Your brand is a major asset - Make sure it stays consistant

A strong brand image is one of every successful company’s major assets – which makes maintaining its consistency across widespread outlets absolutely vital.

Brand Auditing is an established technique, giving senior management the ability to monitor the way in which the brand is being represented throughout the organisation.

It is a process of checking operational compliance of brand facilities, standards, procedures and policies.

The business intelligence and mystery shopping company, Retail Active, is one of the UK’s leading practitioners of brand auditing, with a vast experience of helping to maintain brand consistency for a wide variety of household- name brands.

Managing director, Julian Chamberlain says: “The idea for brand auditing came from the clients themselves. They wanted to ensure a consistent operational standard across multi-unit operations, to deliver flawless execution of the brand.

“Brand auditing creates a regular, structured process to identify compliance and non-compliance of brand essentials.”

This involves visiting entire chains in the space of only a few weeks to give a “State of the Nation” report on the execution of the brand.

It saves hours of wasted management time, resources and overheads and produces web-based data, with photographs, which can be views 24/7.

The brand auditors provide detailed and structured feedback to managers, giving assistance and expert advice, where necessary.

Julian Chamberlain says: “It is an excellent method of protecting capital investments, correcting any non-approved practices and maintaining the fabric of the business.

“However, depending on the brand, it only works effectively as part of an ongoing measurement programme.”

Brand auditing involves a regular monthly or quarterly structured audit operation – which is normally unannounced and which checks compliance against a pre determined and agreed criteria. Each non-compliance is fully recorded and backed up with evidence. It is recorded on a 24/7 reporting system – providing instant visibility of the brand delivery and performance. This approach if frequently used in conjunction with a mystery shopping programme.

Julian Chamberlain says: “Each programme is developed on a bespoke basis, to meet clients specific requirements – but the underlying process remains the same.

“The most common pitfall is to use the brand audit process to penalise unit managers.

“It should really be used in a more strategic way to uplift the performance of the brand, share information on best practice and reward great performance”.