The authors discussed the importance of Corporate Brand and how to implement it by utilizing their tool kit to analyze, diagnose, and uncover issues which could possibly obstruct a company from reaching its success. By conducting research on 100 companies worldwide, they found that three key elements, which are vision, culture, and image, must be correctly aligned in order to complete this strategic implementation and earn satisfactory results. Each element is driven by a different constituency. Vision is strategically formed by top management. Corporate culture is created through behaviors and attitudes of employees, which consequently result in the company’s values.

Image is the perception of external entities on a company.In order to effectively generate a corporate brand, the top management, employees, and other stakeholders must develop three-way relationships to drive each other, support those elements, promote corporate values, and eliminate pitfalls and gaps between them. Certain companies are illustrated to address the misalignment issues.Corporate brand offers many benefits to a company. These benefits include marketing cost reduction, a sense of brand community, a seal of approval, and robust symbolism.

Even though corporate branding seems to be the right answer for most companies, it is not applicable for some companies. Examples of such companies are those with a number of strong product brands, and each brand represents its line and market, such as the Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy.DiscussionFor the past years, the business world has enthusiastically experienced the occurrence of strategic branding transformations.

It has seen a shift from product branding to corporate branding as a new marketing strategy and a company’s valuable asset. Corporate branding does not explicitly advocate a company’s products and their features, but rather present significant corporate values to both internal and external entities. The goal of corporate branding strategy is to establish a lucid direction and coherent relationship among various stakeholders, as well as illustrating a strong image to the outside world.Branding has played a major role in corporate strategy development because it can direct the scales of products. If branding is considerately implemented, a brand name itself can become a generic name of a particular product.With the insightful vision of its CEO, Apple has become a unique computer developer in the industry. Along with a reliable operating system, it offers new designs, which successfully attract a large group of consumers.

Even though an Apple computer is literally a personal computer, everyone calls it a Mac computer, which strongly represents itself as a computer under Apple brand.Lego has turned itself from a toymaker into a leader in the business of creativity and learning. Lego has created various types of programs and activities to leverage relationships among the three entities, as well as support association and alignments among the three elements. Everyone’s ideas and thoughts are shared across the entire company. Their efforts pay off.

Its global sales have been increasing, and the Lego brick becomes “toy of the century”.For decades, Sony has been a major player in the electronics appliance industry. A number of electronics devices have been introduced to the market with different model names, but under the only corporate name – Sony. It is not an exaggeration to say that in consumers’ views Sony stands for reliability, high quality, and cutting-edge designs. Sony is always one of the top names when consumers are considering purchasing a new electronics device. Sony is rigidly standing in a concrete position of a corporate brand strategy.