Brand as Organizing Hub

As brand continues to take on greater gravitas in advertising and marketing discussions, it is important to realize that brand (or symbolic identity, which I use synonymously with brand) should be seen as an organizing hub for organizations. Your organization’s brand identity should organize thought, action, strategy and tactics. For the past few years, I’ve been working on articulating this notion with communication scholar, John Cragan, PhD. This link will take you to one version of our model.

Your brand should be readily identifiable by internal (employees, volunteers, etc.) and external (shareholders, customers, potential customers, etc.) constituents. Brand should help manage expectations and behaviors.

Symbolic Identity should be at the center, serving as the hub, organizing:
• Symbolic Activities
• Structuring Activities
• Informing Activities
• Affiliating Activities

Symbolic Activities – Identity
At this level your brand will influence and be influenced by your symbolic identity structures (or duality of structure) relative to the identity a brand projects, what’s accepted by a given community and what brings a community together (or drives it apart).

Structuring Activities – Management
An organization’s management activities should be led by its brand/symbolic identity. The way the organizations organizes its resources, leads its people and the market and how it decides what’s important.

Informing Activities – Information
Brand identity will also influence the value and perceived currency of information in an organization. The extent to which information is shared, new information is created and the facilitation information structures will be influenced by your brand identity.

Affiliating Activities – Relationships
Symbolic identity also influences relationships in the organization. The identity will help reduce uncertainty on how people relate to each other, resolve problems and judge one another’s value in the organization or symbolic community.

How well does your organization incorporate its symbolic identity into its day-to-day life? A service organization may manage differently than a product company or an educational institution, regardless of the type of the organization it is important that the brand owners realize the influence of the brand and realize that an effective brand cannot be all things to all people.

If you’re interested in real life applications in your organization, contact Sanctioning Agent (email Agent411 @ SanctioningAgent.com).