Brand Identity v’s Corporate Identity

A ‘Brand Identity’ and a ‘Corporate Identity’ are two essential assets of any organisation today.

To function with purpose, unity and direction, an organisation must clearly define, articulate, and represent both its brand and corporate identities.

As a business leader or marketer, you may see this currently:

• Your competitors are confident and consistent in their messaging, and they are growing and taking market share.
• Also, their internal culture is healthy, job satisfaction and employee retention are high, and job seekers aspire to work for them.

This Is No Accident.

They have achieved this because they are backed by a common internal purpose that presents publicly as an identity their customers resonate with.

It may sound a little dramatic but the truth is, that your organisation will stagnate, and struggle to progress if you fail to get your employees united behind the common purpose of the organisation.

With clear Corporate and Brand Identity guidelines in place, your organisation will have a powerful engine to drive internal engagement and customer satisfaction.

That’s why every organisation needs to have both.

However, as a Branding Studio, we come across many businesses operating under the assumption that the two are the same thing, meaning they aren’t able to capitalise on the power that both provide.

This Leaves An Organisation Vulnerable To Competition Through A Lack Of Clarity, Consistency And Engagement.

So, we’ve put together this article to help you understand the differences, explain what each contains, and how they work together to get the best result.

Let’s Start With Some Definitions.

A Brand Identity is the visual vehicle through which a brand illustrates its use, application and appearance – everything it stands for.

It’s the customer-facing element of a brand. The brand identity is everything the audience sees and interacts with around a product or service.

In other words, Brand Identity is the expression of the brand that communicates the organisation’s values, mission, and ‘personality’ to the public.

Think everything across:

• logos
• colours,
• fonts
• website
• advertising
• marketing materials.

On The Other Hand

A Corporate Identity is the articulation and manifestation of your broader organisational purpose. It’s a tangible framework that captures the intangible value of your organisation – your culture, direction, and purpose.

A corporate identity is the internal foundation upon which the brand identity is built and enables consistency throughout the organisation.

It guides how a company conducts itself publicly and internally and ensures all employees and stakeholders are united around a common culture, mission, and purpose.

In other words, a corporate identity acts as a blueprint for all future communications, empowering your team with the ability to express your united identity, both internally and across all your key stakeholders.

Your Corporate Identity covers the following visual and worded elements:

• Corporate Identity
• Unifying central position
• An organisation-wide visual tone
• Associated objectives and negative associations
• Corporate core pillars
• Approach to corporate positioning
• Corporate differentiators
• Corporate social responsibility
• Corporate imagery
• A corporate collateral expression; and
• A collective visual expression

With those simplified definitions covered, let’s go a little deeper to really show you each of their true potentials and how to use them together.

What Is A Corporate Identity?

Your corporate identity is a framework that presents the fundamental driving values of your organisation and articulates your broader organisational purpose.

It is the internal structure of your brand identity, which goes beyond visual identity and encompasses the company’s vision, mission, values, and culture.

But it doesn’t stop there.

A Corporate Identity acts as the foundation for how your organisation thinks, behaves, what it says, does, and stands for – it’s the blueprint for how your organisation presents and expresses itself so that your identity isn’t left up to the interpretations of your audience.

How does your Corporate Identity apply to your organisation?

Your clearly defined Corporate Identity should be set out in a Corporate Identity document.

This Corporate Identity document (a handbook for example) will emerge from the development process and clarify the language, look, and feel of your enterprise.

You will need a comprehensive and coherent Corporate Identity document, any time you want to engage with an audience, internally or externally. It acts as a communication compass, providing you with a specific, clear, and consistent reference point based on your combined branding and corporate identities.

This means that everyone inside your organisation, particularly those driving marketing and communications, will know exactly how to express themselves on behalf of the company.

It also removes managerial distractions, provides clarity that reduces decision paralysis and facilitates a greater degree of autonomy amongst employees and management.

Also, a thoughtfully crafted corporate identity document that employees understand, will help to create ‘buy-in’ to the company’s true purpose.

It will make employees more likely to act as brand ambassadors, willing to reinforce the brand’s message internally and externally. Thus, it will play a pivotal role in driving sales, employee morale, retention, and future recruitment.

How Does A Brand Identity And A Corporate Identity Work Together?

Your brand identity and corporate identity are like two sides of one coin. 

The brand identity is a visual and verbal expression of the brand persona to the audience outside. It’s what speaks to the audience and draws them in to engage.

An organisation will develop its corporate identity as a framework to set the internal trajectory of the company, like vision, mission, core drivers, behaviours, and beliefs.

When combined, these two identities create a cohesive and consistent brand experience that brings the internal operations and external audience perceptions into alignment.  The two work together to create clarity, trust and engagement from all stakeholders.

For example, if a company’s brand identity is centred around things like youth and creativity, its corporate identity will reflect these traits in the language it uses, its visual elements, marketing initiatives, and internal communications.

The corporate identity provides the substance, and the brand identity delivers the style. Together they provide absolute clarity on who, and what your brand and organisation represent. This in turn emotionally bonds you to your target audience.

And THIS Is Why You Need Both.

Without a comprehensive and cohesive corporate identity, the brand identity will feel disjointed or incomplete, losing its impact.

Conversely, without a strong brand identity, the company’s outward presence may fail to resonate with its audience, regardless of how well-crafted the internal framework is.

When the two are created well and complement each other, they create a unified presence that drives the organisation internally and ensures consistent customer satisfaction.

We Hope This Helps You Better Understand The Difference Between The Two Key Identities Of An Organisation.

With this in mind, we encourage you to consider whether your company has given enough thought to distinguish the two.

You may be keen to give it a go yourself. Feel free to use this article or the information you can find in our Font & Swatch resources library.

If All Of This Feels A Little Overwhelming Or You Would Prefer To Get Help.

Then contact us. We’re a Branding and Corporate Identity Development Agency and we can manage everything for you.

Our expert Corporate Identity Development team will ensure that your organisation has a strong and clear Brand Identity and Corporate Identity.

At Font & Swatch, we work to unlock the true power of your brand and help enable a purpose-driven line of communication within your organisation

• An initial discussion is exactly what you need to set you on the course to success. Mail us at create@fontandswatch.com

• For more information and to get the results your enterprise deserves, contact the team at Font & Swatch today.