Corporate identity and branding

In a world that continuously evolves, in which globalization and competition amongst brands is exacerbated, companies feel the need to communicate their identity in a distinct way, so that they can stand out from competition and their differences are immediately recognized. They have to communicate their competitive advantage in a clear and unequivocal manner, so that consumers are able to grasp the value they are trying to sell to them.

Brands also need to constantly evolve and adapt to their target and to the different touch points that grow with the experience they offer to customers. Rapid technological advancements bring new challenges to the brand, but also new opportunities and new touch points that will be leveraged as entry points for selling to target individuals.

It is important to distinguish between different kinds of brands. Here is a list of the main brand types as proposed by Carmi in his 2009 book Branding. Una visione design oriented:

• Corporate brand where the brand identifies an entire company, a group, an institution or an organization.

• Individual brand identifies only a single product

• Family brand used to identify multiple products that fulfill similar needs

• Umbrella brand in use when needing to cluster products that could be very different from one another but that nevertheless generate from the same unique promise of specific use of the product.

In order for a brand to be successful, recognizable and stand out from the crowd, it needs to have a brand identity. An identity, in branding terminology, refers to the external expression of a brand. It encompasses everything, from naming to visual elements, emotions that it conveys, up to acoustic presence and sensorial stimuli. ¹

Corporate identity appears to be the combination of how a brand is communicated to the market: its naming, colors, tone of voice, graphic organization and music.

We are now going to analyze branding as a holistic practice that includes both visual and auditory (music) branding. The following definitions and processes are somewhat similar to all the branding areas, they might differ in some specific connotation, but the overall structure also applies to music branding. Therefore, here’s the definition of branding from Designing Brand Identity: An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team:

“Branding is a disciplined process used to build awareness, attract new customers, and extend customer loyalty. Positioning a brand to be irreplaceable requires a daily desire to be the best. To be successful, brand builders need to stick to the basics, stay calm on the roller coaster of relentless change, and seize every opportunity to be the brand of choice.”²

How does a brand come to life? What are the processes that brought us the beloved brands we all know and recognize nowadays? Are there different kinds of branding?

The process of branding is very broad and it can be very demanding from an organizational and financial perspective. When starting a project of Corporate Design, designers should always connect and coordinate with the Design Strategy project.

In fact, strategists have the responsibility of creating and supervising a method, an algorithm of communication of the brand, while Corporate Design would be just one output of the algorithm that takes care of how the brand is communicated to the world. There are also a series of different branding strategies. Based on what a brand is supposed to do, who identifies with the brand, how it behaves and so forth, Wheeler defines different types of branding:

Co-branding:

Partnering with another brand to achieve reach

Digital branding:

Web, social media, search engine optimization, driving commerce on the web

Personal branding:

The way an individual builds a reputation

Cause branding:

Aligning a brand with a charitable cause; or corporate social responsibility

Country branding:

Efforts to attract tourists and businesses

There are also multiple theories on how to deploy the branding process. I am going to review two already-existing frameworks that cover the entirety of the process.

The first framework ³ states that the Corporate Identity process is articulated in five different phases:

Analysis and strategic development

The first phase has the objective of identifying the main traits of the brand, its values, its equity. The output of this phase will highlight each and every potential value and competitive advantage of the brand in order for the team to understand why it is different from the rest of competition. This phase is characterized by stakeholder interviews, and strategic internal ideations in order to analyze all of the different attributes of the brand the team is about to build and work on.

Meta-project and research

In this phase the team lays down the foundation of the project. As meta-project means “the design of the design project”, the team will be thinking of structuring their ideas assisted by in-field and online research sessions. The main output of this phase should include concepts that define the area of interest in which the project is situated, benchmark of competitor brands and conceptual references of the product or service you want your brand to reflect.

Creative development of the corporate identity

The third phase focuses on the creation of the corporate identity. Here the team will first embark in creative explorations, thanks to the use of mood boards and other sort of design tools that can aid in conveying the message, values and attributes of the brand to the team. After creating a mockup of the corporate identity it would be useful to test the samples with the reference target and then iterate on the feedback provided from the user tested. Focus group or other interview methodologies can be used at this stage.

Development and creation of corporate

Phase four begins when the corporate identity is “frozen”. Once the design has been chosen, it can be applied to multiple touchpoints. The objective of the phase is to ensure flexibility and scalability to the corporate brand while maintaining the maximum control and coordination of all its expressions.

Manage and control corporate brand assets

Lastly, this phase has the goal to develop and maintain a pool of tools that provide guidance in the use of the brand and its correct implementation in all of the different touchpoints. Usually these tools are collected into the brand guidelines manual, online brand knowledge platform and/or other digital tools for collecting and categorizing brand assets. Brand knowledge tools contribute to the correct communication and comprehension of brand values in all business units.

The second framework⁴ essentially uses the same principles of the previously analyzed one but with small differences.

In this model research and strategy are basically swapped. The team would start by doing research on a specific topic to then turn to clarifying the strategy behind the creation of the brand identity. The last three steps follow the same logic of the previous model. But with different naming conventions.

Although the branding practice is very much well-defined nowadays and has become a standard for corporations and companies around the world, it might be useful to remind the reader of how branding was born.

Before the 20th Century there was no such thing as a holistic corporate identity project. Products and services were being advertised through paper via images that could have resembled logos and text. But it wasn’t until 1907 with Peter Beherens and AEG that Corporate identity began to develop. From there on prominent companies in Europe and then in the United States followed suit: Olivetti, IBM, Shell, BMW are just some of the names of big corporations that adopted the standard of branding early on in the history of their products.