
maximum, rather than every year. Of course, if your
brand changes, if you have to rebrand, or if you have
an urgent issue that needs to be resolved (say, a
trademark dispute), exceptions may be made.
•
Merchandise with your logo (chotskies, clothing, notebooks, pens, etc.)
•
Press releases
•
Customer communications (magazines, billing notices, quality assurance letters and complaint follow-up,
partner/alliance mailings)
Internal
•
Investor materials (Don’t forget that investors are also consumers, so your consumer presence is at least as
important to them as the design of your annual report.)
•
E-mail signatures (Take a sample of everyone from CEO to front desk. Are they consistent?)
•
Trade shows for employee recruitment
•
Recruitment ads in print and on the Web
•
Employee training materials (both new employee and ongoing staff training, both in print and on the Web )
•
Employee referral program materials
•
Internal employee newsletters (print and electronic)
•
Faxes and memos (Look at the faxes that no one has yet picked up. Are the headers consistent?)
You do not have to audit every single item, but it is important to go through this exercise of listing everything you
can think of, as it will give you a feel for the breadth and depth of your brand’s presence. You can then pare it down
to the items you specifically want to review.
Note that this list applies to all the locations where you do business; not simply to your corporate office(s). If you
have hundreds of locations, you may need to audit every one of them. Or, you may want to audit only one division
or one function or a representative sample. It all depends on your goals and your resources. (Note above that I said
this is time-consuming!)
Next, prepare your questionnaire. This should be as brief as possible, yet still enable you to capture what you need
to fulfill your goals. Sample questions could include:
•
What is the purpose of this item?
•
How is it used?
•
Where is it used?
•
To whom is it given? Or, by whom is it seen?
•
How many are printed or produced?
•
If it is electronic, how many clicks or page views does it get?
•
Who are the vendors (design, print)?
•
How long has this item been in use?
Now it’s time to prepare an address list of all the departments and/or locations which you intend to audit and
determine who, at each location, will be designated as the point person. You may designate the senior person at
each location, or in each department, or you may designate an administrative leader.
For example, if your locations are retail sales offices, you could designate the manager or assistant manager; if your
locations are hotels or restaurants, you could designate the senior administrator; if your locations are sales offices,
you could designate the sales leader. Whoever is designated, it is important to identify a specific person at each
location who is responsible to collect the information and return it to you.
Next, determine how you want this information. An actual sample of the item is usually preferred, so you can touch
and feel the quality of it. Photographs (especially for signage) or Web links may also be submitted.
If your company has an Intranet, then set up a site for responses to be sent to you electronically, with physical
samples to be sent separately via regular mail. If your company does not have such resources, it is perfectly fine to
conduct the audit completely via regular mail, although you may ask that digital images (of signage, apparel, etc.) be
sent to you via e-mail.
Write a page of FAQs in which you explain the goals of the audit, estimate the amount of time it will take away
from the normal workflow in each location or department, specify a hard deadline (taking into account business
deadlines, staff resources and holidays) and give a phone number to call for any questions.
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Finally, write a short, strong cover memo, requesting assistance and compliance. The CEO or CMO should sign it.
The memo might say that the audit will allow you to identify opportunities, benchmark best practices and reduce
cost, or achieve any other of a number of goals. Reiterate that it is important to send the complete information and
to send it by the deadline indicated.
Conduct Location Audits
A Location Audit is a subset of a Communications Audit and has many of the same components but moves forward
by a different process. For this type of audit, you will need the list of specific items you anticipate reviewing and the
questionnaire, but you will also need to make a personal visit to each location you are auditing.
This is not a “gotcha” game, so make sure that you communicate with the senior person at each location to
schedule a visit which will not interrupt operations and which will give you some time at the end of your review to
sit down with the person to discuss your findings. Send the list of items and the questionnaire in advance so items
can be pulled and available for you to review. A Location Audit, however, will undoubtedly uncover many items of
which you were unaware, or items which you neglected to include in your initial list. For example,:
•
Is the marquee sign viewable from the main highway
or mall location?
•
Is it easy to park and visit the location?
•
Is the exterior well maintained?
•
Is the interior clean?
•
Is music playing on a sound system?
•
How does the location smell? Are there offensive
odors?
•
Is there amateur or unprofessional signage (e.g., the
rest rooms may have a handwritten “out of order”
sign, taped to the door)?
•
Is sales presentation material appropriate, branded
and legal?
•
Do all light bulbs work?
•
Is personal, private customer information in sight on
computer screens?
A Location Audit will be an eye-opener. Look at each of these new encounters as an opportunity to improve your
brand. If a location has done something well, document it, identify it as a best practice in your final report and
incorporate into your brand standards manual.
If a location has done something detrimental to the brand, document it and look at why it was done. If it was simply
carelessness, as, for example the unprofessional rest room sign, bring it to the attention of the senior person and
recommend how to address it.
In some cases, you may find items that individuals have created themselves, never having received brand or legal
approval from your corporate office. In these cases, determine first if there is anything in existence that would
meet the need (many times, field staff are not aware of all the materials available to them). If there is nothing
available that will meet the need, determine how important the need is and consider whether you should create
something standard. Chance are that if one location identifies a need, other locations have that same need.
