Corporate Branding

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 standalone 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

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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.

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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 

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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 (Middle managers, Employees )

Media (TV, print, www 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: [email protected]