What's Your Business?

Corporate Design Strategy Concepts and Processes

Claire T. Tomlins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134762118
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

What's Your Business? offers a comprehensive pathway through the subject of corporate design clarifying the relationship between corporate design and corporate strategy and the terms identity, brand, image, communication and reputation. The book explores the impact of developing digital technology on brand creation and positioning in a marketplace, through symbolic and coherent design. A local market trader may buy a van, promote his business on a blackboard and proclaim 'daily special offers'. Corporations use computers, design websites and communicate with global clients through social media. Yet each business started with an idea and developed a distinctive existence. What's Your Business? helps you turn a business idea into reality by establishing its existence, ethos, message and activities. By integrating corporate and design strategy with creative inputs Claire Tomlins illustrates the subject's diversity. She ensures businesses set goals, strategies and plans whilst ensuring they recognise an identity that sparks the corporate design strategy and creative inputs that manifests the company's aesthetic for marketing purposes; including design management, Intellectual Property topics and measures. Business people wishing to know how design can provide added value to their organisation will find this book useful, including where they could contribute. Academic concepts and definitions are updated and explanations are provided to business and design students on where each of their skillsets can contribute to a business.

---

Part I
Ground Base – How Corporate Design Started and Evolved

---

Corporate design concepts and terms progress an idea through to its physical manifestation as a business or other type of organisation. This subject has been in existence since the first commercial barter transaction – a person or organisation with an identity and appearance who communicated what they were selling or doing. Throughout the centuries, monarchies, military, religions and trade guilds have recognised the relevance of corporate design and applied its concepts to the creation and use of regalia, uniforms, structures, stories, behaviour, signs and rituals, and this still continues today worldwide.

It was not until the mid 1950s that the subject gained business and academic recognition. Part I of this book considers the terms in their academic origins. Many books today emphasise the practice and the academic, with academic taking second place. However, unless we take time to observe our surroundings, consider what is happening and argue the relevant pros and cons for progression, mistakes can be made. All societies survive and evolve through a wide range of occurrences and cogitations; it is only by formulating goals, structures, policies and laws that they can survive.

In practice, corporate design is applied to the design of academic institutions, the business environment, towns, cities, countries, continents and everything in between to communicate their ethos, way of working and what they stand for. This is communicated through a multitude of communication channels and media.

Part I starts the book by introducing the subject and its key terms and how they were recognised and developed across traditional print media, TV and film. By starting here, the appearance of digital media becomes part of the subject’s evolution as well as digital media technology itself and where changes in emphasis and definitions of key terms evolved.

Essentially identity and image are inherent in everything, communicating an organisation’s existence to the outside world. This may be a one-man or woman small to medium size enterprise which has a business idea, sets up a stall, prints pamphlets, or designs a one-page website to advertise what it is selling. On the other hand, it could be a global corporation with a clearly defined corporate identity strategy or website branding strategy and complex management systems. Both businesses have an identity and project an image that communicates a message by corporate design approaches.

The following three chapters will explain how the subject of corporate and branding design developed through three interrelated subjects:

Chapter 1 Corporate Identity and Image Development

Chapter 2 Corporate Identity and Branding Debate

Chapter 3 New Media, Communication and Reputation

---

Chapter 1
Corporate Identity and Image Development

---

Where do businesses come from?

Introduction

In this chapter, a potted history of how corporate identity and branding developed during the 1950s, 1970s and 1990s is discussed, establishing the modern business through recognition of the terms identity and image.

Corporate design has been in existence for millennia across the world, as anyone starting an organisation or business communicates an identity and image straight away. Here the journey will start in the 1950s when Pierre Martineau (1958) established the subject and coined the term corporate identity which was portrayed through images. At this time graphic designers were the practitioners of the subject as they synthesised information to create an image and message that a business required. F.H.K. Henrion, a British graphic designer, then produced house styles for the UK and European markets, firmly establishing the subject within the business environment. Further development occurred in the US, reinforcing the term corporate identity through graphic design and visual identity systems (Balmer and Greyser, 2003). Worldwide each country and its organisations have an identity and project an image. This is developed independently according to their geographical location, mores and traditions.

