“All of the great ideas, without action, become stale and useless. The key to turning dreams into reality is action.” - Jim Rohn, American Entrepreneur and Author.
Everything that we know and love started as an idea - potential - but if people like Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn (Internet inventors), Steve Jobs and Bill Gates didn’t act on them, we wouldn’t have a lot of the things we’ve come to know and love. Global connectivity has skyrocketed thanks to great ideas acted upon, and as of April 2024 there were 5.44 billion internet users, with a massive 5.07 billion also being social media users - that’s 62.6 percent of the global population that you can connect with!
That of course means a massive amount of content for the masses to consume, and walking the tightrope between unique yet appealing, loud enough to make a statement but not so much so that you create discomfort, fast-paced but not too fast that you leave your community behind - all while staying authentic - can be daunting and add to the already overwhelming task of starting a business, especially in the art world.
The Importance of Staying Fresh in a Visual Industry
The art world is heavily visual and can have an extremely high standard, and Brand Identity is a critical factor when you’re trying to stand out in the industry. A strong brand can enhance credibility, attract new clients, and encourage loyalty among existing ones. However, maintaining this requires regular evaluation.
As with the human experience, the better you understand who you authentically are, the better you can navigate your surroundings, and this is where a Brand Audit comes into play. A Brand Audit is a comprehensive examination of your brand that is usually done annually, or when you’re at a crucial stage in your journey. It defines your current position in the market, reviews the effectiveness of your key message and how you communicate it, and examines your target audience/s in comparison to competitors and other external factors, which helps you to understand the current perception of your brand and areas for improvement.
Undergoing a Brand Audit at crucial phases of your business development helps maintain alignment of brand elements, provide a clear picture of your brand's strengths and weaknesses, and makes it easier to gauge if it resonates with your target audience's needs and wants. Overall, a handy tool to guide your brand refreshment strategy!
Step 1: Understand the Purpose of a Brand Audit
A Brand Audit serves multiple purposes:
As an example The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York periodically reviews its branding, not only to stay current but to make sure they’re providing what their evolving audiences want. Refreshing their appeal to new and loyal visitors, ensures they remain accessible and relevant, inevitably avoiding wasted time and expenses, while increasing revenue - maintaining their position as a leading institution in the art world.
Step 2: Prepare for the Brand Audit
You need to have a good idea of what you’re hoping to gain out of the process, or you run the risk of wasting time and effort, so set clear objectives before diving into the audit. Identify what you're aiming for, be it enhancing brand consistency, improving audience engagement, or refining your marketing strategies.
Gather all relevant materials and data, including logos, marketing collateral, social media profiles, and website and social media analytics - you will use these as a benchmark - and engage a skilled team of marketing professionals, designers, copywriters, and co-ordinators to run the project. If you don’t have these people in-house, use an art-industry expert agency or consultants. Diverse perspectives will enrich the brand audit process and bring lots of creative ideas to the table, and having people with a versatile range of experiences and backgrounds can promote out-of-the-box thinking. You can add another layer to the diversity of input by asking your audience to share their opinion using polls and other interactive tools on social media platforms.
Step 3: Review Brand Elements
You want each aspect of your brand to be as authentically aligned with your vision, message, and the right audience for you as possible in order to achieve optimum growth, reach, community building, and revenue. According to a study by Lucidpress, consistent branding can increase revenue by up to 33%. That’s a huge increase and shows how important it is to analyze each element of your brand critically.
Ask yourself:
Visual Elements: Are all elements including logo, favicon, and CI, visually appealing and reflective of your brand’s identity?
Use surveys, direct conversations, and customer feedback forms to gather insights from your audience, asking them what they think of your brand elements and what improvements they would suggest. You can also do this through a series of Instagram Stories with polls asking specific questions about your logo, website, and social media content and encouraging followers to share their thoughts and suggestions.
Step 4: Monitor Social Media and Analyse Website Analytics
Social media and website analytics are treasure troves of information. Monitoring social media mentions can reveal public perception, while website analytics can show which pages and content types resonate most with your audience.
Tate Modern effectively uses social media analytics to tailor their content, helping them understand which posts get the most engagement and refine their strategy to better connect with their audience, and it’s a great habit for us all to adopt. It acts as a log, giving you a clear indication on what content is working well and what needs to improve, ultimately maximising your efforts and relationship with your audience.
