mykdBrand operations and design mykd.co.uk

Brand System Pulse

Most organisations can commission a great brand. Few can operationalise one. Twelve questions on whether yours still holds when AI produces most of your client-facing material.

12Questions
7Domains
4Minutes

The same seven domains used in the paid diagnostic and the audit.

What the reading gives you

  1. AI tools are already producing your client documents.

    You find out whether your brand rules are written for a tool to follow or only for a person to read.

    You can fix the rules while AI use is still growing, and before an off-brand document reaches a client.

  2. Someone will ask who controls what leaves the building.

    You see what stops an off-system document reaching a client today, and whether that depends on one person noticing.

    You have an answer ready when your managing partner asks.

  3. Your design team spends its week correcting other people’s work.

    You see a stage for each of seven domains, and which one is holding the others back.

    You get a place to start that you can defend, with the cost set out in terms your own team will recognise.

  4. You need to know whether this is worth an hour of your time.

    You see where you sit on a four stage scale, with your foundations and your operational layer counted separately.

    It takes four minutes and commits you to nothing. If your system already works, the reading says so and tells you to stop there.

See where your brand system stands.

What a brand system is

Your brand system is everything between the approved identity and the document that reaches a client. The Pulse looks at seven parts of it. Select one to see what it covers.

    Why consistency matters

    A client cannot try a professional services firm before they buy. Every document they receive is evidence for or against what they expect. Consistency turns that material into recognition, and recognition is what puts a firm on the shortlist.

    1. 95%

      of the people receiving your material today are not buying. Companies change their principal law firm or bank roughly once every five years, so most of what you send is building a memory for a decision that comes later.

      Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, the 95-5 rule
    2. 32

      percentage points faster revenue growth for companies in the top quartile of the McKinsey Design Index. The quartiles below the top showed little difference between them. The market paid only for design that stood out.

      McKinsey, The Business Value of Design, 2018
    3. 90%

      of business buyers choose a supplier that was already on their shortlist before the buying process began. A firm that is not known before the brief arrives is rarely the one chosen.

      Bain & Company and Google, survey of 1,208 US business buyers, Harvard Business Review, 2022
    Inconsistency reads as uncertainty.

    Material that is easier to process is judged more favourably and as more truthful. A client who sees four versions of your firm has less reason to trust any of them.

    Processing fluency research, cognitive psychology

    Your firm now produces more with AI, and the review layer has not grown.

    Your identity only works if it looks the same every time. The Pulse shows whether your system can hold that when a tool is doing the producing.

    Guideline machine-readability
    Question 1 of 12

    Your reading is ready.

    Your reading and the seven domain breakdown are on the next screen. Three fields and it is yours.

    Add your name.
    Add your organisation.
    Check the email address.

    What the gaps are costing

      Where I would start

        What this reading cannot see

        The diagnostic is the same seven domains with evidence behind them. Sixty minutes, live, asking for the last time each thing happened rather than what usually happens, with your own template open. A report follows within 24 hours, including where I would start on each domain. £950 plus VAT, credited in full against the audit fee if you commission one within 90 days.