Guide
Give the analysis what a crawl cannot reach
The material archive is where you add the brand's own material, so the next analysis becomes sharper.
Why
From online analysis to full brand analysis
A brand does not live on a website alone. It lives on the shop front, the signage, the delivery van, the uniform, the packaging and the exhibition stand. None of that can be reached by a crawl, however good it is. With the material archive, the brand analysis is no longer an online analysis. It is a full brand analysis.
Social media and news can rarely be crawled
Crawling LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook, along with many news outlets, is blocked, because the platforms systematically protect everything that is not logged in, and because articles often sit behind paywalls. Web search falls back on the search engine's indexed copy, which can be years old: in July 2026 a user was given a wrong follower count and a wording that had not been on the profile since 2024. For ordinary websites this is a minor problem. For social media it is the challenge. The material archive solves it.
How it works
1
Choose first what you are adding
The archive has three entrances: The brand in the world (material the recipient actually meets: social media, ads, physical material, press and pages from a blocked website), The brand's foundation (logo, colours, typography and brand book) and Documentation (brand tracking, ESG reports and annual reports - measurements and reports about the company). The choice decides which types you can pick, and how the material is used in the analysis.
2
Choose a brand and add images
Drag them into the field, click to choose, or paste a screenshot with Ctrl/Cmd+V. The material belongs to the brand you have selected.
3
Set material type and date
The type decides how the material is read. The date decides whether it still counts as current. Both apply to every file in the upload.
4
Write a note and a link as context
Both are optional and set per file. The note is a short line of up to 100 characters about where or why the material was made. The link documents where it came from. Both can be edited later.
5
The material is read
Each image is read for both text and visual expression, and the result is stored.
6
The next analysis uses it
The material feeds seven of the fifteen sections: source coverage, brand assets, semiotics, distinctive assets, positioning, employer brand and channel execution. It is deliberately kept out of the sections that establish the brand's identity, so a piece of material is never measured against an identity it helped define. With at least 4 images in the archive (social media, ads, physical material), your imagery style is also assessed across them - with open sourcing in the report.
Seven material types
The type decides how the material is read
A post, an ad, a shop front, an article and a website page are five different kinds of evidence, and they are not judged the same way. On top of those come the two types under The brand's foundation, which are not evidence at all, but your own starting point - and the three types under Documentation, which are measurements and reports about the company and are always used with explicit sourcing.
Social media
Organic posts in the brand's own voice. Not ads, but what you write and share yourselves. Here text and image count equally, because both are your choice.
Ad or campaign
Paid material, online and offline: print, poster, outdoor and banners. Judged as advertising, where a sharp, single-minded message is a strength and not a lack of nuance.
Physical material
Shop front, signage, packaging, vehicle wrap, uniform and exhibition stand. Judged mainly on visual and sensory expression. Sparse text is entirely normal here.
Article or coverage
Written by others about you, including behind paywalls. Read as the outside world's picture of the brand, never as your own voice. A journalist's wording does not count as your tone of voice.
Website
Pages from your own website, saved as PDF or screenshot, when the site cannot be read automatically. Read as your own published voice, where text and visual expression count equally. Cookie banners and navigation are left out.
Logo, colours and typography
The individual elements under The brand's foundation: logo file (SVG or image), colour codes, typefaces. An uploaded logo file feeds directly into the analysis's visual verification: colours and logo form are verified from your own file, and the report declares this openly in the data foundation. If you have a full rulebook, it belongs under the next type.
Brand book, CVI or design manual
The full rulebook for how the brand should look and sound. Used as the yardstick your actual expression is measured against – it is never scored as market evidence. The manual's explicitly stated colour codes and front pages also feed into the analysis's visual verification as the brand's own declaration: if the website confirms a declared colour, it stands with high certainty, and if manual and website diverge, the gap is reported openly as a finding. Does not cover strategy documents.
Brand tracking or awareness measurement
Your own measurements of awareness, image and preference, typically from a research agency. The figures are used with explicit sourcing in the analysis of mental availability and audience - they can document what a web analysis can otherwise only hypothesise. Absence of a measurement never lowers anything.
ESG or responsibility report
Documented action behind the values: initiatives, stated targets and governance. Used with sourcing in the assessment of position and responsibility - never as market evidence of how the brand is expressed.
Annual report or strategy document
Strategic direction, ambitions and market position in the company's own words and figures. Upload the brand-relevant pages - accounting detail is skipped. Used with sourcing, never as market evidence.
Social posts
Both what the post says and what it shows
An organic social-media post carries brand signal in two places at once: in the text and in the visual — photo, colours, style, mood. Both are stored. Take only one, and you throw away half, because you chose both yourselves. The platform's own buttons are deliberately left out, because "Like" and "Share" say nothing about the brand. But the engagement figures are kept: impressions, comments, shares and follower counts are the market's response to the brand.
Blocked website
When the website cannot be read: add it yourself
Some websites reject all automated reading, typically because of bot protection. The analysis still runs, but without the site's content. You can fix that yourself: you are not a robot, so the pages open normally for you. Save the most important pages as PDF in your browser and add them to the archive, and they will feed the next analysis.
The easiest way is to do it directly in the analysis dialog: when you start an analysis of a blocked site, the dialog shows two fields where the PDF pages (field A) and the front-page source files (field B) are saved to the archive right away.
How to save a page as PDF
Open the page in your browser and press Ctrl+P (Mac: Cmd+P). Choose "Save as PDF" as the printer and save the file. One PDF per page gives the most precise reading, and each file can be up to 20 MB. Do NOT use the browser's "Save page as": it saves a folder with hundreds of technical files, which the archive cannot use.
These pages should be included, in order of priority
- The front page
- About or history
- Press room, brand portal or logo and design pages, if they exist
- Team or leadership
- Values, mission or responsibility
- Careers or culture
- Optionally an audience page plus one product page and one news item or case
The front page plus four to six subpages is a good frame. The list mirrors the same prioritisation the analysis itself uses when it selects pages on an open site. Follow it rather than picking the best-looking pages, and the basis becomes comparable to an ordinary reading. The careers page is the one most people forget, and it is the only source for the employer brand section.
How to add the pages to the archive
Choose the entrance The brand in the world and the type Website: the pages are the brand's actual, published communication and are treated as evidence, not as a rulebook. Set the date to the day you saved the pages, put the page's address in the link field and write a short note, e.g. "front page". The data basis in the report will still honestly show that the website could not be read automatically, but the content now feeds the analysis.
Want logo and colours verified too?
The PDFs cover the text, but visual verification (logo, colours, typography) needs the page's raw building blocks. Save the front page once more with "Save page as → Webpage, complete" (instead of Ctrl+P). Then choose the saved folder (the one ending in "_files") in the "Front-page source files" panel, and add the HTML file saved next to it with the "Add HTML file" button — it improves logo and imagery detection. You can also drag file and folder in together. Only HTML, CSS and image files are sent on, and the analysis then runs its normal visual verification on the files. The report shows that the basis was supplied by you. The "Webpage, complete" feature exists in Chrome, Edge, Vivaldi, Brave and Firefox; Safari saves a web archive instead, which cannot be used here.
Advice
Getting the most out of an upload
Add material as you go
The archive improves the more of the brand it covers. Add new material as it appears, rather than saving it up for one big session. That way the analysis always has the freshest picture to work from.
Choose representatively, not just the best
The analysis judges the quality of the material, not merely that it exists. If it is generic or incoherent, that counts against the brand, exactly as it would in reality. And because people naturally upload their best-looking work, the archive is read as the brand's strongest material: if even that is average, it weighs more heavily than a random selection would. So add what shows the brand day to day.
Write a note on what you add
The archive grows month by month, and a year from now it will no longer be obvious what a single image was, or why it is there. A short note keeps the material understandable for you later and for colleagues who were not around when it was made. It also travels into the analysis as context from you.
Keep material from the same period together
The date is set for the whole upload. If something is from the spring and something from last week, run two rounds, so both get the right date.
Expect about 20 seconds per image
Ten images take around three minutes. Files are read one at a time on purpose, because the server does not have the memory to read them in parallel. Keep the tab open.
Be aware of
Sharing
The archive is shared across the organisation
Material belongs to the brand, not the person. If a colleague adds posts, they feed your analyses too. That is why every card shows who added it and when. Shared material that changes everyone's results must not be invisible.
Timing
Material works forward, not backward
It feeds the next analysis. Analyses already completed do not change, because a finished analysis is a snapshot of what was known at the time.
The date
More important than it looks
The date decides whether the material still counts as current. Social posts never show a real date, only "4d" or "2 weeks ago", and that kind of stamp becomes wrong the moment it is stored. That is why we ask. Give it honestly: old material presented as new is precisely the mistake this feature exists to prevent.
Evidence
Evidence of something, never of absence
The analysis uses the archive to confirm what the brand does and expresses. It never concludes that something is missing because it is not in the archive. An archive is always a selection.
Three entrances
Evidence is scored, the foundation is the yardstick, documentation is sourced
The three entrances are treated fundamentally differently. The brand in the world is evidence: it is scored as the recipient meets it. The brand's foundation is never scored as market evidence - it is used as the yardstick your actual expression is measured against. Documentation (tracking, ESG, annual report) is always used with explicit sourcing: a tracking measurement can document awareness and perception with your own figures, but your own accounts never become evidence of how the brand is expressed. Neither of the latter two can score the brand up on its own: the analysis still measures what the world actually meets.
The note
Brief context, not a description
For each item you can write a note of up to 100 characters about where or why it was made. We read the content ourselves, so the note should not repeat what the material says or shows. It travels into the analysis as context stated by you, not as the brand's own words.
The link
Stored, but not fetched
You can note a link for each item. It is stored as documentation of where the material came from. We do not try to fetch the page, since that is exactly what cannot be done on social media.
Corrections
The note and the link can be edited later
The pencil icon on the card reopens both fields, so you can fix a typo, add a link you only track down later, or remove what you wrote. The correction feeds the next analysis, not the ones already completed. Type and date cannot be changed, because they decide whether the material still counts as current. If they are wrong, delete the entry and add the material again.
Tidying
Archive rather than delete
Archiving puts material away without removing it, and can be undone. Deleting is permanent and removes the raw file from storage too.
Not covered
What is deliberately left out
Strategy documents, brand tracking and ESG reports are included today through their own entrance, Documentation: they are always used with explicit sourcing ("according to your own measurement from ...") and never as market evidence of how the brand is expressed. Brand books, CVI and design manuals belong under The brand's foundation and serve as the yardstick. The principle is unchanged: the brand's own ideals and own accounts must never become evidence in the sections of the analysis they ought to be measured against.