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This article examines the nature, importance, typology, and management of corporate brands. Argues that in making a distinction between corporate brands, corporate identities, and product brands, the underlying characteristics of corporate brands can be uncovered. A key thesis of the article is that a corporate brand is a valuable resource: one that provides an entity with a sustainable, competitive advantage if specific criteria are met. These criteria are defined in terms of an economic theory known as "the resource-based view of the firm". An affirmation of this economic doctrine requires corporate brands to be rare, durable, inappropriable, imperfectly imitable, and imperfectly substitutable. Also contends that the traditional tripartite, branding typology be expanded to reflect the new modes in which corporate brands are being utilised. These new corporate branding categories are: familial, shared, surrogate, supra, multiplex, and federal. Finally, reasons that the management of a corporate brand requires the orchestration of six "identity types". The critical identity type is the "covenanted identity" because it underpins the corporate brand. The covenanted identity comprises a set of expectations relating to an organisation's products/services and activities. Internally, it acts as a standard against which an employee/employer's actions can be evaluated. Argues that employees are crucial to the success, and maintenance, of corporate brands. Speculates that the current interest in corporate brands is redolent of a new dynamic in marketing. As such, corporate brands are symptomatic of the increased importance accorded to corporate-level concerns and concepts. This interest in corporate-level concerns should form the basis of a new branch of marketing: one that weft and weaves the concepts of corporate identity, image, reputation, communications along with corporate branding. The article concurs with Balmer and Greyser who argue that this area should be known as corporate-level-marketing.

Recent environmental trends are forcing senior managers to give greater import to corporate identity and corporate communications. They are discovering that conventional methods of redressing identity problems are becoming progressively less effective because, in our opinion, the traditional focus has viewed corporate identity and corporate communication as functional rather than as strategic. We suggest a much broadened view that looks at corporate communication as a three-part system process ± primary, secondary and tertiary. In many companies these three are out of balance. Primary communication should present a positive image of the company and set the stage for a strong reputation. Secondary communication should be designed to support and reinforce primary communication. Tertiary communication should be positive and result in a superior reputation if the other two stages of corporate communication are properly conceived. The authors postulate that senior managers who implement this can invest their organisation with a competitive advantage.

In this paper we open up the topic of ethical corporate identity: what we believe to be a new, as well as highly salient, field of inquiry for scholarship in ethics and corporate social responsibility. Taking as our starting point Balmer and Greyser's (2003) AC 2 ID test model of corporate identity -a pragmatic tool of identity management -we explore the specificities of an ethical form of corporate identity. We draw key insights from conceptualisations of Corporate Social Responsibility and social orientated theories of business. We argue ethical identity potentially takes us beyond the personification of the corporation as agent. Instead, ethical identity is seen to be formed relationally, between parties, within a community of business and social exchange. Extending the AC 2 ID test model, we suggest the management of ethical 2 identity requires a more socially, dialogically embedded kind of corporate practice and greater levels of critical reflexivity.

Recent environmental trends are forcing senior managers to give greater import to corporate identity and corporate communications. They are discovering that conventional methods of redressing identity problems are becoming progressively less effective because, in our opinion, the traditional focus has viewed corporate identity and corporate communications as functional rather than as strategic. We suggest a much broadened view that looks at corporate communications as a three-part system process ± primary, secondary, and tertiary. In many companies these three are out of balance. Primary communication should present a positive image of the company and set the stage for a strong reputation. Secondary communication should be designed to support and reinforce primary communication. Tertiary communications should be positive and result in a superior reputation if the other two stages of corporate communication are properly conceived. The authors postulate that senior managers who implement this can invest their organisation with a competitive advantage.