Corporate identity, branding, and corporate reputation

Cornelissen, J. (2017). Chapter 5 - Corporate identity, branding, and corporate reputation. Corporate communication: A guide to theory and practice. 5th Ed (pp. 84-106).Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Summary

This chapter summarized the background and frameworks organizations have used to create their organizational reputations and identities. What is made clear is that the strongest companies look internally as well as to external stakeholder to ensure alignment between how a company projects itself to the external world and how it behaves internally. Core values become increasingly important when building a strong brand and reputation. If these values do not translate into authenticity, then brand strength can and will be impacted. At the end of the day, care must be given to crafting an identity that is both authentic, distinctive, and meaningful to stakeholder groups.

Experience

This chapter is very thought provoking for me. My experience is that most of the groups I have been in professionally have not paid much attention to their identity Anand/or put in the effort to really brand themselves. My current organization is the first to hire a communications expert to address those things and it’s fascinating to see how she has started to craft our brand. I think there is more work to do on our values and vision so we can get people to understand and truly live them. I’m not sure I could articulate them right now, but I now have a good reason to ask based on the article.

KEYWORDS: branded identity, corporate brand, corporate identity, corporate personality, culture, design, brand portfolio, symbolism, organizational identity, corporate image, corporate reputation, vision, alignment, monolithic, endorsed brand, vision-culture-image toolkit