How Corporate Communication Influences Strategy...

Corporate Reputation Review Volume 8 Number 3 Top of Mind How Corporate Communication Influences Strategy Implementation, Reputation and the Corporate Brand: An Exploratory Qualitative Study Janis Forman Anderson School at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA Paul A. Argenti Tuck School at Dartmouth, Amos Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH ABSTRACT This paper reports the ï ¬ ndings of a qualitative ï ¬ eld study of ï ¬ ve ï ¬ rms from diverse industries on best practices in corporate communication, especially as they concern the links between a company’s corporate communication function, on the one hand, and its implementation of strategy, its reputation and its corporate branding, on the other. The overarching question addressed in†¦show more content†¦The corporate communication function is the actual department or unit whose purpose is to implement an organization’s stra- tegies through communication. The unit also serves as the antenna of an organization, receiving reactions from key constituencies to various strategies of the ï ¬ rm. By strategic implementation, in this study, the authors mean how a company executes its corporate strategy or its plans for the overarching identity and direction of the ï ¬ rm. By reputation, the authors mean how all constituencies, collectively, view the organization. The idea of ‘brand’ is central to this work and merits further discussion. David Aaker (1991), Emeritus Professor of Marketing at the Haas School of Business, deï ¬ nes brand as follows: ‘A brand is a distinguishing name and/or symbol (such as a logo, trademark, or package design) intended to identify the goods or services of either one seller or a group of sellers, and to diï ¬â‚¬erentiate those goods or services from those of competitors. A brand thus signals to the customer the source of the product, and protects both the cus tomer and the producer from competitors who would attempt to provide products that appear to be identical.’ Aaker (1991: 7) Tom Blackett (2004) of Interbrand, a world-leading brand consultancy, points out that, regardless of its use, the word ‘brand’ has always meant ‘in its passive form, the