Corporate Identity

The components of corporate identity

The classic model divides corporate identity into three parts, with corporate culture sometimes added as a fourth:

Component	What it covers	Examples
Corporate design	The visual appearance of the organisation	Logo, colours, typefaces, stationery, signage, vehicle livery, workwear, office interiors, website
Corporate communication	How the organisation speaks, internally and externally	Tone of voice, press releases, annual report, boilerplate text, internal newsletters
Corporate behaviour	How the organisation acts towards employees, customers, suppliers and the public	Service standards, complaint handling, hiring practices, environmental commitments
Corporate culture	The shared values the other three express	Mission, values, ways of working

The design part is the most visible and the easiest to specify. The behaviour part is what customers and employees judge most, and no new logo can fix it.

Corporate identity vs brand identity

	Corporate identity	Brand identity
Subject	The organisation	A product, a service, or the company as customers see it
Audiences	Employees, investors, regulators, suppliers, job candidates and customers	Mainly customers and prospects
Scope	Design, communication and behaviour, including legal and administrative documents	Name, visual and verbal elements and how they combine
Number	One per organisation	One or many, depending on the brand architecture
Usual owner	Corporate communications or the executive team	Marketing

When a company sells under its own name (a "branded house"), the two largely overlap: the corporate logo is the brand logo. When it sells under separate product brands (a "house of brands"), the corporate identity appears mainly in the annual report, on the careers site, in legal documents and in investor material, while each product brand has its own brand identity. Many B2B companies sit between the two, with one corporate identity and product lines that carry sub-brands or endorsed names such as "Product X, by Company Y".

The corporate identity manual

A corporate identity manual, or CI manual, records the rules. It covers the same visual ground as brand guidelines, but usually extends to the organisation's own documents and premises:

• Stationery: letterhead, business cards, compliments slips, envelopes, invoices.
• Email signatures, presentation templates and document templates.
• Signage, reception areas, vehicle livery and workwear.
• Rules for subsidiaries and acquired companies: when they keep their name, when they adopt the group identity, and how an endorsement line reads.
• The legal information that must appear on business documents.

The last point is a legal requirement in many countries. In the UK, for example, the Company, Limited Liability Partnership and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2015 require a company to show its registered name on its business letters, order forms and websites, together with its registered number, the part of the UK where it is registered and its registered office address. A letterhead or email signature template that drops these details is non-compliant as well as off-brand, and because templates are copied, the error spreads to every document made from it.

Corporate identity during mergers and reorganisations

Corporate identity changes most often for structural reasons: a merger, an acquisition, a spin-off or a new group name. These projects are mostly logistics. Every subsidiary needs new stationery, signage, email signatures, templates and legal footers on the same date, and the old versions have to be withdrawn from shared drives, intranets and partners' systems. A common failure is a new identity on the website and the old one in every sales deck for months afterwards. See rebranding for how teams plan the switch, and global branding for running one identity across countries.

Corporate identity in Freedam

• In Administration, Branding, the workspace takes on the organisation's identity: a logo and an emblem for light backgrounds and for dark backgrounds, an optional text label beside the logo in the menu bar, and the images shown on the sign-in pages.
• The brand guide documents the corporate design (logos, emblems, colour palettes and typefaces). Every signed-in user can read it and download from it, and so can visitors without an account when the public portal is on.
• Letterheads, email signature files and presentation templates are stored in the asset library. Share links, collections and brand portals point at the asset rather than the file, so they show a replaced letterhead as soon as the new version is uploaded. See version control.
• Templates produce branded images in which colleagues change only the text and colours the designer unlocked.

See create a brand center for how to bring the corporate identity and its files into one place.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between corporate identity and corporate image?

Corporate identity is what the organisation decides and does. Corporate image is how others perceive it. Reputation research measures the gap between the two.

Is corporate identity only for large companies?

No. A small company needs a consistent letterhead, email signature and legal details as much as a large one. Its manual is simply shorter, often a few pages.

What is the difference between corporate design and corporate identity?

Corporate design is the visual part: logo, colours, typography, stationery and signage. Corporate identity also includes how the organisation communicates and behaves.