Branding and Marketing Communications

What is IMC and what does it mean for a company to follow IMC? Integrated Marketing Communications is a cross-functional process that seeks to shape the entirety of communications received by the target audience. Its goal is to start from the perspective of the customer and works its way backward, seeking to align every touchpoint the company has with the customer into a synergized communications program. A company following IMC, will view all touchpoints as part of the plan and not siloed departments. Advertising, PR, Sales, and all other customer-facing departments should have a consistent, unified messaging for the customer. The organization should be leveraging data gathered on its customers and desired prospects to create this unified messaging to affect customer behavior rather than just their attitudes or opinions. Once more, all of this hinges on crafting this messaging from the customer’s perspective and working backward. (Pelsmacker, Geuens & Bergh 2018). This messa

What is a brand story and what makes a good brand story? A brand story is a bit of a misnomer, as the use of the word story relays a concept of a narrative told to a listener. A brand story is not communicated in a direct way to the intended audience but is felt or perceived. It’s intended purpose is to invoke emotion and hopefully attachment. Google is doing this now as I type this in its Docs application. Their main goals are integration and to keep me on a Google product as long as possible. They want me to feel a sense of reliability, ease of access across their products and a shared space. I see icons for other applications integrated along the side of the screen (calendar, keep, tasks), reminding me that Google wants me to have easy access to things that may be valuable while a draft a document. A large share button sits at the top-right, reminding me to bounce this draft off of my friend before it’s published. An icon directly above that says “Saving” after every keystroke an

Brand architecture is the structure on which the brand is built. It’s the way an organization interacts with its brands and how they interact with each other. This strategy may take many forms, but can usually be distilled into two categories: a “branded house” or a “house of brands” (Keller, Apéria, & Georgson 2008). A classic example of the branded house is FedEx, where each service is just visually branded with a different color. You always know it’s FedEx. A major example of a branded house is Unilever. This Dutch giant’s products are not marketed on the parent companies name. Each brand is positioned on its own, and they do very little to reflect upon each other. Just a few of Unilever’s brands. Another way to describe brand architecture is to define whether its structure is monolithic, endorsed or pluralistic ( Lischer 2017). We'll be using both methods as we look at a few companies below. Example 1: Volvo Volvo’s brand architecture is based

What is Brand Identity vs. Brand Image? Brand identity is the accumulation of the organization’s name, logo, brands, taglines, service attributes, offerings, and all other outward-facing elements of the organization. These elements should be reflective of the organization’s mission and values. Overall, the uniting factor is that all of these disparate pieces are created by the company themselves. As seen in the diagram above, the brand identity is shaped by not only its outward expressions, but also those pointed inward. The brand image, on the other hand, is more of a group effort. Paul Argenti, in his book Corporate Communication, defines image as “...a reflection of an organization’s identity. Put another way, it is the organization as seen from the viewpoint of its constituencies.” (2016). The brand image may look different to different groups or may have many images for a single group. The goal is to have the brand identity and image closely aligned, as the purpose of a cohesive