As idioms go, it’s a good one to live by.

I certainly like it more than ‘Ignorance is Bliss.’ There aren’t many aspects of life where I buy into this.

In fact, I can’t think of many situations that aren’t ultimately improved by honesty. Is it always easy? Of course not, but improvement can’t happen without a full grasp of the facts.

One place where this is true is brand.

If we have the responsibility of being the stewards of a brand, we owe it to everyone invested in the success of that brand (employees, suppliers, the communities it serves) to understand how that brand is received by the world. This starts with research and insight but takes in every aspect of communication along the way.

There are plenty of markers of a business’ underlying brand health, including:

1. How often do we get referrals?
2. Can we charge a premium?
3. Are we truly thought leaders?

Did you try to answer those questions as you read them? Good news, you’re on your way to learning the truth about your brand.

Over the past few years SLG has been working to understand the key elements that make up healthy brands and have been developing proprietary brand development processes.

These processes dictate our approach and we’ve found that they work really well. So well, in fact, that we want to share them with as many construction marketers as possible, with the aim of making the sector a better one for brand maturity.

This is our TruthScore calculator.

A simple set of twelve questions that will give you a clearer insight into the fundamentals that your brand should have in place. Within two minutes you can have a clear checklist of the areas of your brand that need attention, those you’re excelling in, and that may help inform your approach to brand.

We hope the timing of this will prove to be perfect for you. All the indicators in the construction sector and wider economy say that things are set to really start to move – and we all know that the businesses that focus on investment in brand and marketing are always the ones that ‘roar out of recession’ fastest.

So, prepare for enlightenment as you uncover the truth about your brand, setting you on your path to improvement to capitalise on market growth and keep pace with you competitors.