But does it really matter if you find it hard to tell the difference between corporate identity and brand image? Yes, it does! Understanding and applying these essential marketing terms shapes how a brand is visually portrayed, how audiences perceive its messages, and a company’s power in rapidly changing, competitive markets.
To grasp the significance of corporate identity, we will address the most common questions on the subject and then examine three examples from leading experts in global corporate identity.
Key Points
- Corporate identity refers to the way a business presents itself to the public through visual elements, communication, and behavior to create a consistent and recognizable brand personality.
- A strong corporate identity enhances brand recognition, builds trust with audiences, and ensures consistent communication across various platforms.
- To create a corporate identity, businesses must perform a brand audit, refine messaging, develop creative elements, implement strategies, and review periodically for updates.
- Examples of successful corporate identities include Airbnb, Spotify, and Apple, showcasing how consistent visual design and strategic branding drive market relevance and growth.
What is Corporate Identity?
Corporate identity is a term that is often misunderstood in the business world. Many individuals confuse the term with logos or wrongly believe it only pertains to industries like banking, legal, or technology. However, a corporate identity refers to the way a business presents itself to the public. This idea focuses on how internal actions can shape external views and then leveraging this insight to craft a deliberate image. The identity an organization creates for itself includes all elements of its public image, such as:
- Marketing
- Advertising methods
- Packaging for products
- Logos
- Colors
- Uniforms for staff or dress code
Now, all of these visible elements combine to form a clear and recognizable “personality” for the business.
Businesses usually shape their corporate identity around their target audience, as appealing to all types of consumers simultaneously can be difficult. Hence, the development of an identity occurs through three main organizational elements, which are:
- Corporate communication: Corporate communication refers to how a business shares information with its employees, stakeholders, customers, and investors. It includes different business processes like public relations, internal and paid communications, reputation management, and media relations.
- Corporate behavior: A company’s corporate behavior consists of its philosophy and values. Businesses often achieve this by engaging in social responsibility activities.
- Corporate design: Corporate design is the blend of brand elements that distinguishes a company from its competitors and attracts the interest of consumers. It includes different visual components, like logos, style guides, and typography.
What is the Main Purpose of Corporate Identity?
But in the real sense, why should I pay attention to this factor? What is the main purpose that comes with this process? Whats in for my business as I employ them?
You see, when a company’s visual elements are applied correctly and consistently, they combine to form a corporate brand identity that is easily recognizable and memorable by anyone, including your target audience. So I’m quite sure you wouldn’t want to miss that.
A reliable and distinctive brand consistency allows you to have greater control over your crucial brand image. This image, which is of course formed by individual interactions with your company, can be influenced or affected by a strong corporate identity. Additional benefits that a well-developed corporate identity can yield are:
- Expertise: Creating a strong corporate identity demonstrates to consumers that the brand is a reliable industry expert. And in turn lead to greater brand loyalty and, consequently, higher revenue.
- Reliability: Reliability is key for a business, as it helps to build and maintain visual marketing techniques across different platforms like billboards, social media, and commercials.
- Cohesion: Building a strong corporate identity helps maintain consistent communication and brand representation, and in the long run, it will strengthen all corporate representatives engagement with clients and stakeholders uniformly.
How to Create a Corporate Identity
Building a corporate or company identity requires your internal team to align on your brand’s positioning, mission, values, messaging, and personality. Once you have established a solid foundation, you can collaborate with your design team or a corporate identity design company to develop a visual language that embodies your brand.
In fact, there is a lot more to note down on how to successfully create one for your business, so stay with me and let’s go through it:
#1. Perform a brand audit
When it comes to developing a corporate identity, the first step to go about it is to perform a brand audit, which helps to access the brand’s position in the market. This process shows where the organization is doing well and where it can improve even better.
To carry out the process, determine the elements that play a significant role in the brand’s growth and how consumers view your presummed products and services. You will also need to include a detailed examination of competitors’ brand strategies, enabling you to identify:
- Whom you compete with for market share
- How to differentiate the brand
- What strategies to consider
#2. Enhance your messaging statements
The second step to creating a corporate brand identity is by improving on your message statements. Your messaging clearly communicates the brand’s value proposition through purposeful language in advertising content. So identify the fundamental values of the company and connect them to the expectations of its target audience. While at this, make sure to pay close attention to what you provide to the consumer that meets their needs or sets you apart from the competition.
These actions are a key part of developing your corporate identity and serve as the initial step in refining your messaging statements.
#3. Develop your creative elements
We already discussed what your creative elements should look like above; now its time to breathe life into them. Once you have completed your messaging statements, think about the creative elements you want to include with them.
This includes design elements like the logo, fonts, colors, and overall style of your advertising content. It may also encompass elements such as storefront designs, interior arrangements, and employee attire. The creative elements work together to create a unified and steady brand voice that resonates with your target audience and reflects the company’s values. So take each step seriously.
To ensure the brand voice is suitable, it’s quite important to evaluate the traits of the target audience, including their ages, professions, social preferences, and market preferences. By understanding the audience in this manner, you can identify areas where you can connect with or attract your customers.
#4. Put effective strategies into action
There are various business strategies you can use to enhance the brand. For example, you can develop a content marketing strategy that effectively conveys your brand story and highlights your unique value to your target audience.
