Relationship Between Corporate And Corporate Identity

Corporate Identity and its Linkages with the Corporate Brand

Introduction

Corporate Communication is gaining immense importance in today’s changing times. In the digital age, the biggest challenge for an organization is to remain consistent across traditional as well as new media. Corporate identity management imparts consistency to an organization’s messaging and gives it a personality (emotional, friendly, reliable, trustworthy, simple etc.). Also, Corporate Brand defines the firm that will deliver and stand behind the offering that the customer will buy and use. The corporate brand has access to organizational as well as product associations and represents the organization that stands behind its products. While corporate identity heavily

Majorly, there have been three key interest areas within this domain that are discussed over many published papers and journals (Van Riel, Ballmer, 1997). The three areas are: Corporate identity as a function of design, corporate identity as a function of integrated marketing communications, and corporate identity as a function of intra-organizational disciplines. These three concepts shall now be discussed in depth.

Corporate Identity: Function of design

In its simplest form, corporate identity is a function of design that includes the name of the organization, its logos, the interior of the buildings, and visual identification such as uniforms of the staff, vehicles and signage. For a long period, graphic designers have remained highly influential been hugely influential in two regards, in that they articulated the basic tenets of corporate identity formation and management and succeeded in keeping the subject on the agenda of senior managers. Currently, symbolism, or design, has assumed a greater role and has moved on from merely increasing organizational visibility, to a more serious position of communicating corporate strategy (Ollins, 1978). There were now three main types of visual identity such as Monolithic (single brand visual), Endorsed (parent brand endorsing a sub-brand) and Branded (a plethora

This can be manifested in an ability to attract and retain customers and employees, achieve strategic alliances, gain the support of financial markets and generate a sense of direction and purpose. Corporate identity is a strategic issue. Corporate identity differs from traditional brand marketing since it is concerned with all of an organization’s stakeholders and the multi-faceted way in which an organization communicates.” (Ballmer, Bernstein, Riel et al. 1997)

Thus, this statement highlights the multidisciplinary nature of the area and its difference from brand management.

Another interesting research that recent academicians have developed is that corporate identity refers to an organization’s unique characteristics which are rooted in the behaviour of the internal stakeholders i.e., the members of the organization. Many scholars thus opine that management of an organization’s identity is a strategic function and it requires a multidisciplinary approach. Also, senior managers can essentially narrow the gap between actual and desired identity through optimally utilizing the corporate identity mix (behaviour, symbolism and