Your corporate brand is a singularly powerful asset.
 
It defines what you stand for and how you uniquely deliver, distilling what makes you special across all that you do. Doing so efficiently unlocks value across your enterprise, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
 
As corporate branding continues to evolve (we’ve been at it for over 80 years), here are the tried-and-true principles to doing it right.

At the heart of a strong corporate brand is its brand idea. Done right, it’s a balance of what’s true and new; mixing today’s strengths with future aspiration in a singular, ownable idea. This idea guides how the brand uniquely looks, talks, and acts, including the experiences and offerings it creates.

They are distinctive, ownable and emotionally powerful. They should feel right for who you are and direct where you are heading. They inspire the creation of experiences, expression, content and more to help you deliver on your strategy. Because of their power and potential, we call them Big Brand Ideas.

While all strong Go-to Brands need an idea that builds connection and enables progress, corporate brands take on added challenges. Not only must they connect with customers, but they must also connect with the world– partners, investors, employees, regulators, and public at large. They must answer why they exist and what role they play, beyond an aggregate of businesses to add up to more. Bank of America has businesses spanning retail banking to global investing, and recognizes it is only successful when those it serves are successful. Its role is to serve and empower– customers, colleagues, communities– by helping make financial lives better at every connection across its portfolio. It poses the question to everyone it serves, “What would you like the power to do?”, and can deliver by drawing from across all its capabilities and businesses.

The most effective corporate brands are viewed by the C-suite as a strategic management tool, not just a corporate communications effort. Leaders embrace the brand to help drive their vision and values for the company and accelerate their corporate strategy. When the corporate brand is clear, succinct and compelling, they can embrace it and say it again and again, building belief both among employees and externally.   

When leaders can easily incorporate the corporate brand idea into what they do and say, it becomes a unifying rally cry. Walmart’s “Save money, live better” echoed the words of its founder as well as current leaders. The brand becomes a powerful way to communicate the CEO’s vision and values. When people feel it and want to be a part of it, from the very top and through the organization, it becomes an intuitive guide for the organization, unlike so many frameworks that only live on a page and are forgotten. 

The shift for companies to become more approachable and relatable has become table stakes in any brand evolution. Brands must speak to people to form a connection, not be impersonal and disengaged.

As more companies become relatable and act at ‘eye-level’, it’s no longer enough to simply act like ‘a person’. You need be your own specific person, carrying through your personality across all experiences to uniquely feel like you– in how you look, talk and act. State Street, which services nearly 10 percent of the world’s assets, recently defined its corporate brand and is unifying its sub-brands. To reflect its role in giving clients an essential advantage and moving the industry forward, it modernized its expression, creating an ownable symbol of “the street”, energizing its legacy colors and updating fonts to balance longevity with future-facing cues. It has a bold brand voice, proud to be “from a different street,” reinforcing its unique role.

The strongest brands are built from the inside-out, with employees living, breathing and delivering on the brand in their day-to-day. Because when it is felt on the inside, your customers and stakeholders will feel it too. Corporate marketing leaders should team with their internal HR, communications and business partners to capture employee hearts and minds and ensure brand helps create an intuitive thread across all that employees do— in experience, expression and communications. When DuPont separated as its own company, it embraced its role in creating the innovations the world needs to thrive. Their employees are the creators who make it happen, and the evolved brand helped create a shared identity together as “Makers of New”.      

From the minutiae of our daily lives to the epochs of history, stories are integral to making sense of the world, cementing feelings and memories, and driving progress. For corporate brands, the benefits of a cohesive and compelling story are no different. Though it may seem counterproductive to prioritize the corporate brand, doing so need not come at the expense of day-to-day business momentum. In fact, a stronger corporate brand is what creates the conditions for enduring, sustainable growth – by connecting and bolstering every part of your portfolio, inspiring continuous, brand-aligned innovation, and attracting and retaining the best talent.
 
For a story as expansive as one’s corporate brand, just picking up the pen can feel daunting. Finding the right thread requires strategic and creative rigor. But as with any epic, when you put in the work to define who you are, what you stand for, and where you’re going…the rest practically writes itself. People will get excited about what’s possible and where you are heading. It will inspire new thinking and a desire to join in and help write what’s next. And ultimately it will be greater than the sum of its chapters.

• How strong is your corporate brand today?  Is it perceived as enhancing value across your portfolio, so that the whole is understood as more than the sum of its parts?
• When did you last examine and think about investing in your corporate brand? On average, companies across the Fortune 500 refresh their logos every 7 years
• Do you have a Big Brand Idea, that that is clear, distinctive and compelling to help accelerate your strategy?
• Does your expression connect and meet audiences where they are with a distinct personality? 
• Does your corporate brand draw in talent who want to be a part of your story? Do your employees understand what you stand for and how to deliver?