Engage with your customers using both traditional marketing channels and social media platforms. These measures help align organizational objectives, brand reputation, and marketing activities.
#5. Review and modify
Analysis and modification are continuous processes that may need the brand to adjust to changing consumer preferences and market trends. Due to this change that is bound to happen, it is advisable to regularly assess the business’s performance and its public views to determine the most effective way to showcase the brand. This process helps you make sure that the brand represents the company’s character, values, and expectations.
Practical Examples of Corporate Identity
Let’s quickly look at some of the real-life examples of this corporate identity used by some popular brands recognised worldwide today:
#1. Airbnb
Similar to other tech startups like Google, Amazon, and Apple, Airbnb’s business model has changed over the years, enabling the brand to expand into new markets. Airbnb evolved from a listing site into a significant force in the travel industry and, more recently, became an innovator in the experience economy.
The evolution of this brand has been accompanied by a consistently changing corporate visual identity, particularly highlighted by its rebrand in 2014. Airbnb collaborated with DesignStudio to completely revamp its visual identity in order to convey a new brand image to its expanding audience of travel enthusiasts and hosts.
The outcome was Airbnb’s well-known ‘belong anywhere’ slogan, effectively represented by a new logo design. The updated logo aligned seamlessly with the new brand positioning, featuring a universal ‘A’ that was crafted to overcome language barriers and represent a united community.
With the addition of a more versatile color palette and a set of illustrative, universally recognizable icons, Airbnb’s corporate identity became instantly more modern, international, and approachable.
Since 2014, Airbnb has been enhancing its corporate identity, refining its initial rebrand to suit its evolving platforms and communications. Airbnb is now focusing on experiences in addition to bookings. Their marketing content spans print magazines and social media channels. In a recent blog post, they emphasized the significance of their visual identity, stating that “design principles still guide us every day.”
This is particularly evident in the growth of its 2014 illustrative route and its human-led photography style. Every adjustment or change to its robust company identity enhances Airbnb’s friendly, engaging, enjoyable, and welcoming brand image.
#2. Spotify
Also, Spotify serves as an excellent example of a brand that employs corporate design to position itself in various markets and engage with new audiences.
As it transitions from a music streaming service to a worldwide entertainment brand, the industry disruptor has made several significant visual updates to its corporate brand identity.
In 2015, the company replaced its solid green and white color scheme and logo with a new minimalist logo design, a wide 31 color palette, and gradient-style textures.
The move transformed Spotify into a more dynamic and striking brand, competing directly with traditional entertainment companies in the music industry. By moving away from a strict two-color scheme, the brand was able to create a uniform appearance and atmosphere across its varied content. Regardless of whether it’s a grime artist or a classical performer, Spotify’s communications maintain a consistent style that respects all its artists.
Similar to Airbnb, Spotify highlights that a strong brand is one that evolves and stays current over time. In April 2020, Spotify launched a rebranding campaign that revamped its color palette, adjusted its fonts, and added a new set of animations and transitions to enhance the brand’s visual identity.
#3. Apple
Apple’s exclusivity formula is a critical component of its business identity. Apple’s motto “think different” stresses this formula. It ensures that all of its offerings convey the same corporate message.
This distinguishes it from other companies in the market.
Aside from that, Apple has served the community by giving instructional sessions to over 3.6 million suppliers since 2008. This assists Apple in sustaining a strong company identity through the right application of corporate identity elements.
#4. NatWest
In contrast to our previous brand examples, UK firm NatWest remains solidly in its primary industry of banking. However, when it expanded its offering from physical in-store services to a wide range of digital items, its previous corporate visual identity needed to be refreshed to reflect its new online perspective.
FutureBrand brought the brand image to a new, digitally optimized level with 3D shapes and a multicolored palette, dubbed “Unlocking the power of the individual cube” (a reference to the company’s original, 2D logo).
This logo-inspired approach resulted in more lively, humorous, and colorful brand guidelines, allowing NatWest’s design team to develop on-brand assets that tie together the company’s physical and digital locations.
With challenger brands like Monzo, Starling, and Revolut breaking into the banking scene with fresh, user-friendly, and eye-catching designs, Natwest’s new corporate identity has also helped it stay relevant in an increasingly crowded industry.
#5. Starbucks
Starbucks’ high-quality, premium, and delicious coffee is known all over the world. However, that is not the only reason for the company’s fame. The consistent ambiance created within its stores, the consistent corporate promise, and the consistent brand design are what make it more trustworthy and reputable.
Starbucks takes its social responsibilities extremely seriously. It has assisted farmers, provided work to refugees, and made other endeavors.
As a result, Starbucks has emerged as one of the world’s most relevant coffeehouse brands.
With all these real-life examples I just mentioned, you can easily go through them individually, understand and practice how they handle their corporate identity and witness your brand become very close to success.
Conclusion
A corporate identity provides a company with a distinct business profile and outlines its service standards and working practices. In today’s dynamic market, having a clear and strong corporate identity is essential.
I have stated times without a number of the numerous benefits it attracts while also leaving a lasting impression on others. First, establish a corporate identity before entering the market.
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