Content area
Full Text
Revealing the Corporation. Perspectives on Identity, Image, Reputation, Corporate Branding and Corporate-level Marketing Edited by John M.T. Balmer and Stephen A. Greyser Routledge London and New York, NY 2003
Keywords Corporate identity, Corporate branding, Marketing
Review DOI 10.1108/03090560410529312
First impression: a rich and warm auditorium as cover image, deep purple colouring with gold and lights, in front a heavy velvet curtain and on the parquet rows of comforable but empty seats. After turning the first leaves of the volume (that is to say the book's "curtain" has risen) it turns out that there is much light in its content, the atmosphere is warm and friendly for experts, as well as for the more or less unexperienced readers in the topic of Revealing a Corporation, and the rows of seats are full with bright contributors - i.e. leading professionals of the western world who wrote once the most remarkable essays reproduced now on the "stage". And when turning the last leaves of the book: final applause for the two stage managers, namely, the two professors who selected and interpreted the fascinating performance.
The anthology selected and interpreted by Professors Balmer and Greyser deals with a topic which already is of vital importance and will be more and more decisive in the near, as well as in the distant, future for the global competitiveness of corporations: namely their products and services tend to become more and more similar and therefore the corporations' intangibles have now, and will have also in the future, a dominant role in gaining competitive advantage on the home as well as on the global market. One of the most efficient "chain of intangibles" is the topic of the present anthology: the chain which starts with the well-shaped corporate identity and ends up with the characteristics and benefits of corporate branding.
The structure of the anthology follows a strict logical...