The Essential Ingredients of a Company’s Public Image

Your company is a brand, and larger companies may have additional brands underneath the parent company. A brand is your company’s image, including the logo, the mission, the vision, the values, the voice, the colors, the fonts, and the messaging. Having a positive brand image and communicating your brand effectively to consumers is crucial for retaining customers, attracting new customers, and setting your company apart from the competition.

The Logo

Having a company logo is essential. It helps consumers remember your brand and thereby drives associations about the brand into that logo. A logo also allows companies to easily market themselves on swag, social media, and various documents. The best logos:

  • Are relatively simple (think Pepsi, McDonald’s, Honda, Target, Apple)
  • Consist of only a few key colors
  • Use colors strategically according to psychology (e.g., blue is a color associated with trust and is thus used by many banks and medical companies)
  • Are memorable

Companies often have an image or icon as their logo, but many companies (Coca Cola, Google, Subway, FedEx) use just the company name in their chosen font.

Logos also can include a tagline to further describe the company or job customers’ memories. Examples include:

  • McDonald’s: I’m Lovin’ It
  • Subway: Eat Fresh
  • Target: Expect More. Pay Less.
  • Nike: Just Do It.

I would recommend most companies include a tagline when they are just getting started and trying to establish their brand. As a company grows and has solidified its brand name and logo recognition, it can remove the tagline and even the company name, leaving just the logo imagery.

If you don’t yet have a logo for your company, there are many graphics designers that can create a logo for you, or you can try to come up with one yourself. I created my logo myself in Adobe Illustrator.

The Mission

To establish who your brand is and what your company does, you need to communicate this in a company mission statement and reiterate that mission in your marketing communications. The mission statement should include:

  • Who your company is
  • What your company does
  • Why your company does what it does

Examples:

Disney: The mission of The Walt Disney Company is to entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling, reflecting the iconic brands, creative minds and innovative technologies that make ours the world’s premier entertainment company.

As your company achieves wide brand recognition, you may decide to shorten your mission statement to something like the following:

LinkedIn: Connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.

The Vision

A company’s vision statement should address the future state of the company. Unlike the mission statement, which states why the company exists, the vision statement should state what the company hopes to achieve. A mission statement should be actionable, while a vision statement should be aspirational.

Many companies will combine their mission and vision statements into one cohesive statement that gives the company’s purpose, vision, and values.

Adobe: To move the Web forward while also giving Web designers and developers the best tools and services in the world.

The Values

A company’s values are what unites employees while striving for the company vision. These values may include diversity, honesty, integrity, creativity, boldness, fairness, innovation, communication, fun, excellence. Companies can (and should) communicate these values on their company webpages, their social media posts, and in their marketing materials.

The Voice

Voice is the distinct personality or style a company has in both its written and verbal communications. Companies should keep voice consistent throughout. Tone is a subset of voice and can vary based on context and audience. The tone addresses the attitude and mood in different content pieces.

The Visual Identity

Companies should have a style guide that they use to keep their “look” consistent across all channels. The style guide should include the company colors and fonts as well as templates and guidelines for the design of social media posts, brochures, and PowerPoint presentations.

The Messaging

Companies should keep the overall messaging the same across all marketing channels and cater the messaging to each target audience. For instance, when marketing to hospital administrators, marketers should highlight cost savings of using the company’s products or services and any positive PR that would come with the products or services–like positive patient outcomes. When marketing to patients, marketers should highlight the health and wellness benefits of a product or service.

While each of these components of brand identity should remain fairly consistent, companies are constantly evolving, so you should revisit each of these every once in a while to check for possible improvements or modifications. It is also recommended that companies have a formal Brand Standards Guide that communicates each of these components so that all employees are aligned and new employees can be effectively trained on company standards to ensure consistency and quality.