Know-How Exchange : Branding

First, I see a need to clearly identify the corporate brand. Does it provide an umbrella over the individual brands and can those externally and internally identify them as being related?

If your answer is "yes" to those questions, your job will be simpler and you'll have the ability to be creative in your message. A lot of creativity and brands that have little to do with one another will make corporate brand recognition more challenging.

Visuals will depend on what your products and corporate brand are. Any tactics that demonstrate consistency and relativity, assuming all brands are related, should resonate. Sorry I can't think of any movies ;)

I'm watching this topic closely as I'm new to management and am planning a similar internal brand awareness campaign. Our situation may be different than yours in that the corporate brand is highly recognizable to our audiences, yet some of our vertical brands have gone somewhat astray.

There's never been a marketing department at our institution so my approach is to refine the corporate brand (with sign off!!); meet with vertical managers to learn their business and to establish an ongoing, collaborative relationship to avoid history of silos and autonomy (this is huge part of plan); conduct a comprehensive audit of threats to the corporate brand; then bring together all vertical managers (retreat setting) to educate (branding consultant); reiterate corporate brand strategy; report findings from internal audit; reinforce success stories of the vertical brands that demonstrate benefits to the corporate brand; and ultimately, illustrate internal tactics that will keep us on plan (ie. on-going education, forums, brand reviews, etc.)

Main message to the vertical managers: what is the benefit of brand consistency?

benefits to the corporation:
increases recognition and value to corporation, investors, and shareholders leading to reinvestment, research and growth

benefits to the vertical brands:
leveraging the credibility and existing affinity of the established corporate brand makes for more efficient communications across all channels: suppliers, vendors, creditors, partners, and both loyal and potential customers

benefits to the internal stakeholders (your audience):
more efficient to execute tactics by not reinventing the wheel;
encourages collaboration which increases education and information sharing leading to better ideas, etc.

benefits to the customer:
confidence and trust doing business with known brand