INTERNAL BRAND IMPLEMENTATION
Brand Audit and Brand Camp
D Tosti
Introduction
The purpose of a Brand Audit is to determine what it will take, in behavioral terms, to deliver the
promise made by an external brand image or statement. That is, given a set of guiding principles
derived from the external brand promise, a Brand Audit would ask the following basic questions.
 What behavior will it take from people throughout the organization to make those principles real?
(Brand Character)
 What do people need from leaders and managers to enable them to demonstrate those behaviors?
(Brand Leadership)
In its simplest expression a Brand Audit asks people, “What do you need to do to deliver the brand
experience?” and “What do you need from your boss to enable you to accomplish that delivery?”
The purpose of a Brand Camp is to determine what an individual unit – region, department,
distributorship, etc. – can do to strengthen its ability to deliver the brand promise. A typical Brand
Camp would be centered on the brand promise, and have feedback available about the extent to which
the group currently demonstrates the behavioral practices of the Brand Character. The ‘camp’ might
be conducted in one session, but more often in a series of events, revolving around the following two
issues.
 What can we do to strengthen our ability to deliver the brand promise – by improving our ability
to demonstrate practices that are not currently part of our local/group culture, and/or by making
the most of practices that are strong in the culture?
 Given our knowledge of our local customers and market, what can we do to add value in support
of the brand promise?
Conducting a Brand Audit: Overview
A Brand Audit begins with a set of guiding principles derived from the external brand promise.
Clarifying Brand Character: Given these principles, we choose practices that potentially represent
behaviors that will enable people to create a customer experience that matches the brand promise. We
begin with a large pool of practices, and test them with individuals throughout the organization,
typically beginning at the front-line level. That testing includes gathering information about both of
the following questions:
1. How critical are the practices to delivering the brand promise?
2. To what extent are those practices currently demonstrated in the organization?
The information from this audit, in combination with interview data and input from executive
management is used to create a description of Brand Character.
Clarifying Required Support: The process here is similar to that used to clarify Brand Character, with
the difference that the questions focus on what people need from their leaders. Again, the audit
determines both criticality of the leadership behaviors and the extent to which they are currently
demonstrated in the organization.
While a Brand Audit begins at the front line of the organization, with the people most directly involved
in delivering the customer experience, the Brand Character needs to be an integral part of the
organization as a whole. No matter how hard they try, people cannot deliver the brand experience
unless the behavior of people above them or in other areas of the organization is compatible and
supportive.
The Linking Process: The value of the two questions we posed earlier (What do you need to do to
deliver the promise? What do you need from others in support?) is that we can extend the brand
character ‘discussion’ all the way up the organization, as illustrated below.
Creating the Links
Corporate personnel
Required support
Senior management
Required support
Front-line management
Required support
Front-line personnel
Customer experience
Such a methodology can provide an audit trail for the brand from the boardroom to the customer,
through a series of investigations:
 Given the brand proposition, what must the experience be?
 How can the people at the front line provide that experience?
 In turn, what do they need from their leadership to be able to deliver that experience?
 What does the brand leadership need from senior management and others to be able to provide that
leadership?
 What does senior management need from corporate headquarters to be able to deliver their
portion of the requirements?
In summary, the audit asks, “What do we need to do and what kind of support do we need to do it?”
Outcomes and Benefits of the Brand Audit
1. The use of behavioral practices to define brand values creates increased clarity about how to
ensure delivery of the brand experience. Brand propositions and particularly brand ‘characters’
or brand ‘personalities’ often seem somewhat abstract to those who must implement them. By
translating them into specific practices at the customer interface and in the work setting, they
become much more explicit – and thus easier to deliver and manage.
2. Gathering data across levels helps to integrate the brand effort across the organization, from the
customer interface to executive management.
3. Creation of a pattern of delivery and support at successive levels helps to integrate the brand
into the organizational structure and the day-to-day way of doing business.
4. The brand and the Brand Audit information can be used to provide a framework for integrating
information from a variety of sources – e.g., customer data, management practices, corporate
practices. This can also help to identify additional gaps in support.
5. The sequence of the Brand Audit – working ‘backward’ from people at the customer interface
up through the organization – strengthens the link of the brand effort to the customer.
6. The effort increases motivation by clearly linking working practices to purposes. People can
see the internal Brand Character statements as critical to delivering value to customers – and
thus to overall success for the company and themselves.
7. The Brand Character provides an additional framework for setting priorities and making ‘tradeoffs’ in the organization. When conflicts or dilemmas arise, it can serve as a key input to
deciding among alternative actions or prioritizing efforts.
Conducting a Brand Audit: Process
Step 1: Agree on Brand Promise description with executive management – broad principles and
preliminary descriptions of each.
Step 2: Select behavioral practices that represent the execution of those principles.
Step 3: Gather data through interviews, surveys, and card sorts to clarify both the Brand Character and
Brand Leadership.
Step 4: (Optional) Conduct interviews and focus groups to conduct an organizational scan that will
identify potential systemic supports and obstacles to demonstrating the brand character.
Step 5: Analyze data and prepare report, outlining:
 Data collection methods and sources
 Brand Character and Brand Leadership descriptions
 Other (non-leadership) Issues that may need to be addressed to ensure support of the Brand
Character
 Recommendations for implementing Brand Character and Brand Leadership, and for addressing
key issues, if any
Step 6: Review data collection findings and recommendations with decision makers.
This process involves interim reviews throughout to ensure that all necessary constituencies are
involved, and that the language and design of interim materials, as well as the final Brand Character
and Brand Leadership descriptions reflect the company’s business environment, people, customers,
and strategic direction.
Conducting a Brand Camp: Overview
Brand Camps are working meetings, led by local management, to plan how to most effectively
implement the brand promise within a given area. The meetings are preceded by a Brand Character
survey that gives the group a picture of the extent to which they are currently demonstrating its
practices.
The first task of the meetings is to ensure a common understanding of the brand promise and brand
character, and to provide examples of how others have turned such brand character descriptions into
successful action. Given that, the group can begin to use the survey data to decide how to strengthen
key practices.
The group also focuses on ways to provide customer value that are directly relevant to their
environment, their strengths, and their customer base
Since relatively few managers are experienced in conducting this kind of meeting, and both the Brand
Character and feedback will be relatively new to them, they will need support and preparation. There
are several ways to provide this, including:
 Through management working sessions in which they become familiar with the Brand Character
and Brand Promise, work to strengthen their own Brand Leadership, and have an opportunity to
plan and practice how they will conduct Brand Camps
 Through on-site support from a consultant acting as leader or co-facilitator with the manager in
initial Brand Camps