Corporate Marketing (1) The role of the corporate brand.

An interesting observation from Prahalad and Ramaswamy's "The Future of Competition": 'Take Sony: With the multitudinous product choices available to consumers as well as the many financial choices open to investors, the company itself is emerging as a center of brand equity, an anchor for value in a sea of discontinuities. As companies orient themselves towards experiences, what is the real value anchor? We believe it is consistent quality of co-creation experience across multiple channels and multiple events in the experience environment. The experience is the brand - not firm-centric, one-way communication as in advertising, public relations and image manipulation. For brand management the focus on individual-specific experience implies a subjective notion of brand definition, one that the company cannot directly manage. Instead, firms must shift to managing experience environments, working with customers and consumer communities. Brand managers must now facilitate new experiences and create new points of interaction, letting consumers connect the dots as they choose.' ________________________________________________ It's impossible to improve on this far-sighted articulation of the new corporate reality, except to say that other stakeholders also have value-needs from a corporate brand, and also wish to co-create experiences at the corporate interface. Corporate brands now makes multiple offers to multiple stakeholder markets. Balancing these needs is the challenge of Corporate Marketing - which demands internal collaboration, as well as external...