1.1 Early Recognition of Corporate Identity

Walter Marguiles (1977) and Wally Olins (1978) continued advancing the subject during the 1970s, as it gained popularity in the business world. Corporate identity during this period related business image creation as a necessity in establishing and enhancing a company’s reputation in the marketplace. Marguiles (1977) suggested that a positive image, created from the business’s identity and its initial occurrence and evolution over time, impacted its reputation. Hence a company had to manage the way its image was presented to audiences. Communication and reputation will be discussed in Chapter 3.

There is no clear definition of corporate identity. This is reflected in the business world where executives once had little knowledge of the subject, its strategic implication or management (Melewar and Smith, 2003). Even today, when corporate identity or branding is mentioned, most people consider it only to be visual identity. Over time definitions subtly changed as each term’s relevance and purpose became more apparent. Wally Olins has mentioned that it takes time for the corporate identity notion to be accepted and understood. He provided the premise upon which traditional corporate identity is based, which can still be transferred to the digital world and branding, commenting that: ‘[Corporate identity] can project four things: who you are, what you do, how you do it and where you want to go’ (Olins, 1995). The ‘who you are’ and ‘what you do’ determine who the company is, whereas ‘how you do it’ defines what the company is like personally, its personality. This approach served the business requirement on traditional media communication by directing the creation of an identity for the organisation and image to be distributed to the world outside the organisation. Further definitions of corporate identity will be given in Chapter 2. Here it suffices to say that the subject’s late recognition and development encouraged not only isolationism but also creativity and innovation that formed around distinct national and disciplinary schools of thought.

The 1970s and 1980s saw corporate identity, design and public relations merge as they began to use communication and behavioural techniques to establish how an organisation communicates externally and internally. The subject gaining popularity as organisational behaviour became recognised as part of an organisation’s cultural identity, this being added to visual identity as part of the image creative process consolidating the symbolic nature of corporate design. Hence recognition of the corporate design notion took time for people to understand, even though it is a constant feature of daily life.

Another important factor in corporate identity development was that, until the late 1980s, corporate image communication for the majority of UK businesses was fairly local or national in approach. Only international companies had to consider socio-political and legal requirements in other countries. They could control the imagery and its distribution. Historically, these companies formed around products, after the Industrial Revolution. In the modern era, the 1980s internationalist approach defined product branding as principally the process of attaching the name and a reputation to something or someone. Hence these companies created their own symbols to emphasise the company’s market position in the selected local or national markets, thereby controlling audience perception of the company and its products by imagery.

Traditional media corporate identity literature in the UK reached academic maturity in the late 1990s. At this time, seven terms had been recognised: corporate identity; branding; image; corporate communication; reputation; symbolic visual identity; and symbolic organisational behaviour. The subject is now part of corporate level marketing (Balmer, 2002) where the company philosophy, management and processes receive attention. The identity–image–reputation communication interfaces are of strategic importance, being inherently multidisciplinary in nature (Balmer, 2002; Van Riel and Balmer, 1997) with many skillsets employed and applied to various media which communicate the message.

1.2 New Media and the Internet

The early 1990s introduced the internet’s potential as an additional marketing communication channel through which to convey corporate image. The key difference between traditional media and web technology was that at this time website visitors pulled information from a computer screen, which could be located anywhere in the world and updated and accessed anytime. Conventionally this same information had to be pushed or distributed into the marketplace as detailed above. More subjects and concepts were now being added to corporate identity, as corporate strategists, designers, researchers and website visitors grappled with the digital medium’s possibilities and necessities.

Conclusion

To sum up, in the second half of the twentieth century corporate identity terminology developed in the UK, European and US markets from its initial corporate image created by graphic designers under the academic heading of symbolic visual identity. Then the 1980s recognised organisational behaviour, portrayed through attitudes and rituals, which was added to the symbolic subject area. As corporate identity and the created image on traditional media was reaching maturity in the 1990s, web technology began to open up new possibilities. Terms applied in traditional contexts were transferring to web technology, with continual debates as it developed and transformed business.

To answer the practical question – where do businesses come from?

