Corporate Branding – Ultimate Guide

What is corporate branding?

Branding intended for corporations means individualising one’s business, uncovering its unique selling characteristics, values and setting into motion a strategy that facilitates the company’s growth. Instead of focusing on one or a group of products, the mission of such a revamp is forming the image of the entire organisation.

For different companies the development of the corporate brand can be very purposive – from non-profits firms to manufacturers and providers of services. The results of implementation of the characterising strategy influences visibility, credibility and recognition that is really crucial for every company, no matter if it’s a veteran in the industry of a recently founded start-up.

Branding services are usually provided by innovative agencies that possess comprehensive knowledge of the market, decent creative writing skills, designing proficiency and excellent communication capabilities.

What is the importance of branding for corporates?

Despite the fact that every business is unlike any other and has its own story to tell, all of them face some similar challenges in the form of winning people’s hearts and staying relevant in the timeless perspective. Here’s when branding comes in handy to polish the gem. Let’s see the ways in which corporate revamping creates new horizons and why it’s vital:

Unseal hidden potential. There are many ways business performances can be improved and, definitely, corporate branding is one of the most important and effective ones and it lies in forming a brand personality, individualising it on the market, setting a strategy into the motion. Every company can have some special characteristics that differentiate it from the competitors’, yet to unearth this potential, there should be some work.

Just pretend how little we could have known about Unilever, Nestle or many other companies if they wouldn’t have cared about their brands. First of all, it would be really very difficult to reach the globe in the way they do and build the reputation that guides people in shops to buy exactly their products instead of giving the chance to those who didn’t give enough attention to their image.

Ensuring consistency. Your messaging and visuals should match and be recognisable on every platform they’re presented. Having very bright imagery while sticking to an emotionless tone of voice won’t be memorable enough for customers. Reshaping visual and verbal identities, choosing a certain personality that suits your business the most and following guidelines will help customers form an impression about your brand.

Qualified brand design experts are able to uncover the main values of your firm and convey it through words and designs so it will be authentic and true as well as understandable for people making their choices, removing all odds that keep your business out of the spotlight.

Break new ground of trustworthiness. Putting some effort in packaging but ignoring the revamp of your entire firm, might be a way of doing things, yet there’s always a risk just to move in circles. Some corporate branding examples, very well-known companies that gained worldwide recognition, used to struggle with differentiation themselves and were taken as mediocre companies before they took care of their image.

Namely, Salesforce, a provider of CRM solutions, had weak brand representation that didn’t display all the unique characteristics that they possessed and it led to misunderstanding its core. Yet, conducting rebranding and sticking to an easy formula that lies in their tagline “No Software”, made them appealing. Right messages help form the image of your company and make it reliable, capable of dealing with the stated problems in people’s eyes.

Draw talents to your business. Every possible breakthrough is backed up by talented specialists and attracting knowledgeable and experienced people with a knack for coming up with innovative solutions is a must have. Having established a good image is like possessing a magnet for those who want to prove themselves in the work field, as well as ignoring it lowers the possibilities of catching the interest of those who make waves in the industry.

That’s how developers dream about working for Google or content-creators would love to join Netflix. Without a well curated corporate strategy, achieving such goals as it least could be called troublesome.

Securing cumulative effect. What is a corporate brand’s biggest advantage in the matter of efficiency? Through the implementation of the big idea, standing behind your business, caring for all the details – communication, colours, fonts, taglines without forgetting products look excelling, your company’s success will be cumulative.

With every new fulfilment and noticeable advancement, all your great deals will boost your brand reputation, its performance, awareness and loyalty. So with every following novelty, the success of your offering will cultivate the indicators of the entire company, ensuring aligning one thriving product with the producer and emergence of trust credit to your future goods and services.

How to make a strong corporate brand?

Empowering a brand with tools that can help it strike gold requires a complex approach, with incorporations of several key strategies that close the issues inside and outside of the company. It’s the entire roadmap of decisions that must be made in order to raise recognition, attract new audiences and turn them into loyal customers. Let’s see the tips to think up:

Tip no. 1: Determine whose needs your business is intended to satisfy

Implementation of any corporate branding ideas should be considered with the full focus on the people that will invest their time and money into your offerings. Thinking that your business can correspond to the needs of every group of people, you might fail with building trust and loyalty. Jessica Walsh once said: “If a brand doesn’t have any haters, it means that nobody truly loves it”. So, that’s what you need – to identify the category or people that will love your brand.

