Brand your house: why businesses of every size need to consider their corporate brand identity
When I say small business branding, what phrases come to mind?
Maybe logo design?
Storefront signage?
Business cards?
How about the phrase corporate brand strategy?
Nope? That didn’t come to mind?
Believe it or not, corporate branding isn’t just for multi-million dollar companies. (Actually, many technically “small businesses” are multi-million dollar companies. Mine isn’t, but hey, maybe yours is!).
The truth is, if you’re running a business of any shape or size, you need to consider your corporate branding.
I define corporate branding as the overarching brand strategy a multidisciplinary business takes. This means whether you sell professional consulting services alongside digital products, or whether you hand-knit socks while also running a pottery business from your garage—if your brand offers more than one unrelated product or service, it’s never too soon to put a corporate brand strategy in place.
In this post, we’re going to dive into who really needs a corporate brand strategy, which house your brand is (and no, we’re not using the Sorting Hat), and the foundational components every corporate brand strategy should have in place.
Let’s get started!
Corporate branding strategy for businesses large and small
You get a corporate branding strategy, and you get a corporate branding strategy, and you get a corporate branding strategy!
That’s right—small companies, mid-sized businesses, and (obviously) corporations all need to consider corporate brand identity. Many technically small businesses are multidisciplinary, meaning they offer a unique array of products and services that may be unrelated to one another or serve different audiences.
Whether your business is large or small, if you run a multidisciplinary company, you need to consider your corporate brand strategy.
As we frequently mention here on the blog, branding really boils down to three main questions:
What do you do?
Who do you do it for?
Why does it matter to them?
A multidisciplinary business will struggle to answer these questions clearly. We serve corporations with IT solutions, but we also offer accounting software. We offer children’s products but we also have a second business that offers products for adult audiences. I design wedding stationery, and I also provide wedding photography.
If your business is multidisciplinary, it still needs a clear brand hierarchy, brand organization, and either a cohesive identity or separate identities for your different offerings. The role of a corporate brand strategy is to streamline and organize your business and provide a clear definition of what the brand is and what it isn’t.
A corporate brand strategy is often an overarching strategy that can encompass all your brand’s offerings or services. It dials into the primary mission, purpose, vision, and values of the company, and may even speak to a specific audience, if your offerings are all aimed at the same core demographic. The corporate brand strategy guidelines will then outline how the different branches of the business interact with one another (or whether they don’t) in a concept called umbrella branding or house of brands vs. branded house.
Umbrella branding: how to organize your multidisciplinary brand
Houses aren’t just for Hogwarts.
Whether your brand is a Hufflepuff or a Ravenclaw, it’s still crucial to stand underneath the Sorting Hat and determine which kind of house your company is: a house of brands or a branded house.
Side note: the term “umbrella branding” is often used as another way to describe this concept, so we’ll use the two interchangeably. When we talk about umbrella branding, we’re talking about house of brands vs. branded house, and vice versa.
House of brands: a corporate brand that has multiple businesses, offerings, or products that should each be branded independently as they serve different markets or have separate identities.
Branded house: a corporate brand that still has multiple branches but brands them cohesively (under one “umbrella brand”)
The difference between a house of brands and a branded house is whether or not the multidisciplinary branches can live harmoniously with one another without causing brand confusion.
If your sub-brands, offerings, and/or products:
Serve different audiences
Offer very different solutions to different problems
Each have their own unique brand vision, mission, and purpose
Your corporate brand strategy would be a house of brands.
This is ideal when each of your sub-brands needs to live in its own universe in order to avoid brand confusion! Your corporate brand should be known for one thing, and when we try to offer too many things to too many people all under the same branding roof, it’s time to kick those 30-year-old kids out of their parents’ basement and into their own homes. (See what I did there?).
If your sub-brands, offerings, and/or products:
Serve the same audience
Offer similar solutions to common problems
All share the same corporate brand vision, mission, and purpose
Your corporate brand strategy would be a branded house or umbrella brand.
This makes sense for companies that want to keep a cohesive identity as a common thread across all their offerings. Again, remember that your brand should be known for one thing, and if you offer multiple ways of serving that one thing, it simply feels like a natural evolution to host a big ol’ brand-family reunion and build another wing onto your house for all those relatives to stay a while.
Just to clarify: when I say your brand should be known for one thing, I’m not talking about a product or service, I’m talking about an idea.
Disney = happiness
Airbnb = home away from home
Jeep = adventure
A strong brand is known for its one thing, and all its sub-brands, offerings, or products should serve that one idea.
If they don’t, the brand will present itself most clearly to the world as a collection of unrelated brands—a house of brands.
For more reading on this topic, I highly recommend the book Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands by Marty Neumeier, considered one of the foremost experts on brand strategy.
Disclosure: The link above is an affiliate link. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.
The building blocks of corporate brand strategy guidelines
So you’ve determined whether your brand is a branded house or a house of brands.
You’ve even taken the online quiz to decide whether you’re a Gryffindor or a Slytherin!
Whether you’re running a startup from your couch or a multi-million-dollar corporation from your private office space, your multidisciplinary brand will need a corporate brand strategy.
While not to overlook the vast differences between branding a small business and a large corporation (and there are many), at the heart of it all, the same principles still apply. Branding is still branding, whether you’re branding a mom-and-pop or a Fortune 500. The foundational building blocks should be present in both.
A corporate brand strategy guideline should include the same foundational building blocks, whether the company is a mom-and-pop shop or a Fortune 500 company.
Some of these most crucial, foundational building blocks would include:
Brand mission
How your brand is going to make a difference for your customers
Brand purpose
The reason why your brand exists—why you show up for your customers
Brand vision
The long-term aim of your brand, often described as the kind of world your brand aspires to create
Brand hierarchy
How all your different offerings, sub-brands, or company branches are structured (house of brands vs. branded house) and to what extent they share the corporate brand’s mission, purpose, and vision
Of course, there is so, so much more that goes into corporate brand strategy guidelines, but at the very core, the $10,000 business and the $10M business each need to address the same foundational blocks of corporate branding.
If you’re looking for a strategic branding agency to partner with you in developing your corporate brand identity, we hope we’re the right team for you. To learn more about how we can help your house of brands or branded house (or even your Hogwarts house) develop a strategic foundation, schedule a consultation today:
