AISHWARYA INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT AND IT

CROSS CUTTING ISSUE

MBA III SEM

SUB: PRODUCT AND BRAND MANAGEMENT

TOPIC: Corporate Brand

 Corporate Brand

The traditional branding idea is that each product needs a unique identity. Ideally a brand
should become so strong that it should become a synonym for the product itself. Companies
like Procter & Gamble and Unilever have followed the strategy of creating and nurturing
separate brands for each of their businesses.

Some other companies like Microsoft and Sony promote a corporate brand instead of
branding individual products. The corporate brand is a single umbrella image that permeates
all the businesses of the company.

But corporate branding is not simply designing a new logo and attaching it to every product.
There is more to corporate branding than coining an attractive slogan, tacking it on a wide
range of products, and hoping that it will mean something to customers and employees.

To create a corporate brand, the company has to take concerted steps to align vision, culture
and image of the company. Vision is the top management’s aspirations for the company.

Culture is the organization’s values, behaviours and attitudes, i.e., the way employees feel
about the company. Image is the outside world’s impression of the company.

This outside world includes all stakeholders of the company like customers, shareholders, the
media, the general public and so on. The process of alignment will start with exposing gaps
between vision, culture and image.

i. The misalignment between vision and culture develops when the management
moves the company in a strategic direction that employees do not understand or
support. The gap usually emerges when senior management establishes a vision
 that is too ambitious for the organization to implement. In such situations there is
gap between reality and rhetoric. Management blames employees for resisting
change and employees are suspicious and cynical. Such scapegoat finding and
mistrust will wither the corporate brand from within. Three issues need to be
addressed:

ii.

(1) Does the company practice the values it promotes? The downsizing that took place at
IBM inspite of company’s promises of lifelong employment created anxiety, depression and
fear among its employees. In such situations employees will not believe that the company
will abide by the promises made to the customers via the values of the corporate brand. They
will not feel the pressure to live by the values of the corporate brand.

(2) Does the company’s vision inspire all subcultures? The engineers in R&D will have
different set of values and priorities than those held by marketing department. An
organizational value like ‘customer care’ should be shared across the organization. The value
‘customer care’ should guide the work of accounts department as much as it does the
marketing department. If a common value does not permeate all the departments, the
customer will not get what has been promised by the corporate brand. The brand’s promises
to customers can be fulfilled only by a concerted effort of all the departments of the
company.

(3) Are the vision and culture of the company sufficiently differentiated from those of
competitors? The vision and culture is the DNA of the company, which helps in standing out
from competition. The vision and culture will decide what the company will achieve for the
customer. If the vision and culture of the company is not different from those of its
competitors, customers will not encounter unique experiences with the company.
ii. The image-culture gap arises when customers are confused about what the company stands
for. This happens when a company does not keep its promises. A company needs to compare
what its employees are saying and what its customers and other stakeholders are saying.
Following issues need to be addressed:

(1) What images do stakeholders associate with the company? The images are both real and
perceived and emanate from an individual’s feelings, thoughts and opinions as well as from
the facts of the company. The image of stakeholders can be different from what the company
seeks to project. Stakeholders may discover that the culture of the company is different from
the one that is needed if the company has to achieve the desired image. A company trying to
project an image of being customer focused will be thwarted in its attempt if employees
continue to treat customers as intrusions in their lives. Customers will easily see through the
facade.

(2) In what ways do employees and stakeholders interact? Advertising and public relations
shape a company’s image, but stakeholders’ direct and personal encounters with the
organization seal or destroy a company’s image. Such interactions should be carefully
planned and staged till the desired behaviour becomes intuitive.

(3) Do employees care what stakeholders think of the company? The employees should feel
hurt if important stakeholders, like customers, hold an opinion contrary to what they expect
them to believe about the company. There is not much chance of an alignment between the
image and culture of the company if employees are not concerned with what their customers
think about them.

iii. The most brilliant strategic vision will fail if it is not aligned with what customers want
from the company. Following issues are important while addressing the image vision gap:

(1) Who are the stakeholders? Many companies discover that their products reach a very
different market than the one they are targeting. Nike saw itself as a high-performance
athletic shoe company that attended only to the needs of top athletes. But half of Nike’s sales
were coming from people who were wearing Nike shoes as a substitute for casual shoes.
Though such untargeted markets obviously find something attractive in company’s offerings,
the company can cement its relationship with them by aligning its strategies more strongly
with their interests.
(2) What do stakeholders want from the company? After Nike discovered that its shoes were
sold as substitutes for casual shoes, it produced a line of conventional casual shoes. But
customers wanted the same shoes that their athletic heroes were wearing and rejected the new
line. Companies have to probe deep to find customers’ expectations and align their strategic
vision with them.

(3) Is the company effectively communicating its vision to its stakeholders? Customers are
attracted to a company when the company’s communications are able to create certain
expectations in their minds. The expectations of the customers and the strategic vision of the
company should align for a profitable relationship between them. The company should be
able to clearly communicate as to what it wants to achieve for its customers.
Feedback:-
1. The corporate branding was very useful and related topic to Product and brand
management. All the information was clear and effective. I have gained good
relatable knowledge from this class.
- Neha Chouhan
2. The easy explanation of topic and gained extra knowledge beyond syllabus.
- Jaswant
3. I really enjoyed the class and learned a lot.
- Saurabh Jain
4.  Provide depth knowledge with good practical example of brand management so it
becomes very easier to understand the concept.

- Nikhil Bahrani

MBA III SEM

S.N NAME
1. Jaswant
2. Neha Chouhan
3. Nikhil Bahrani
4. Archit Bhardwaj
5. Saurabh Jain