CORPORATE BRANDING

The New Global Trend

Anupama & Nizar

“India has the brand capital.It has the intellectual
capital.All we need is a sense of belief in ourselves
that we can turn our natural advantages into the
creation of global brands”.
-DIRUBAI AMBANI
Manual Castells:-

A new economy emerged around the world

Shift in the power away from nations towards

multinational

Partnership with foreign companies

Developing cross –border buyer-supplier relations

Performance of the companies is directly linked

with the strength of their brand name.
Meaning of Corporate Branding

It is not a by-product,ad campaign,logo,or a

slogan
It is the product of millions of experiences that
a company creates

Davis:-
Composite of all the experiences, encounters &
perceptions a customer has with a company.
i.e build trust in the company & not in a
particular product.
Aaker:-
Represent an organization that stands
behinds products in spirit & substance
Reflects its heritage,value, culture, people,&
strategy.
The very essence of a company are value&
priorities;
i.e,innovation,perceived quality,customer
concern
Product Branding vs. Corporate
Branding

Davis:-it strives to build trust in the brand by

allowing the consumer to fit product perception
& brand image into one.

Product branding model clearly delineates

the corporate brand from its range of stand-
alone products.
e.g. Unilever, P&G, CavinKare, Paras etc.

Its main advantage is the easy entry & exit.

It is expensive to build multiple brands &
making it difficult to establish strong linkage
between the corporate entity & its portfolio of
Brands.

Hatch & Schultz, distinguish 6 differences

between product & corporate branding;

 The shift in focus from product to corporation

of the branding effort.
 A different exposure to the organization,which
makes the firms behavior & its interaction with
 society much more visible.

The relation of the brand with all the company

stake holders, not just customers.

The requirement of organization wide support.

The temporal dimension of corporate brands

includes past & future, not just present.

The greater reach of corporate brands than

product brands is that they take on more strategic
importance.
Need for Corporate Branding

Every successful corporate brand has the

capacity to communicate its company’s core
beliefs & attitudes to its target customers.

Strong corporate brands have average 5% higher

Return to their share holders than weak brands.

The founder & Chairman of Sony, late Akio Mori

says that ,the company name is the life of an
Enterprise.
It carries responsibility & guarantees the
quality of the product.
Very appropriate to service industries.
A strong corporate brand commands a
premium price & makes marketing more
efficient.
The world’s No.1 mobile ph manufacturer,
Nokia, has been steadily working on its
corporate brand name & the mgt of
consumers perceptions over the last few years.
Corporate branding
process
 Are built over time
“ corporate branding must reflect the
organizations core values”
3. Discovery process

4. Strategy

5. Communication

6. Management
1.Discovery process

 Understand the prospective audiences

 Company should have a clear idea about

the market
 Leads to the allocation of resources not
just in terms of marketing, but also
interms of mkg, mfg, HR, R&D etc.
Case in point: Philips and acer
computers
- “Let’s make things better”

- broken “made in Taiwan” to become the

world’s third largest manufacturer of PCs

 Careful construction of a strong brand image

helped to succeed even in Japanese market
“aim is to become more consumer-oriented”
audiences??
 Not only external customers but also
internal customers, i.e., employees
 The people of an organization provides
the basis 4 the corporate brand image
Case in point: IBM in E-Business(1997)
 First brought the idea to its internal
customers, educated & trained the
employees on E-Business
 then it went to the outside customers
2.Strategic process
 Develop a strategy to communicate the
vision of the brand
 In the globalize world, the only alternative
to differentiate the company is its brand
case in point: LG Electronics India Pvt.Ltd.
 It was able to compete a nationwide
launch within 5 months
 Others taken 2 years for doing the same

 Others ignored the eastern India

Strategy used: differentiated its products on
the basis of technology
Televisions : Golden Eye
Refrigerators : Preserve Nutrition
Washing machines : Chaos punch Plus Three
 Cricket Game in Televisions in 2003

 Resulted in 15% increase in TV sales

“Building a strong brand equals building a
strong brand experiences”
- Walt Disney
Essentials
- Build a corporate identity

(name, logo, house colors, tagline etc)

- Build a corporate image

(the perception of the public about the

company)
3.Communication process
 Includes understanding the market
leverage that the company has, the
customer base, the opportunities that
exist in the market
 Done by
- advertising
- promotional efforts
- PR brand building
Case in point: Nike and BP
 British Petroleum merged with Amoco

rebranded itself as BP by launching “beyond

petroleum” – campaign
 76% employees were favorable towards the

brand
 90% employees felt that the company is going

in the right path

Nike “Just Do It”

4. Management Process
 Ensures that the experiences get from the
company are consistent with the brand
strategy
 Is both internal and external

 Continuous and should be linked with the

culture
“ Cultural facet provides a link between
brand and fire, particularly when they bear
the same name (IBM, Nestle, Sony etc)
 Management
( Top management(CEO)
CEO BRANDING, Social capital)

Internal Media
(Middle managers, (TV, print, www
Employees ) Surveys)

External
(products-customers,
Geographical spread,
public, govt etc
Case in point: Culture at Pan Public Hotel Group

 President Ichigo Umerhara – corporate brand

champion
Mission: “to take people successfully to places
they have never been before”
 Staff are called as ‘associates’

 “hire on attitudes and train on skills”

 No HR department and they call that as

‘people Innovation’
 Departments

 This has created the culture

Corporate Branding- Indian Scenario.

The ability of Indian companies to prosper

& be competitive internationally has a lot to
do with the home base;

For Indian brands to really make it big

internally, what will be needed is a
leadership that matches international
standards.
Limitations of Corporate
Branding

The corporate-centric model of building brand

has obvious advantages, but it has some
inherent dangers also.

If the brand image is not consistently managed

it may result in the loss of its value.

Wrong strategic decisions will results in

adverse effects on the profitability &
performance of the company.
Conclusion

It should be managed as any other long term

asset.

It is a strong tool for realigning a corporate

strategy.

As Klenin suggests,” brand builders are the

primary producers in our so-called knowledge
economy”.

Its role never disappears,& remains the

standard which the company upholds.
A well-drafted & professionally managed
corporate branding strategy & the
implementation plan can help to drive
profitability & share holder value aligning the
interest of the stakeholders, the mgt & the
company.
For queries please contact
Professor and Head, Dept. of Mgt studies
NMCC Marthandam
Tamil Nadu

E-mail: samluther2002@yahoo.com