ISSUE 04: Audit before you edit

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Welcome to the 738th day of January.

The ‘this is my year ‘energy is fading fast and everyone’s quietly eyeing an early exit from their dry/sugar-free/no-buy Jan.

We’re over it. Or at least let me tell you about someone who is very clearly over it - a woman I had a prospecting call with this week.

Let’s just say it was less than ideal.

Instagram tells me Jessica is Gen Z’s new Karen, so let’s call her Jessica. She found me via LinkedIn and reached out to organise a chat. She referenced a couple of the case studies she saw on my website that she ‘liked the logos of’ (this should have been red flag no.1 for me, but I digress).

She had been running a jewellery brand for around five years. There’d been early success, but things had started to stall. Sales had plateaued, traffic and conversions were down, enquiries for bespoke had dried up, and competition in the category was starting to hit closer to home. Her confidence had taken a hit.

The doctor will see you now

These are undoubtedly real symptoms. The kind you don’t ignore. But her conclusion? She needed a new logo and website. That’s a bit like walking into a doctor’s office with a headache and asking for a lobotomy.

I suggested that while a visual identity refresh might be part of the answer, jumping straight to execution without clarity on her business, audience, positioning, or the wider cultural and market context would be guesswork at best. Subjectively chosen instead of grounded and informed.

And potentially a total waste of her time and money.

A few questions in, it became clear those foundations weren’t really in place. I apologised and let her know that I only provide visual identity services when I can be sure I am working from a solid strategy, and I suggested her investment would be better spent on strategy development before touching design. Sound, rational advice? I thought so.

Jessica was pissed.

And I get it. She saw it as an upsell rather than an honest steer in a direction that would serve her better. Long story short, the conversation ended soon thereafter.

Here’s the thing. Jessica isn’t wrong for wanting a tangible fix. A new logo feels like progress. A website refresh feels like action. When you’re watching your business stall in real time, doing something feels better than standing still.

But she skipped the diagnostic. Many founders do. They jump straight to the treatment without understanding what’s actually broken. And because brand work sits at the intersection of strategy, design, messaging, and marketing, it’s easy to misdiagnose which part needs attention.

Audit > Edit

Before you jump to what you think needs a change and spend money solving the wrong problem, run yourself through this audit.

In 15 questions or less, it’ll show you where the cracks actually are, who you need to hire to help fill them, and most importantly, give you well-placed confidence in your next steps.

Part 01: Positioning & Strategy

1. Can you finish this sentence in under 20 words? We are the only [product/service] for [specific type of person] who wants to [address specific problem] because [reason only we can solve it].”

If you’re humming and hawing or your answer could describe three other brands in your category, your positioning is the problem. You need strategy before you touch anything else.

2. Who are you absolutely not for? Who would be a terrible fit for your brand? If your answer is “everyone could use this,” you haven’t made a real choice. Brands that try to be something for everyone end up meaning nothing to anyone. Don’t be afraid to weed out your Jessicas.

3. If your brand disappeared tomorrow, what would your best customers actually miss? Not what you hope they’d say. What would they actually say? If you don’t know, or if the answer is “nothing, they’d just buy from someone else,” you have a positioning problem, not a design problem.

4. What belief does your brand holds that your competitors don’t? Not a feature. Not a benefit. A belief. One you’re willing to hold even when it means profits are at stake. When all the fintech bros started wearing Patagonia fleece vests en masse, branded with their corporate logos, Patagonia closed off its corporate sales to organisations it viewed as “ecologically damaging”. You don’t need to set out to single-handedly solve the climate crisis/global conflict/world hunger/wealth inequality - but if you don’t stand for something beyond making money, customers are not going to part with theirs.

Part 02: Audience & Market Clarity

5. Describe your ideal client or customer in painful, specific detail. Not demographics. Psychographics. What do they care about? What are they tired of? What do they read, follow, buy? Audiences are not monolithic. If your answer is vague or sounds like a persona template from 2015, you don’t know your audience well enough to market to them effectively.

6. What has changed about your audience in the last two years? Are they in a different life stage? Do they have different priorities? Are they spending differently? Culture shifts fast, and if you’re marketing to the customer you had three years ago, you’re already behind.

7. Who is your real competition? Not who you think you’re competing with. Who is actually winning your customer’s attention and money? For a jewellery brand, it might not be other jewellers, it might be experience spending, or saving for travel, or a shift toward minimal accessorising. If you don’t know what you’re actually up against, you will miss the mark every time.

Part 03: Messaging & Communication

8. Read your website homepage, social media bios, and about page out loud. Do they tell the same story? Use the same tone? Reflect the same priorities? If they feel like they were written by different people with different ideas about what your brand is, you have a messaging problem.

9. Does your brand sound like you, or like a brand trying to sound like a brand? If you’re using words like “curated,” “elevated,” “thoughtfully crafted,” or “intentional” without saying anything specific, you’re hiding behind industry language instead of having a point of view. Strip out the filler. What’s left?

10. Can someone understand what you do and why it matters in under 10 seconds? Look at your homepage hero section or your Instagram grid. If someone has never heard of you, can they immediately grasp what you offer and whether it’s for them? If not, that’s clarity and messaging work, which comes before design.

Part 04: Visual Identity & Brand Expression

11. Remove your logo from everything. Is your brand still recognisable? Look at your photography style, colour palette, typography, the way you style product shots or flatlays. If you stripped the logo, would someone still know it’s you? If not, your visual identity isn’t doing its job.

12. Does your visual identity still reflect who you are now? Or is it a relic of who you were three years ago when you quickly pulled together a brand on Canva? If your business has matured, you’ve done the positioning work above, but your visuals are not aligned, the disconnect will make you look less credible than you are.

Part 05: Experience & Execution

13. Walk through your customer journey as if you’ve never heard of your brand. Google yourself. Land on your website. Browse. Add something to cart. Read the confirmation email. What’s the experience? Is it seamless and on-brand, or does it feel disjointed and generic? Are there friction points that make someone second-guess the purchase? This is where execution gaps live, and they’re not about your logo at all.

14. What do your customers actually say about you? Pull up reviews, DMs, testimonials, survey responses. What language do they use? What do they love? What do they complain about? If there’s a gap between what you think you’re known for and what customers actually value, that’s a strategy and messaging issue, not a visual one.

15. Be honest: what’s the real reason you want to change your visual identity? Is it because your positioning is unclear and you’re hoping a new look will fix it? Is it because you’re bored? Is it because you’re comparing yourself to a competitor who just rebranded? Or is it because your visual identity genuinely no longer represents the business you’ve built? The answer will tell you whether you need strategy, design, or just a friendly reminder that the grass isn’t always greener.

What This Audit Actually Tells You

If most of your weak spots landed in Positioning & Strategy or Audience & Market Clarity, you need a brand strategist. Full stop. Design won’t fix a confused foundation.

If your issues are in Messaging & Communication, you may need a content strategist or copywriter who understands brand voice - potentially in combination with brand strategy work.

If you’re solid on positioning and messaging but your Visual Identity feels off or inconsistent, now you can talk to a design agency.

And if everything upstream is fine but your Experience & Execution is clunky, you might just need a UX audit, a better website developer, or tighter operational systems.

Jessica wanted a logo because a logo is concrete. But a logo won’t fix a brand that doesn’t know what it stands for or who it’s for. Start with the foundation. The aesthetics can wait.

Until next week,
Hilary