Tip no. 2: Take care of those who enable your success

If your employees are not pleased with their workplace, the outflow of personnel is not under your control and your business isn’t a desirable company to apply for a job position, it will be very difficult to climb the ladder of success and gain recognition. An undoubtedly powerful brand whose authority isn’t questioned, won’t neglect the inner processes.

Tip no. 3: Giving a special thought to establishing credibility

Everyone from Socrates and Epictetus to Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos spoke about reputation. One of the main goals of branding for corporates is to settle a good image of a company and prepare the communication framework to act according to some standards. Ensuring that your business is trustworthy and sustainability is important no matter whether you centre your efforts on customers or other companies.

Tip no. 4: Secure emotional ties

What does your brand mean for people? When their things are worn out, do they approach your shops again and once for a better version? What sentiments do they have toward your company? There is nothing worse than indifference, since with time people will just forget about your business. Throughout the revamping process, inventive managers identify the brand persona, its characteristics and what emotions it evokes – inspiration, amusement or awe.

Tip no. 5: Heed to distinctiveness

You’ll surely be able to do some sales if you just copy the features of another brand, but it’s impossible to become the other Nike, Mars or Sony, copying their style and unique characteristics. Corporate branding definition doesn’t mean repeating the success of someone else but establishing an exclusive way of your business development, so it will grow gradually and substantially.

Tip no. 6: Prioritise purpose

Forming messaging, choosing what will lead your company, giving a heed to the missions your firm has in order to push your brand beyond the image of profit-making business is one of the clues. The effectiveness of implementing the purpose-driven strategy proved by a number of companies, following this idea. Apart from making balanced decisions for the sake of impressing the target audience, it facilitates strengthening the company’s reputation.

Tip no. 7: Ensure consistency

Mismatching the colours of your visual identity, choosing the fonts that don’t align with your ideas, different key elements for every platform your brand presented on and nonconformity of your messaging and tone of voice will be perceived by people. Even without professional skills, most customers feel when something looks odd and there is a big possibility that they just pass by what you offer just because your assets arouse unfavourable emotions.

Key elements of corporates branding

Brand shaping offerings embrace much more points that people usually imagine, visually and verbally leaving no stone unturned so your customer will see your brand in the needed light. Glance at the components that together strengthen businesses and work as assets:

• Logo – you can often hear that brand isn’t about the logo, yet it doesn’t mean that we need to overlook it. Being one of the symbols customers see first approaching your goods and services, it shouldn’t be only appealing but applicable and memorable.

  There are many ways a proper logo can be created – a separate image that represents the idea, the name of the brand that is painted according to the image or combination of these elements;

• Naming – the value of a proper name is compared to the logo’s, since buying products, people voice their choice. As for b2b corporate branding or B2C, it must be easy to read – the more it looks like a password, the worse it is for keeping in mind.

  It’s also vital to think up what is important for your customers and what will get more attention on the market. Sometimes personal things work, like Mars, which was named after the founder Franklin Clarence Mars and the same with this company’s product – Sneakers got its name after Mars’ beloved horse. Honouring some essential moments of your life through the naming might not always benefit your business if it doesn’t resonate with your audience;

• Messaging and communication strategy – no corporate brands that want to be thriving can do without a good verbal identity that helps make clear the company’s intentions, values and promises. Most of the things we know about brands, we have been told. Brand Consulting can help in making difficult decisions.

  The verbal identity captures more than just one apt word and naming. It’s an entire brand presentation that was put into words. A minimal set of it can include taglines, mottos and tone of voice but an advanced package encompasses the aspects like frameworks for messaging, a captivating storytelling to engage with people, articles or even a guidance for suitable copywriting style to follow the main idea and comprehensively narrated it;

• Visual identity elements – the visuals that represent a brand aren’t limited to one logo but includes a wide range of components that form your business image. They cover fonts, colour palette, special style pictures that serve for recognition and help more creatively place the elements on different platforms and ensure its consistency.

  Additionally, photos can be requested that go well with the general mood and be used to set the perception;

• Strategy and positioning – the most important but the most complicated when it comes to assessment, activities related to the strategy and positioning. Sometimes visuals and verbal messaging, even made with the special attention might not lead to the results you expect because of misunderstanding the position your company has in the mind of people and failing with guessing what truly will be to your audience’s liking. Establishing a proper strategy roadmap without a corporate branding consultant can be a difficult undertaking and ignoring the market insights, longevity of trends, their alignment with your business’s mission and vision will surely turn this success achievement into games with luck;

• Business collateral – to ensure that every tiny detail in your business is recruited to shape a positive image, you can consider applying for merchandise designs package. The assets of this form will influence your partners’ good attitude towards your business as well as your employees’.

