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Corporate Brand Platforms
A Corporate Brand Platform is an actionable articulation of management intentions in six parts.
The "Components" tool groups these intentions under three headings... the vision or defining destination, desired culture, and communicated composition. In practice, it helps to break the 'vision' piece into three elements (positioning, purpose and mission) and to add a 'personality' statement to the 'culture' piece. Thus there are six expressions of the leadership intentions I have found most useful to specify, for the purpose of planning, designing and managing the corporate brand:
- Positioning >
What we hope to "be" in our audiences' minds, compared to other companies
- Purpose >
What we are in business to do
- Mission >
Beyond the economics, why it is worth doing
- Composition >
How we are best seen to be structured to achieve our purpose
- Culture >
The distinctive shared behaviors that best support our common purpose and mission
- Personality >
Our chosen style and manner
Not all companies, it’s true, can usefully articulate all six statements. Their units, perhaps, may share no meaningful common purpose, mission or culture. To that extent, however, the corporate brand is by definition weaker; the units themselves may constitute the stronger and more relevant brands.
Time after time, this six-part construct has been proven to be effective as an identity planning tool. (See Celera, Dow Jones, Flowserve, and Commonfund examples.)
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