Key Areas Where a Strong Corporate Brand Adds Value

In today’s product-centric business environment, companies frequently commit vast amounts of resources to market their product brands, yet sometimes overlook the company brand — the brand that stands behind all of a company’s products, services and people.

At the most basic level, strong corporate brands add value to a company in 3 key areas:

Internally (culture)

Employees who have a shared understanding of who the company brand is and who it’s for (which customers, segments, etc.) naturally live out the brand in their interactions with each other. In essence, employees’ collective on-the-job behaviors — the culture — personify the company brand. A shared understanding of the brand among all employees — from manufacturing to tech support, engineering to human resources — promotes a consistent understanding of how business is done across the organization.

Externally (marketplace)

Strong corporate brands deliver more economic value. CoreBrand’s Corporate Branding Index® revealed that the corporate brand accounts for between five and seven percent of market capitalization, which CoreBrand refers to as brand equity. Similarly, research conducted by McKinsey & Company in 2012 found that strong brands outperformed weak brands by 20 percent, up from 13 percent in 2011. Accordingly, the corporate brand can significantly contribute to or detract from a company’s value.

Finally, strong corporate brands offer the intangible asset of goodwill which can drive value and boost market capitalization.

source:entrepreneur