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Chapter 29—Corporate Identity
(some call it “brand”—mistakenly)

The words “brand” and “branding” are hot in the B2B world
these days. Traditionally, it was consumer companies that
focused on brand. But the appreciation of the value of a brand
has crossed into B2B.

The challenge for many companies is to understand exactly
what branding is. Simply put, your company’s brand is its
reputation. It’s how customers see you—the perception they
have of the company. And that perception comes from many
different sources—through customers’ interactions with sales
reps, their use of your product, their dealings with your technical
support team, etc. Brand is much bigger than any single
business function—it’s more than marketing, it’s more than
customer service, more than research and development.

For that reason, I will leave the full discussion of B2B branding
to other books. What I want to tackle here is corporate identity,
which is the visual representation of your business, mainly
your logo and communications design. It’s the identity on your
website, business card, and trade show booth.

There’s a wide spectrum of B2B logos on the market. I’ve seen
some created by world-class designers, and I’ve seen some
designed by the fourteen-year old nephew of the company’s
CEO. Ultimately, a logo is not going to make or break a B2B
company. For companies starting out, use one of the services
like www.99designs.com to get a solid design at a great price.
If your company has a logo that was designed a long time
ago, it may have strong brand equity and should be changed

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© 2012 Lisa Shepherd