Corporate Identity: greater than the sum of its parts.
I’m currently developing a workshop at Synkd on the value of creating a compelling corporate identity for small business growth, so I wanted to share some insights.
Perhaps the most important lesson or takeaway, as mentioned in my previous blog and worth mentioning again here, is that many businesses are still confusing ‘brand’ with their ‘corporate identity’.
I can’t stress enough to businesses and business owners the importance of understanding the differences between a logo, a corporate identity and a brand, and how each works together as part of a brand blueprint for business growth. They are all expressions of the same thing (a core belief or intrinsic value) yet they each play important and different roles to build a perception of your business in your customers’ mind. This perception is key to realising that business growth.
Remember, your customer creates that perception, not you. As businesses it is your role to empower your customers with the tools and framework to create and craft that perception!
If businesses fail to recognise that their corporate identity (i.e. the overall design or ‘look and feel’ of all marketing collateral) is a range of strategic communication tools used to influence and shape perception of the brand, this can seriously impact the appeal and growth of your brand. Its perhaps ironic that failing to appreciate the value that a strategic corporate identity adds to a businesses performance can significantly undermine the perceived value of the brand.
As the saying goes, ‘Brands are often conceived by visionaries, created by customers, grown by ‘raving fans’, but almost always destroyed by brand caretakers’.
With little strategic thought involved in the creative process, and limited consideration for visual consistency across the range of customer touch points, the effectiveness and integrity of your brand is compromised. The result? The overall brand message is disrupted or diluted, the brand experience
dis-connected, and customer trust is lost. Further to this, many small businesses and organisations employ what can only be described as a scatter-gun approach to their corporate identity. A typical business case study goes something like the following: – ‘We need a logo’. Develop, refresh or tweak an existing logo – ‘Yes, we have a brand!’ ‘No, you have a logo.’ Next, add in a business card to help spread the word, then some corporate stationery i.e. a letterhead, an estimate or invoice form etc… for the administration team. Include an email signature for employees to email clients and maybe a pull up banner for those occasional business conferences or public speaking events. Finally, send over an internal ‘values’ poster to pin up in the communal kitchen area to the keep ‘HR’ happy and we’re done?
While this ad hoc approach is understandable, given the limited budgets and time constraints that most businesses encounter, there’s far more value in applying a more strategic, broader and overriding approach to your corporate identity. Savvy business owners know the value and benefit of an effective corporate identity in all areas of the business – both internal and external.
Developing a brand strategy, exploring the purpose and beliefs behind a brand, well before a pencil has even touched the designers’ sketch pad, ensures your corporate identity sends a powerful message and reflects your companies core philosophies – your vision, values and mission. These are elements that most corporate identity projects lack – with the results to reflect it.
A fragmented, scattered or ill-thought out strategy for your corporate identity is highly likely to lose visual consistency or lack an overall design cohesiveness that’s necessary to resonate with your desired customer. A more strategic approach requires each respective touch point within the corporate identity ‘suite’ to be given a considered and consistent message that reinforces your brand message and values. Only when this approach is adopted is the final result well and truly greater than the sum of its parts – and the true value of a corporate identity as a business tool can be seen, felt and appreciated.
Brand is about delivering consistently on a promise, guaranteeing standards and providing certainty in an uncertain world. Your corporate identity visually communicates this promise to your customers across all of your marketing collateral. Winning hearts and minds can be a complex process. The challenges involved underlines the necessity to manage the brand and corporate identity process effectively to ensure the final results elevate the brand to greater heights.
So when you’re ready to invest in your brand and corporate identity I’m here to serve. It starts with you and what you believe in.
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I hope you learned something new, insightful or useful from this blog.
As The Brand Entrepreneur, I believe in helping businesses and savvy entrepreneurs build a ‘brand blueprint’ for business growth. I do this by helping businesses and business owners communicate their ‘Why?’. Successful brands in the future care about customers, not branding. I believe that future is now. I’m passionate about creating brand stories & design assets that help brands get ‘in sync’ and connected to customers.
BE vigilant – Brand New ‘Brand Entrepreneur’ Brand Workshops appearing in 2018!
Jamie Thomas – The Brand Entrepreneur