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In a world full of confusion and loads of contradictory messages, effective identity and brand can be the reasons why a consumer chooses one product over another. Market and production departments often pull in opposite directions. The competitive power of most companies is decreased because their corporate identity is insufficiently defined.

Identity can be defined on two levels.

On a definite level, it aims to increase the chance of recognition, uniqueness in comparison with others but still be continuous enough to be recognised. On the second level, the abstract, identity expresses the symbolic description of an organisation’s character, goal and origin.

On the other side product identity can be approached from the following three kinds of information:

1. Information about existence as a material object; the object expresses “here is a thing”.
2. Information about origin; its designer, manufacturer, country and culture.
3. Information about quality; function, use and maintenance.

According to the theory, the better the product informs, the stronger its identity.

Finally corporate identity is a complex combination of a company’s artefacts and those incidents that ideally have their origin in the company’s business idea, strategic concept and what makes the company unique; its character. Corporate identity both profiles and visualises the company’s business idea and strategic concept. There is also an increase of sense of belonging to the organisation, and an emphasis of its origin and character. This makes the corporate identity valuable both as an external competitive power and internal instrument for building strategies. A clear corporate identity creates a feeling of “us” that makes the employees identify themselves with the company.

Identity is often perceived as a name or a brand regarding market communicative perspectives. In an organisational perspective, identity is defined as notion of analysis which describes how the organisation looks at itself and its relation to its surroundings. Profile is not equivalent to identity. It refers to what is unique in the corporate identity. The impression of a company’s conscious behaviour, in addition to its unconscious or uncontrolled activities, creates an image of the company. Image is a picture of the company which is conceived by the market.

There are six steps to improve/establish your corporate identity:

1. Get a view over the market, its size and perfectibility, what the rivals do and where they are headed.
2. Find out where you are by how things work both internally and externally in your organization.
3. Work on the differences between you and your competitors, and benefit from the positive differences. In this way you initiate a strategy for your company.
4. Define the goal and the way to reach it. It is a question of how to manage what is the basis for the company in the best possible way.
5. Tell your co-workers what you are up to developing and make the new identity as visible as possible.
6. Evaluate your new identity and be assured that it corresponds to the goals you set for positioning and personality.

Source:  www.brandxpress.net

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