Homework 3: Corporate image, corporate identity and reputation

Each brand and company has their good or bad images in public eye as well as set identity and built reputation. To begin with, corporate image means what customers think about the brand. Image is formed from products and services, social responsibility, communications and also the environment of the company. If the company’s offices look nice and adorable the customer feels more confident, comfortable and it helps to make a decision. Besides good quality products can guarantee customer’s loyalty and good feedback. Also, good image helps to deal with customer demands, increase sales and go over the crisis period.  In addition, to build a good image is very hard without public relations. Public relations take a responsibility of all sectors because all sectors taking part in communication with customers. For instance, if the company launch a new product PR role is introduce it to target audiences and build an opinion about it. Basically, whatever the company is doing public relations help to communicate with customers and build the right image.

The other part is about corporate identity which means how the company sees themselves. It is about identifying who they are, what they do and how they are doing it. It also includes how they represent themselves, using logos, colours and uniforms as well. Besides, identity means what kind of values and beliefs the company wants to show and share. So if the company send the right messages about their personality by using PR it helps to create the right image and reputation.

Talking about reputation according to CIPR definition PR is all about reputation, building and maintaining goodwill and mutual understanding. So PR role in the company is to build better reputation and build transparent relationship between customers and the company. Unfortunately, PR is not that powerful. The company can lose a good reputation very easily and PR has to deal with it.

For example, o.b. is a really big brand and it had good reputation and image about its products. Unfortunately, the company received many complaints about discontinued popular Ultra item. They received some threats about destroying their reputation and it will damage it a lot. So o.b. came up with a unique idea how to apologise by making a PR campaign “Triple Sorry”. The campaign included a music video where every woman can use their name and it seems that the singer is singing for them personally. More than 100 000 women received an email which led them to their own music video. It received a really great success and the reputation was not damaged that much. PR worked on crisis management and achieved good results, more than 3 million hits only in one weekend.

As the example shows PR is very valuable for a company, to deal with crisis and make two way communications. Even PR can be affected by factors like history, environmental and sector issues it is powerful tool to use. Corporate identity, corporate image and reputation are all related and PR taking responsibility to create it, change and manage the whole process.