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Marketing Academy · Field Work●Marketing Fundamentals
All projects·From: Branding vs. Identity vs. Logo
MiniAudit· 30 minutes

The Consistency Audit: Does This Brand's Identity Actually Match Its Strategy?

Sea Limited (Shopee, Garena parent)

Objective: Given three touchpoints that use a consistent visual identity but describe the value proposition three different ways, diagnose whether the real problem lives at the logo, identity, or strategy layer.

You're a junior brand associate at Sea Limited, checking Shopee's marketing materials across three touchpoints before a leadership review, to see if the visual identity is actually reinforcing one clear brand promise.

The logo and colors are applied correctly everywhere. The words describing what the brand stands for are not consistent. Find out which layer, logo, identity, or strategy, actually needs fixing.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Docs
FreeWrite the diagnosis memo

Free, no account friction, easy to share for leadership review

The process

1 step

Step 01 of 01

Distinguishing a logo problem from a brand identity problem from a brand strategy problem

The lesson's diagnostic point is that customers who don't convert or remember you rarely have a logo problem, they usually have a brand clarity problem about what the company stands for.

Homepage: 'Shop it, love it, all in one app.' Ad creative: 'Southeast Asia's most trusted marketplace.' Support chat greeting: 'Fast, affordable shopping for everyone.' The logo and colors are identical and correct across all three. Is this a logo problem, an identity problem, or a strategy problem?

Google Docs— Review the 3 touchpoint lines given above and write the diagnosis.

Procedure

  1. List what's consistent across the 3 touchpoints (logo, colors, fonts)
  2. List what's inconsistent (the actual words used to describe the value proposition)
  3. Apply the test: is the mark consistent? Is the visual system consistent? Is the story consistent?
  4. Name which single layer needs the fix, and write one unified value-proposition sentence
Sample output
Touchpoint audit (excerpt)
Logo/colors: consistent across all 3
Story: 3 different value propositions, none contradict each other, but none reinforce each other either
Diagnosis: strategy problem, not a visual one

Healthy

The diagnosis correctly names this a strategy problem, even though the visual identity is applied perfectly.

Unhealthy

The diagnosis recommends 'refresh the logo' or 'update the color palette' to fix a wording inconsistency.

What this means

A logo and identity system can be applied perfectly while the underlying brand strategy, what the company actually says it stands for, is still undefined or inconsistent.

So what do I do about it?

SymptomActionEffort
Team keeps proposing visual refreshes for what is actually a messaging problemRun the blank-page test: describe the brand's promise in 3 sentences without using the logo, colors, or product features30 min
YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Final deliverable

A one-page diagnosis memo naming which of the 3 layers, logo, identity, or strategy, actually needs the fix, with a corrected one-sentence value proposition.

See a reference example
Sample output
Coinbase touchpoint diagnosis (excerpt)

STRATEGY PROBLEM CONFIRMED
Homepage: 'The easiest way to buy crypto.'
App Store listing: 'Your gateway to the open financial system.'
Support greeting: 'Buy, sell, and manage digital currency safely.'
RECOMMENDATION: unify around one sentence, 'Coinbase makes crypto trustworthy enough for anyone to use.' No logo or color change needed.

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

  • Correctly identifies the strategy layer as the actual problem, not logo or identity
  • Writes one unified value-proposition sentence
  • Does not recommend any visual change