Brand, Identity and Reputation: Exploring, Creating New Realities ...

A Competance based Brand: Meaning and Management
Tayo Otubanjo, Pan African University, Nigeria
Olusanmi Amujo, Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, Nigeria
Abstract
The paper addresses how business organizations can effectively differentiate themselves in the marketplace. The paper
underscores the strengths of existing corporate branding models whilst also highlighting their inability to accommodate
the core competencies of business organizations. Consequently, key discourses within core competence and corporate
branding literatures are integrated and drawn to develop ‗the competence based branding model‘. The model highlights
the role of corporate personality in the corporate differentiation process – and the meaning of a competence based brand
was suggested. A corporate advertising campaign, which calls attention to Accenture‘s knowledge personality, was
presented to strengthen this meaning. The paper advances the conceptual literature on corporate branding by giving
insight into the stage by stage processes through which a competence based brand evolves. It also provides a platform
on which the role of core competencies within corporate brand building can be better understood.
Keywords: core competencies, corporate branding, corporate personality,
1. Introduction
Between the early 1990s and up until the later part of the mid 1990s, the notion of corporate identity was conceived as
an important field of academic endeavour dominating the corporate marketing literature (Otubanjo and Melewar, 2007;
He and Balmer, 2007; Cornelissen, et al. 2007; Cornelius et al., 2007; Melewar and Karaosmanoglu, 2006; Suvatjis and
de Chernatony, 2005; Balmer, 2002a; Melewar, 2003; Christensen and Askegaard, 2001). The attention generated by
the concept of corporate identity (during the said period) was so momentous that it inspired and influenced the
publication of a special issue addressing this important concept (see European Journal of Marketing‘s 1997 special issue
on corporate identity). More importantly, the vast amount of theoretical and empirical literatures contributing towards
the development of theory in this field provides strong evidence (see Balmer, 2001b) that corporate identity was truly an
important marketing phenomenon during the this period.
Today however, the story is different. The emphasis placed on the understanding of the meaning, management,
planning, evaluation and measurement of the concept of corporate identity and the volume of theoretical literature
contributing to this discipline has reduced considerably. Corporate marketing literature has witnessed a dramatic shift in
emphasis towards corporate branding (Hatch and Schultz, 2003). Consequently, the volume of academic and
practitioner literatures being published in European and American journals within the framework of corporate branding
is rising by the day.
The movement towards increased recognition of corporate branding discipline especially among European academic
and practitioner authors can be adduced to the rise in the volume of importance being placed not only on this
phenomenon as a valuable element of strategic marketing (Mukherjee and He, 2008) and organisational strategy (Leitch
and Richardson, 2003; Balmer 2001a; Olins, 2000) but importantly, it is increasingly seen as a strategic asset
contributing billions of dollars to business organisations (Aaker, 1996).
In the face of today‘s fiercely competitive business activities, rapidly changing business environment, unwarranted
stakeholder attacks and rising number of corporate scandals, corporate branding is increasingly deployed to do four
things: (1) communicate corporate promises or values; (2) enhance the esteem and loyalty in which business
organisations are held amongst stakeholder (Balmer, 2001a); (3) position firms in the favourable mindset of
stakeholders (Keller, 2000) and (4) act as a tool for effective corporate differentiation (Balmer, 2001b; Harris and de
Chernatony, 2001; Ind, 1996, King, 1991).
While a number of studies (de Chernatony and Dall‘Olmo Riley, 1999; de Chernatony, 2001; Harris and de Chernatony,
2001; Leitch and Richardson, 2003; de Chernatony and Segal-Horn, 2003; Urde, 2003; Uggla, 2006) have attempted to
explicate how corporate branding enhances the achievement of the first three objectives highlighted in the last
paragraph, it remains unclear how a corporate brand enhances the successful differentiation of a firm. Given this gap,
this study will attempt to present a new construct – ―competence based branding‖ to explicate how a firm can be
differentiated.
The pursuit of this objective is valuable and important in that it provides an insight into the stage by stage processes
through which a distinct corporate brand evolves. By so doing, the vacuum in literature in relation to how corporate
differentiation occurs through the deployment of a competence based corporate brand is filled. The study provides a
deeper, explicit and analytical insight into the points of linkages that bind the disciplines of core competence and
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