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Michael J. Baker: Griffith University, Australia
John M.T. Balmer: Department of Marketing, Strathclyde University Business School, Glasgow, UK
Introduction
In 1970 B. Charles Ames published a seminal article in the Harvard Business Review entitled "Trappings vs substance in industrial marketing". Ames' article was prompted by a crescendo of criticism from senior executives in leading industrial companies who complained that, while marketing might be all very well for fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), it did little if anything for the performance of firms selling industrial goods. Based on a penetrating analysis of practices in industrial firms, Ames came to the conclusion that the reason "marketing" did not appear to work for them was because they had mistaken the "trappings" of marketing - advertising, public relations, sales promotion, etc. - for the "substance". This substance was seen to consist of a managerial orientation which started with an attempt first to define the real needs of customers, and then to focus the organization on the creation and delivery of goods and services which met these needs.
Much the same problem appears to be attached to discussions concerning the nature and role both of corporate identity and of visual identification. For many people corporate identity is considered synonymous with a symbol or icon, with or without a name or "brand" and, sometimes, with a short sentence or statement which summarizes the mission, purpose or positioning of the organization or a product or service offered by it, e.g. "Coca-Cola. It's the real thing" or "TSB - The Bank that likes to say Yes!" This link between corporate identity and visual identification has been a prominent feature within the literature. A recent example is Dowling (1994, p. 8) who goes so far as to describe corporate identity as referring to "the symbols an organization uses to identify itself to people". However, an increasing number of academics and consultants now see corporate identity as referring to "what the organization is" (Balmer, 1995; van Rekom, 1993) rather than how organizations use visual communication. The Pan-European study undertaken among senior managers by MORI (Market and Opinion Research International) for the identity consultants Herion, Ludlow and Schmidt revealed a wide range of views as to the nature of corporate identity. For instance, whereas 44 per...