In all cases, be direct and firm that items which are out-of-brand cannot be used, but be open to new ways of
communicating which are spontaneously created at the location level. Remember that these are the folks who
spend their days with customers. Their ideas matter.
J. Robinson Group
www.jrobinsongroup.com
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Size Doesn’t Matter
In most organizations, most people don’t think
much about brand communication. If you’re Apple
or Starbucks, maybe. But most small and mid-size
companies may have little beyond a logo, business
cards and possibly a tag line. Even with these
minimal elements, however, you will undoubtedly
discover deficiencies. You will certainly find
opportunities to refine and document additional
brand elements.
Compile Results and Follow Up
After you have sent your package out or have visited a representative number of locations, you will start analyzing
and communicating the results of the audit. There are a number of methods you may use, but the method you
select depends on what you want to accomplish and how much detail you want to address.
A quite straightforward method is to triage your work:
•
Start with identifying the major areas of weakness which MUST be addressed immediately. These are the areas
of most impressions, worst impressions or legal threat. For example, egregious trademark issues, wildly out-of-
brand signage, outdated PR boilerplate, poor taste on your website home page, etc.
•
Next, identify those areas in which relatively minor changes could be made with relatively major positive impact on
the business. For example, a change to a website that could use a brand element to drive more sales, a better
explanation or photo on packaging (these often show up as “stickers” which employees make and place on
standard materials), or a universal change in a telephone script or message that better reflects your brand.
•
Finally, the one-offs in which you could create or develop something to address the problem, but it is not widely
seen, not illegal and not highly off-brand.
Create a master spreadsheet file of the various locations or departments, their specific deficiencies and which
“bucket” each deficiency fits into. Then, look at where there are clusters.
Take stock of your resources and plan a schedule to address each issue with your marketing, sales and operations
partners, keeping in focus the relative importance of each task. Your creative staff will most likely be a major player,
so consult with your traffic manager, creative director, designers, copywriters and production manager as to how
these projects will impact their schedules, too.
Communicate Across Your Organization
Throughout the process of the audit, it is important to communicate with others in the organization to let them
know what you are doing and why you are doing it. In the beginning, once you’ve established your goals and
determined the scope of the project, secure time on agendas to explain the project and to convey the benefits to
the organization. You may be able to do this in a group meeting, or you may prefer meeting one-on-one with the
leaders in the areas that will be affected. Let each of them know that you will be as efficient as possible with the
time and resources of their staffs. If appropriate, ask who, within their organization, they would like to be your
liaison.
As the project is launched, include an article about it in
your employee newsletter and offer updates as the
project continues. Make a schedule and proactively call
those who are charged with the work, asking if they
received the materials, if they are encountering
obstacles or if they have questions. These calls may be
delegated, but it is important to follow up with each
person on a regular basis throughout the audit.
When the results of the audit have been compiled,
determine how you want to communicate the findings
to your various constituents. For senior level staff, a
visual presentation in which you document (via images)
the “Top 3” weaknesses and “Top 3” best practices may
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How Extensive?
If you are responsible for several brands, or are
stretched for resources, you may want to plan a
schedule for audits. For example, you may conduct
in-depth audits for some brands and audit only the
items that receive the most impressions for your
subsidiary brands. It’s all about impact, so stay
focused on what items are seen or heard by the
most people.
be the most effective tool. This can be a real attention-getter if you can attach dollars to each and can even be
humorous if you have “before” and “after” photos of some of the deficiencies!
For those at each location or in each department, a “report card” in which you document the deficiencies is a
straightforward way to communicate what needs to be fixed. This is a way also to assign direct responsibility to a
specific person to make changes. For those items which were not in brand, indicate what may be used instead or
state directly that it may not be used. Ask each person to send a confirmation as to what is being done regarding
each deficiency. This could be a simple e-mail (“We have destroyed the remaining out-of-date flyers”) or it could be
an image (“Here is a photo of our new sign”).
Many of the deficiencies will require work from the corporate staff. There could be, for example, the need to
develop new standards for a specific item or process, to create new collateral material for marketing, or to
organize a new product photo shoot.
Use the spreadsheet file you’ve created to check off each deficiency as it is corrected. You will find that it may be
weeks or months -- even a year -- before schedules and budgets are able to remove all deficiencies. By then, it will
almost be time to start preparing for your next Communication Audit!
J. Robinson Group
www.jrobinsongroup.com
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This “Percolations” has taken you through the entire communications audit process, step by step. For assistance at any
stage along the way, contact the brand-building experts at J Robinson Group. We’re ready to help, right from the start.
Susan Beversluis is a consultant with J. Robinson Group, an Orlando-based firm which specializes in helping clients
develop, formalize and execute business strategies. Susan’s extensive business experience includes brand
development, brand strategy and brand execution, for multinational corporations and for entrepreneurial startups
alike. She can be reached at 407-342-7090 or e-mail her at susan@jrobgrp.com