namely the alignment of identity, culture, image and reputation. This alignment is the
pivotal task in the brand identity management process. The corporate brand toolkit
developed by Hatch and Schultz is based on research in more than 100 companies
over more than ten years. The toolkit was published in Harvard Business Reviewin
- Balmer (Balmer and Greyser 2003) developed another influential framework,
the AC2ID framework. Like the corporate brand toolkit, it focuses on the identity
types present in a company and how these identity types should be managed in order
to ensure alignment. The AC2ID framework is based on extensive research in the
corporate industry field, but has also incorporated recent trends from the academic
literature. It was first published in California Management Reviewin 2002.
The corporate brand toolkit
The corporate brand toolkit identifies strategic vision, organizational culture and
stakeholders’ images as the strategic stars of the organization.
- Strategic vision: central idea behind what the company does. The strategic
vision expresses future management aspirations. - Organizational culture: internal values and beliefs. Basic assumptions that
embody the heritage of the company, manifested in the ways employees feel
about the company across rank, reflected in behaviour. - Stakeholders’ images: how external stakeholders perceive the company, in
other words, it is the outside world’s overall impression of the company.
The alignment of these stars is the means to the creation of a strong and successful
corporate brand identity. These elements are comparable to the four supporting
themes: strategic vision equals corporate identity, organizational culture and orga-
nizational identity share common perspective, and stakeholder images are equiv-
alent to the two external supporting themes, image and reputation.
The alignment of the three strategic stars requires that attention be paid to all
three elements simultaneously. Misalignments can be detected by a series of diag-
nostic questions to all stakeholders internally as well as externally, uncovering the
relationship between the three elements and potential gaps.
The aim with this series of questions is to uncover gaps between either of the
elements, represented by, respectively, employees, management and external
stakeholders. It is a way to see whether if the strategic vision of top management is
in line with consumer demands and if there is sufficient internal employee support
for the strategic vision. Analysis of identity gaps should ideally be conducted
concurrently to ensure ongoing alignment of the strategic elements that are key to
the creation of brand identity. After having identified any identity gaps, it is
essential that the information gathered is used to make an action plan for how
vision and image can undergo a process of realignment. If the problem is
misalignment between vision and organizational culture, then the consequences
could be a brand identity promising too much compared with what employees are
prepared or able to deliver. This type of misalignment problem requires that either
The identity approach 61