The first thing you need to be aware of regarding your corporate identity is that you probably don't have much of one outside your own domain. We're all so caught up in our own enterprises that most of us gladly project our limited circumstances on the rest of the business world.
I liken our corporate myopia to driving a red sports car. Until you purchase one, you may see a red sports car four times a year, but having saddled yourself with your particular make and model, your focus shifts, and suddenly every third car is another red sports car. Because your life is so caught up in XYZ Corporation, because your career depends on the largesse of XYZ, because your children's college education is contingent upon it, because you have become so thoroughly associated with good old XYZ that friends introduce you as "Harry, the prominent such and such from XYZ," you probably think that your corporate identity is readily at the tongue tip of every third citizen. Probably not.
Surely such an observation applies to closely held and startup companies, you may think. This sort of corporate identity problem must apply to organizations with fewer than a dozen employees and revenues in the hundreds of thousands. The Fortune 500 are different, you might imagine. They have established identities, large advertising budgets and are known throughout the business world, if not the great public consciousness.
But try these identities on for size: Ayaya, Inc., Danaher Corporation, Jabil Circuit, MDC Holdings, NiSource, Oneok and VF Corporation. All are well within the top 300 of the Fortune 500 Largest U.S. Industrial Corporations. All have sales exceeding $1 billion, many with multiples of that figure. I think now you'll see that the problem of corporate identity isn't limited to the thin of budget or the shy of press.
In order to begin to solve the problems associated with limited awareness of your corporate enterprise and what it makes, does, and stands for, you need to be aware of the fierce competition you are up against in vying for even a second of a prospect's attention. You need to understand that you are up against every conceivable medium from print to cable TV. You even compete with the corporate mail and unsolicited e-mails your prospect must sift through daily. You are caught trying to peddle a message that may not seem as important, may be too complicated and probably takes a lower priority in your prospect's mind than it does in your own.
You must recognize that a complicated cumbersome bundle of information probably won't get through to most people. You need to narrow your expectations and shoot through just one or two simple and memorable messages. That means knowing where you are going and what you are all about. You need to find out what it is you want people to know about you, and how to tell them in one or two simple declarative sentences. That's all. Any more is asking too much. Are your products known for freshness? Is your service organization known for customer or client service? What does your product do? First define, then communicate.
Once you have arrived at a simple, direct message that aligns with your expectations of what your company is and where it is going, define groups you want to receive the message. Advertising and public relations people call such groups "publics," and they usually filter down to similar groups for most companies. Your employees and your suppliers are most important. And your existing customer base also needs to know your message, since they may only know you for a fraction of what you're capable or producing.
You need to target your wish list of prospective customers, of course, but there are ancillary "publics as well: the banking and investment community; the legal and financial community; the trade and business press; and other organizations within your industry