Businesses and organisations start with one person or group having an idea, defining a market niche – its position – where they think the product or service will thrive, then advertising the business and its products and/or services by distributing leaflets and putting displays on notice boards and websites, including word of mouth and social media. The manner by which the business is conducted – its rituals – will determine how the business establishes itself in the marketplace. If customers like the business and its products, then they will buy. Thereafter the business’s reputation starts to form.

---

Chapter 2
Corporate Identity and Branding Debate

---

Am I marketing a concept, product or service?

Introduction

Often there is no clear difference made between corporate identity and corporate brand, yet the terms are conceptually different with specific definition, purpose and usage. This chapter will provide a more detailed definition of corporate identity and branding theory, explaining how the terms developed, where the confusion has arisen, and their current usage today as branding appears more regularly in academic and business literature.

2.1 Twentieth-Century Corporate Identity Definitions

In the twentieth century corporate identity was seen as difficult, with the consensus being that the term had been narrowly conceived (Van Riel, 1995), regardless of whether it was applied to countries, regions, cities, companies or voluntary organisations. Since Martineau’s (1958) explanation, there has been an increasing understanding of the subject as new concepts and subjects were recognised; for example, in addition to graphic design and organisational behaviour, the subject is now under the marketing umbrella, contributing to corporate strategy by considering a wide range of information sources from economics, sociology, psychology, communication, semiotics, reputation studies and other growing new media subjects.

In 1995 a group of academics, including John Balmer and Stephen Greyser, prepared the ‘Strathclyde Statement’ (see Table 2.1) to explain this multidisciplinary subject and its divergence from branding. The key points are that corporate identity forms a business’s individuality, differentiating it in the marketplace, whilst communicating the organisation’s ethos, personality, vision and activities by coherent imagery and the corporate visual identity system (CVIS). In the 1980s organisational behaviour was recognised based on cultures, stories and rituals built up within an organisation by its activities, stories and staff, across all its media applications.

Table 2.1 The original ‘Strathclyde Statement’ on corporate identity

---

The Strathclyde Statement

Corporate identity management is concerned with the conception, development, and communication of an organization’s mission, philosophy, and ethos.
Its orientation is strategic and is based on a company’s
values, cultures, and behaviors.

The management of corporate identity draws on many disciplines, including strategic management, marketing, corporate communications, organizational behavior, public relations, and design.

It is different from traditional brand marketing directed towards household or business-to-business product/service purchases since it is concerned with all of an organization’s stakeholders and the multifaceted way in which an organization communicates.

It is dynamic, not static, and is greatly affected by changes in the external environment.

When well managed, an organization’s identity results in loyalty from its diverse stakeholders.

As such it can positively affect organizational performance, e.g. its ability to attract and retain customers, achieve strategic alliances, recruit executives and employees, be well positioned in financial markets, and strengthen internal staff identification with the firm.

(Source: John M.T. Balmer and Stephen A. Greyser, 1995)

---

By strategically managing this image externally, a company can engage a wide range of stakeholders by way of various media channels. The 1995 statement was further developed by Cees B.M.Van Riel and John M.T. Balmer in the ‘Strathclyde Statement’ of 1997 where they suggest that corporate identity builds commitment and communication between the company and its diverse stakeholders, this being where it differs from branding which is focused on the product and service’s bottom line stakeholders. To complete the definitions, two by Michael Wolff are quite specific: ‘A corporate identity has personality, a realization and revelation of self in a corporate context’; whereas: ‘A corporate brand is how you exist in other people’s minds … retrieved from their memory when the name is mentioned’ (Michael Wolff, Interview 2006).

2.1.1 CORPORATE IDENTITY SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT

To continue relating the terms with the real world is important as it provides grounding upon which digital events can be debated. Four corporate identity schools of thought were identified by John Balmer in 2003:

1. Strategic school, addressing company philosophy, vision and mission (Olins, 1989, 1995; Van Riel, 1995), connecting corporate strategy with reputation...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Plates
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Part I Ground Base – How Corporate Design Started and Evolved
• Part II Setting the Strategy
• Part III Cohesive Design Management
• Part IV Navigating Symbolic Practice
• Part V Digital Corporate Design
• Bibliography
• Index