Check whether a client's brand has drifted

A drift check is only as good as its reference point, so Kite first builds a fixed record of the brand as you delivered it. Without that, every finding becomes a debate about what the brand was supposed to be.

Kite takes the brand from the strongest source available for each part of it. A guide you hand over comes first, whether it's a PDF in Google Drive, a Google Doc, or a file you upload. A connected Figma brand library supplies the exact color styles, text styles, and approved components. The client's website fills in the rest: Kite reads the copy on the home page and key pages for voice and messaging, pulls the colors, fonts, logo, and spacing the site uses, and looks at the rendered page for imagery and overall look. When you want the site as it stood at handover rather than as it stands today, Kite reads archived versions of those pages from around that date.

Kite records everything on the client's brand pages in their own Kite team. The visual page covers the palette, typefaces, logo and its variants, spacing, and imagery. The voice page covers how formal the brand is, how long its sentences run, whether it speaks as "we," the two to four messages it keeps coming back to, and the words and moves it never uses. Each value notes where it came from and how Kite read it: stated in the guide, in use on a page, or seen on the rendered page.

When the guide and the handover site disagree, the guide wins, and Kite records the disagreement as a finding instead of quietly picking one. That note is often useful on its own, because it shows where the brand was already inconsistent on the day you handed it over.

If you used Kite on the original project, most of this record already exists. Kite wrote it during the brand work, so the drift check starts from the same pages its own work followed.

Kite finds the new and changed pages by comparing the site over time. It reads archived copies of the client's sitemap from public web archives such as the Wayback Machine and compares them, which shows the pages added or removed since the handover. It does the same with archived versions of the home page, which shows how the main message and design have moved.

Archives don't always have saved copies of a small site. When they don't, Kite tells you, and it works from the live sitemap instead. If you kept a list of the pages you delivered, share it, and Kite compares the live site against that list directly.

Pages are only part of a brand. For social posts, Kite reads public posts where it can reach them, and you can paste or upload the ones it can't, such as a screenshot of the client's last ten Instagram posts or the text of their recent LinkedIn updates. For emails and printed pieces, share the files. Kite reads images, PDFs, and documents people upload, and with Google Drive connected it can search a shared client folder for files that changed after the handover date.

You check whether a website still follows its brand guidelines by comparing each page with the guide on two levels: how it looks and how it reads. Most audits only do the first, but a page can match the palette perfectly and still sound like a different company.

For the visual side, Kite renders each new or changed page, so pages built with JavaScript look the way a visitor sees them. It captures a full-page screenshot and reads the colors and fonts the page actually uses, then compares them with the brand record. That catches the near-miss colors and fallback fonts a quick look misses. Kite also looks at the rendered page the way a designer would: whether the logo has room around it, whether the right version sits on dark backgrounds, and whether the photography matches the imagery the guide describes.

For the written side, Kite reads the page copy against the client's voice page. It quotes each line that breaks a rule, such as a word the brand never uses, a sentence that's far longer or more formal than the brand's usual, or a headline that leads with a message the positioning avoids. It also checks whether the new pages carry the brand's core messages at all. A services page that never mentions the thing the brand wants to be known for has drifted, even if every sentence on it is fine.

Each finding comes with the page, the screenshot or quoted line, and the rule it breaks, so the client's team can see the problem without taking your word for it.

You spot off-brand content on a client's channels by reviewing it against the same brand record you use for the website, and by looking for repeats rather than one-offs. A single post with the wrong font is a slip. Twelve posts in a row with the same new template means someone on the client's team is working from a different source.

Kite reviews the posts, emails, and files you've gathered with the same visual and voice checks it runs on web pages. It reads uploaded images for color, type, and logo use, and it reads the copy for voice. Then it looks across the whole set for patterns: a new color that shows up in most recent graphics, a tagline that replaced the original one, or a tone that changed in the same month a new marketer joined.

When the client's designers work in Figma, Kite can also check the brand library itself. It reads the file's version history to see whether the brand library has changed since the handover. On Figma plans that include library analytics, it reads how often the brand's components and styles are inserted or detached across the team's files. A rising number of detached buttons usually means the team is editing the approved components rather than using them, which is how drift starts in design files before it reaches the website.

Not every change from the guide is a mistake, so Kite sorts its findings by what they probably mean. That sorting decides what you do next, and it's the part of a brand audit that takes the most judgment.

Kite puts each finding into one of three groups:

• One-off slips. A single page or post breaks a rule that the rest of the recent work follows. These are usually fixes the client's team will be glad to hear about.
• Repeated patterns. The same change shows up across many new pieces, such as a new accent color or a warmer, chattier tone. These may be a deliberate choice the client made without telling you, so they belong in a conversation before anyone changes anything.
• Changes to the source. The brand files themselves have moved. The Figma library has a new version, the guide in Google Docs was edited, or the home page message changed. Everything built from the new source will follow it, so Kite flags these first.

Kite also tells you what still holds. Knowing that the logo, typefaces, and core messages survived intact is as useful to a client as the list of what didn't, especially when the conversation is about whether they need a refresh or a full rebrand.

Kite turns the findings into two things: a report you can share with the client and fixes for the pages it can reach.

The report shows each finding with its screenshot or quoted line, the rule it breaks, and the group it belongs to. Kite can publish it as a hosted report page with the screenshots in place, write it as a Google Doc your client can comment on, or save it to a shared Google Drive folder. A hosted report opens from its link without signing in, or you can limit it to people at your company.

For fixes, Kite writes the corrected copy and specifies the visual changes for each slip. If the client has connected their CMS to their Kite team, such as Webflow, Contentful, Sanity, or Storyblok, Kite makes the changes there. On a site Kite built and hosts, it makes them directly. Either way, Kite shows the changes first and publishes them once someone with the authority to approve them does so. If you don't have access to the client's site, the report gives their team ready-to-paste copy and clear instructions instead.

When a repeated pattern turns out to be a decision, Kite updates the brand record so it reflects the brand as it is now. The next check then measures against the new rules, and any later work Kite does for that client follows them too.

A drift check works best as a habit, so Kite can run it on a schedule and compare each round with the one before. Quarterly suits most clients, and a monthly check makes sense for a client that publishes heavily or has just hired a new marketer.

Each scheduled run starts from the same brand record, finds what's new since the last check, and reports only what changed. You see whether last quarter's slips were fixed, whether a pattern has grown, and whether anything new has appeared. If your team uses Slack, the results arrive in the channel you choose. Otherwise, Kite emails them from your team's Kite address to the person who set up the check, and every run also appears as its own conversation in the Kite web app.