A COMPANY’S image can become the mainstay of its marketing push. It ties together the company’s reputation and everything that it stands for and is the basis for communication to key audiences.
It can often be the difference between product sales and being left on the shelf.
However, marketing experts say that the company’s image should not be the product of a ‘good idea’. It should be planned and thought through as carefully as any other part of the company’s marketing and business plans.
Brand and Profile Multi-discipline Design Consulting principal Peter Doeltsch said a company needed to gather information about itself before it started down the path of creating an image.
“Who they are and where they want to go are the sort of questions they should be asking themselves,” he said.
“You need to have some understanding of the company’s existing situation.”
Mr Doeltsch said the image creation process was invariably a long one and, potentially, an expensive one.
“It involves changing all of the company’s communications media, such as letterheads and stationery. It changes the way the company communicates,” he said.
Edensilk director Paul Curtis said putting the image in place was as important as creating the image in the first place.
“When a company launches an image that is just a tactic, but hopefully there is a plan behind it,” he said.
Mr Curtis said all of the company’s staff had to embrace the new image.
“If the organisation is fundamentally the same, the process is for nothing,” he said.
brainCells Creative Marketing managing director Allen Burtenshaw said a company’s image was the visualisation of the brand and all the attributes that the company wanted to bring out about itself.
“You have to go through a whole process of thinking before you start the creative side. Most clients come to us and they want to go straight to the creative but you have to do the planning first,” he said.
“Your brand and your image becomes your reputation.”
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