Your corporate brand is the consistent outward expression of your company’s mission statement, business strategy and activities. Basically, in the public mind you are how you act and the most carefully crafted marketing strategy in the world will not be enough to overcome the bad image if the public sees you acting irresponsibly or recklessly. Since your brand perception has a direct correlation to public trust and therefore profits, careful brand image management is highly recommended. But if your corporate brand comes from all these different aspects of doing business, how do you create a positive brand image? Also, how do you create an image that inspires trust in your specific consumer group?

The first thing to understand is that you cannot apply corporate branding as a façade over the top of your organization. Public perception will come from every interaction your company has, from the news, from charity events, from sponsorships and from the public behavior of your employees. If the brand is simple like a marketing slogan, then it won’t get there and you will have spent a lot of money creating stop words. Your brand is an existing entity. Job marketing techniques can simply help you focus on branding and an easy-to-remember tagline.

If your corporate brand comes from existing paradigms within your company, to make sure it’s positive, you’ll need to review practices and public interactions. What you want when creating a positive brand image is to eliminate corporate behaviors that lead to poor public perception and amplify those that give positive press. Additionally, amplifying good behaviors will have the benefit of energizing your employees to represent you well in public. Once you have identified the positive features that already exist in your company, you can focus on adding those features that you feel are necessary to complete the positive corporate brand. It is an excellent example of how the old adage that beauty is only skin deep is applied in the business world.

After all the procedures and behaviors are in place and working well, it will be easy for your marketing department to ‘package’ them into a brand statement. When the corporate slogan matches the brand as perceived by the public, you will have a successful and positive corporate brand image.