A BRAND? CORPORATE, EMPLOYER & INTERNAL BRANDING.

An organization’s existence is manifested by its perception. There are different layers of stakeholders with varying degrees of interest and influence on the organization’s performance. While branding provides an identity, uniqueness, and personality to a corporate body, careful tailoring of branding with optimal marketing efforts can take an organization’s visibility to higher degrees. Brands exist in different formats when it comes to organizational impact. The three highlighted varieties of branding includes – corporate, employer, and internal. Though each branding has meaning and implications on employees’ performance, a synergetic relation among each branding mode can positively impact employee performance and overall organizational effectiveness.

Branding is a process of creating identity. At the elementary level, a brand is an identification mark. Before reaching its modern usage, branding as an idea and concept evolved for many centuries. Our ancestors had various ways of promoting services, wares, or goods, whether they were livestock, wines, metals, or medicines—branding incorporated into messages for identification, boundaries, and distinction. 

(Room, 1998)

Early days of advertising and marketing were performed on a personal basis. A particular individual’s name was given equal importance as his products or services. Modern branding approaches and individual brand names efforts started in the nineteenth century. The Industrial Revolution, mass production, and the resulting standardization accelerated the development of advertising and marketing techniques. And renewed approach to advertisement and marketing demanded an even more instrumental selection of a good brand name.

(Room, 1998)

Branding exists in different formats, though each is closely associated, and a synergetic relation exists among them. Employer brand and corporate brand are one such broad classification; however, the employer brand is a sub-branch of the entire corporate brand. In contrast, employer branding focuses inward on employees, and corporate branding outward on customers. Nevertheless, branding a company’s employer and corporate values helps distinguish it from its market competitors and solidify its status as a trustworthy name in both the employee market and the products/services market. 

Another classification exists of employer branding and internal branding. The primary objective of employer branding is positioning the organization as desirable to attract potential employees and retain current employees. Internal branding focuses on current employees’ fulfillment of the brand promise communicated to relevant external target groups.

(Burmann and Piehler, 2013)

For any organization to reach its higher performance level, three ingredients are critical –  organizational vision, top management commitment, and a capable, articulated, and willing workforce. While corporate branding communicates with customers and external players, it has a component, along with employer branding, and internal branding influences internal employee job performance, which in turn contributes to each of the mentioned branding efforts.

REFERENCES

Room, A., 1998. History of Branding, in: Hart, S., Murphy, J. (Eds.), Brands: The New Wealth Creators. Palgrave Macmillan UK, London, pp. 13–23. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26070-6_2

Burmann, C., Piehler, R., 2013. Employer Branding vs. Internal Branding – Ein Vorschlag zur Integration im Rahmen der identitätsbasierten Markenführung. Unternehm. 67, 223–245. https://doi.org/10.5771/0042-059x-2013-3-223