The recognition audit
Every asset you might be recognised by, tested one at a time with your name removed.
What it measures
The list first.
Built from your own archive and from whatever is out in the world. Old packaging, old boards, a delivery vehicle, a uniform, a jingle nobody has used since 2009. You tell us what you think you own. The list is usually longer than the one you would have written.
Then the asking.
A hundred and fifty to two hundred people who buy in your category, recruited to a written screener. Not your customers, and not your staff. Both know the answer, and neither is who you are trying to be recognised by.
Two numbers per asset.
How many people knew it was you. And of everyone who named any business at all, how many named only you.
Then the placing.
Every asset lands in one of four positions. Known and yours alone, which are the ones to build everything on and never touch. Yours but unknown, which are worth investing in. Known but shared with the whole category, where you are decorating a competitor’s shelf as much as your own. And neither, which means new, or finished.
What you hand over
Your archive, in whatever state it is in. Permission to photograph your premises and your packaging. And the list of what you believe you own.
What comes back
The four positions, with everything you own placed in them.
A written list of what must not change. And one finding you did not have before.
The asset you were about to throw away
Every audit names at least one thing that is known and yours alone that somebody had already decided to change.
Occasionally there is nothing in that position, nothing yet strong enough to be worth protecting. That is not a failed audit. It is the most freeing result a business can be given, because it means the room can be redrawn without anybody losing anything, and now that is a fact rather than a hope.
There is no guarantee attached to either outcome, and there will not be one. A guarantee would turn a measurement into a bet on what it finds.
What is in
The asset list, the fieldwork, the four positions, the protected list, and the conversation that goes through it.
What is not
A verdict on your existing design.
We are not measuring whether it is good. We are measuring what people already know, which is a different question and the only one with an answer.
A survey of anything else.
This is a recognition study. It is not a segmentation, not a satisfaction survey, not a brand tracker. Those are a research house’s work and they cost accordingly.
Your own customers’ opinions.
Loyal customers and employees can identify you from almost nothing, which is exactly why they are excluded. Including them would flatter the result and ruin it.
What it costs you that is not money
Access to the cupboard.
The old files, the old boards, the artwork somebody’s cousin drew in 1998. Most of what matters is in a cupboard rather than on a server.
Two or three weeks of calendar.
Most of which is us in the field rather than you in meetings.
A decision about who decides.
One name, agreed at the start. Not because we are difficult about it, but because a project like this with three people able to overrule each other does not finish, and the honest time to discover that is now.
After the audit
The audit ends where it ends. It is a piece of work on its own, and a good number of them should stop there.
If there is more, it comes in three sizes, and you choose after the measurement rather than before it.
Respondents are category buyers recruited to a written screener, excluding customers and employees. Assets are shown de-branded, in isolation, and recall is unprompted. Sample size, field dates and the screener are stated on every report. Method last revised 29 July 2026.