Bring clarity, unearth treasures, get the big picture, and see what your customers see when you perform an organization-wide, non-financial asset audit
Adapted from Powerful Branding, A Guidebook for Clean Energy Companies to Build Thriving Brands
The guidebook contains a deeper dive into an asset audit and ties it into a larger, long-term branding strategy. For more information, you can order the book here:
“You can’t really know where you are going until you know where you have been.”
Maya Angelou
The clean energy industry is forward-looking. It’s part of our ethos to transition to more sustainable energy. It’s one of the things I love about this industry. And yet, sometimes it pays to spend some time looking back. An asset audit is one of those times.
We create materials for our clean energy organizations in response to a specific need, current trends, or part of a strategic push. Then the person on the team who created the materials leaves the company or materials get buried in a random folder. On the other hand, the website still meets company needs so it hasn’t been reviewed in a while for outdated information.
Occasionally it’s a good idea to step back and audit all company assets in order to get a good, holistic picture of what you have available. And by assets, I don’t mean financial assets, but documents, marketing, HR, engineering, content, sales, and other business assets.
Why should you undertake an asset audit?
What do outsiders see?
An audit gives you the opportunity to get a better picture of what the outside world sees when interacting with your organization, without the blinders of a single department’s silo.
Message and branding drift
Even with a style guide, well-defined messaging, and targeted customer profiles, companies experience drift over time. Reviewing all current assets at once allows you to see trends, messages, visuals, etc. as a whole.
Unearth treasures
An asset audit is a good reminder of what your organization currently has at its disposal. In many cases, older materials can be updated and repurposed without a large investment of time and money.
What to include in your review
In short, as much as you can from as many departments as you can in as many formats and media as you can.
How to review items
Gather all materials you’ll be using in your review. Gathering materials beforehand will help you organize and reduce your cognitive load switching between gathering and analyzing. It will also help you keep momentum going instead of breaking up the analysis too much.
Set aside a day to review all items in a short period of time. If a full day isn’t possible, review items as close together as possible. It will help you take your review in as a whole instead of individual materials.
When auditing an asset, consider:
- Logo: Does the item use the current logo? Or in the case of social media, the current icon?
- Colors: Does the item use the company colors consistently?
- Fonts: Does the item use the company fonts consistently?
- Consistency: Are visuals and icons in a consistent style? Does the asset look like it came from your organization?
- Tone: Does the tone match your organization’s overall tone?
- Messaging: What is the main message? It the copy customer-oriented or company-oriented?
- Audience: Does the asset have an identifiable audience? Is that audience a core audience for the company?
- Overall: Is the asset accurate and current?
Make notes as you go along. For example, you may note that a white paper is outdated and should be pulled from the website. Or maybe a slide in a sales deck is exactly what your team needs to illustrate a post on social media.
What to do with an asset audit?
In reviewing all assets at once like this, you’ll see patterns you wouldn’t otherwise note. Messaging patterns, visual patterns, overall brand patterns. For example, you might notice that all departments except sales are consistent visually. That can raise the question of why that department in particular is not consistent. Is there a need that department has that is not met by the current branding?
And what patterns are your customers and stakeholders picking up on? Do your materials look fun and peppy, but read like an NEC code book?
Once you’ve analyzed assets, make a punch list of items to update, items to archive, and assets that will come in handy.
And taking it a step further, consider setting up a consistent filing/folder system in order to more easily access unearthed assets in the future.
As our industry shifts over the next few months with changing incentives, energy costs, and financing structures, taking some time to review assets will save a lot of headaches down the road and give you valuable insights along the way.
If you’re unsure how to get started or simply don’t have the time to dive into an asset audit, reach out to discuss how I can help.