  The merchandise consists of special marks on paper, notebooks, badges, envelopes, bags, visit cards and even clocks, cups and clothes;

• Web development and social media materials – this offering is not always embodied in corporate branding services provided by innovative agencies, yet we couldn’t help but enlist it in this section, since most brands to be prosperous and up-to-date, especially if they want to operate more than just in one city, need to have appropriate online presence.

A complete web presentation encompasses both web development and web design, content creation – articles and illustrations, testing and preparation material needed for social media – Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and many others, depending on where you want to promote your business in the future. However, there’s always a choice to decide on one line of actions – establishing social media or creating a website.

Powerful corporate branding examples

We’ve outlined a bunch of matters related to revamping business, stating how important and beneficial it is. Now, let’s proceed to the examples of the companies that have really gone through significant changes, care about their reputation and truly thoughtfully attitude to the market and its laws:

Intel

On their website you’ll find a page that is entirely dedicated to exploring their brand, with assets listing. During the whole existence, Intel has implemented a bunch of different strategies to enhance their brand by use of sonic branding, collaborations with giants such Microsoft and Apple. The most remarkable thing about their branding was the campaign “Intel inside” that helped them spread awareness about the company.

The campaign meant that computer manufacturers would put a sticker to let buyers know that devices are powered by Intel. Their wise brand policy secures the position of innovators that has been continuing since 1968, the year of the firm’s foundation. Through the strong positioning, market strategy and creative ways of adaptability, Intel successfully remains a groundbreaker with a few decades of experience and the reputation of the inventor of the freshest novelties.

Disney

It would be difficult to find someone who has never heard about Disney. Their corporate branding design is remarkable, a true classic of creativeness. The company possesses strong characteristics of “magician” brand personality that is exemplary in the industry. With captivating, craving imagination imagery, and their quintessential slogan “Where dreams come true”, Disney provides far more than just products and services.

The most fascinating detail about their company is that Disney came up with incredible ways of brand experience. Offered miracles can be felt in their amusement parks, which have become famous tourist destinations in different countries. Another applause they deserve for their unthinkable global reach with geographic differentiation.

IKEA

Corporate branding meaning of IKEA’s assets embraces the ideas of accessibility, reliability and inclusivity. While their traits suit the “Everyman” brand personality the most, IKEA is much more than just this image, since they offer a bit of innovation, care and magic with their products. The communication style is informal and is opposite to luxury, providing simple and stylish solutions.

Their slogan “To create a better everyday life for the many people” and their logo that consists of the company’s name and two colours – yellow and blue, representing the Swedish flag, has been staying almost unchanged for decades. In 2019 there was a slight change, directed on digitalisation, but the main elements have been changed only a little.

Danone

Being guided by the idea “One planet. One health”, that is used also as their tagline, Danone sticks to their primary values to improve health through the food they produce. Danone was founded in 1919 by Isaac Carasso, who named the company after his son Daniel, which is pronounced in another way in Catalon.

There are many products under the company’s label, some of them have distinctive look, hardly connected to the maternal firm while others are sold under this name and its success showcases to us that Danone is definitely one of the most prominent corporate brands. This thought is proved by statistics which state that the company is the largest corporation related to dairy products globally.

Amazon

With the slogan “Get big fast”, Amazon comprehensively follows the standards of convenience and high speed. One of the details that’s considered as the core of their brand strategy is focusing on clients entirely. Amongst their big deeds from the very beginning of the business establishment was giving the opportunity to customers to leave reviews on the products they bought.

The logo of the company is simple in its look yet complex when it comes to what stands behind it – it’s a smile that incorporates a lot of the meanings, from their dedication to do their job satisfyingly to their orientation towards customers’ feelings. Amazon deeply cares about services they provide, ensuring the distinctive yet recognisable image of all their deliverables – Prime Video, Amazon Kindle, Amazon Web Services and, of course, Amazon.com.

Does your corporation need to be branded?

The challenge of selecting an appropriate corporate branding agency can seem complicated and even cause worries, but on our website you can find all possible tips about how to find a vendor that will meet all your criteria and will be capable of spotlighting the best of your business.

In order to ease this quest for you, we prepared a few listings of the best innovative agencies with inclusion cities, industries and types of agencies, so you could choose one that suits your purposes. Apart from lists of the companies, we left the answers for the questions that can emerge while deciding on a vendor.

You could also use our calculator to get the information of what changes can be done within your industry and budget, with incorporation of all possible additional services you might want to apply for. So, if you want to turn a new leaf of your business prosperity, there are many ways to take proactive steps right now!