Nine questions, about two minutes, and you score them yourself. Open each one, answer it honestly, and count the noes.
Nothing here is a form. We are not collecting your answers and there is no result to email you, which means these have to be questions worth answering on their own.
The nine
1 · Can two people in your company describe what you do in the same sentence?
Ask two of them separately, today, and write down both answers. If the sentences differ in substance rather than in wording, the problem is positioning and no amount of design will fix it. This is the question that most often ends a first call with us saying you need a strategist before you need a studio.
2 · Is there one file that is definitively the logo?
Not a folder. One file, that everyone uses, that nobody has redrawn. If the answer involves the phrase "the one Marketing has", you have a version-control problem wearing a brand problem's clothes, and it is the cheapest thing on this list to fix.
3 · Is there a written rule for what happens when the mark sits on a photograph?
This is the single most common gap. Almost every guideline covers the mark on white and on black, and almost none covers the case that actually arrives every week. If there is no rule, everyone invents one, and after a year you have eleven.
4 · When did somebody last open your guidelines?
If you cannot name the month, they are not guidance, they are an archive. A document people use gets referenced in Slack, argued with, and asked to cover something it does not. Silence is the symptom, not the absence of complaints.
5 · Do your sub-brands look like they belong to you?
Put the parent and every child on one page at the same size. If a stranger cannot group them, you have a brand architecture question, and it is structural — it will not be solved by making the children more colourful.
6 · Does the site look like the brand, or like an interpretation of it?
Usually a tell that the identity and the website were bought from different suppliers, months apart. The join shows most in type sizes, spacing and the buttons — the places the guidelines were vaguest.
7 · Can your team change the website without asking anybody?
Text, images, pages, navigation. If routine changes need a ticket, the site is costing you more than its build price every year, and the cost is invisible because it is paid in people not bothering.
8 · Has anyone checked your colours for contrast?
Not "does it look fine" — checked, with a number. Most brand palettes have one pairing that fails badly, it is usually the accent on white, and it is usually on the button. Fixing it is an afternoon; discovering it in an accessibility audit is a quarter.
9 · If you rebranded tomorrow, would anybody outside notice?
The uncomfortable one. If the honest answer is no, you may not have a brand problem at all — you may have a product, pricing or distribution problem that a rebrand will disguise for about eight months. We would rather you found that out here than in week six.
What the answers tell you
Where you actually are
Eight or nine yeses and your brand is fine. The problem is somewhere else and it is worth finding out where.
What is missing
Noes cluster. Questions 2, 3 and 4 together mean a guidance problem; 1, 5 and 9 mean a positioning one.
What it would take
A guidance problem is weeks. A positioning problem is the whole nine, and pretending otherwise wastes both.
Whether it is us
Some of these answers point at a strategist, a developer or nobody at all. We will say so on the first call.
Counted more noes than you expected?
Send us the three that stung. That is a better first email than a brief.
Let's talk