One of the most helpful tips is to set up Google Analytics4 and regularly document these stats and those available to you on your social media platforms. If you aren’t able to use those yet, other helpful ways can be to post social media polls - they work for most if not all of these steps - or a post on your feed asking followers to comment on what types of content they find most engaging, and use to adjust your content strategy.
Step 5: Compare with Competitors
Benchmarking your brand against competitors is crucial, but does more than just compare you to them. It helps identify where the differences in your offerings are, better methods of communication with your target market, and gaps in the market that could be an extra source of revenue or audience.
A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) can make it easier to understand your brand’s position relative to competitors, and doing in-depth market research into them can help you understand the different options available to your audience from their perspective.
Do be careful to have respect for your competitors and yourself when doing this part of the audit. Our industry is saturated with more than enough to go around, and we have a better chance of succeeding if we learn from each other rather than try to dismiss or outdo.
Step 6: Develop an Action Plan
Based on your findings, develop a detailed action plan prioritizing the areas of improvement and outlining the specific steps needed to address them. Set measurable goals to track your progress, and consider what tools, processes, and systems can help you get there.
A brand style guide is an excellent tool that can assist with maintaining consistency across all your marketing materials and includes guidelines on logo and graphic element usage, layout, colour palette, typography, and tone of voice. You can share snippets of your proposed brand style guide throughout its development on platforms like Instagram or LinkedIn to gather ongoing feedback, which can help keep you moving in the right direction.
Step 7: Implement and Monitor Changes
Implement the changes outlined in your action plan. Continuously monitor the impact of these changes on your brand’s performance. Use metrics such as audience engagement, website traffic, and sales to measure success.
The Guggenheim Museum periodically updates its branding elements to stay current and engaging. They monitor the impact of these changes to ensure their brand remains strong and relevant.
Schedule regular reviews to assess the effectiveness of your changes. Be prepared to make adjustments as needed based on new data and feedback. After implementing changes, run a social media campaign asking followers for their opinions on the new look or feel of your brand. Use Instagram Stories, Twitter polls, and Facebook posts to gather comprehensive feedback.
KEY Questions to Ask During a Brand Audit:
So, how can we help you?
Even with guides like the one we’ve written above, there’s so much to consider that identifying where you should start can still be difficult - but we’ve become familiar with this daunting task and would like to help you.
The Artfundi Journey
The initial Artfundi software was created in 2011 by our Founder/CEO, Tamzin Lovell, as a solution to operational challenges in her Cape Town and London galleries. She later realized how much of a benefit it could be to others in the industry.
Artfundi was founded in 2018 to do just that, and has since worked with a number of clients on various projects, from new launches to full brand re-designs, to audience growth through social media and podcasts. We’ve created and a distinct process that delivers results. Up to now we’ve worked under the radar without advertising, to focus on our existing clients. Soon we will be opening our services up to a wider audience and launching our digital agency - Artfundi Digital.
When working with Artfundi Digital, you get a full programme of done-for-you services.
It starts with CLARITY, our artworks speicalised brand auditing system:
What CLARITY Offers
CLARITY is designed to take you and your business through a comprehensive analysis of your brand's vision, mission, target audience, market position, value proposition, messaging, and other vital areas of focus..
We developed CLARITY because we found existing brand auditing systems didn't fully address the unique needs of the art industry, and often neglected the passion that drives it. CLARITY is different, and so are we. It considers both the tangible and intangible aspects of your business, from technicalities like admin, sales, branding, and marketing, to the emotional elements of vision, inspiration, and personal fulfillment..
How CLARITY Works
The CLARITY process begins with a workshop between you, our strategist, art world expert, and project manager. During this workshop, we guide you through the first phase of the CLARITY document which involves establishing crucial elements of focus, such as your challenges, advantages, inspiration, profit potential, goals, and more. We then articulate your business model, value propositions for each major customer segment, and aligned positioning statements - all put together in a handy snapshot sheet for quick reference!
All of this data gets funneled into an implementation Scope of Work, which is used as a guideline for the rest of the done-for-you services offered in the programme.
Why Choose Artfundi Digital?
CLARITY was designed to fill a gap in the market for a brand audit and strategy system that truly understands the art industry. Its holistic approach considers both the technical and emotional aspects of your business equally - an approach that is carried through Artfundi as a whole.
By choosing Artfundi Digital, you gain an expert partner who will deliver you results guaranteed to grow your business - or your money back.
We're excited to be able to introduce the full suite of done-for-you services offered by Artfundi Digital, so stay tuned for more updates - and if you’d like to enquire about getting started, get in touch!
