CORPORATE BRANDING FOR SERVICES MARKETING COMPANY

Still with Dr. Ned Roberto and Ardy Roberto, according to them, Corporate branding current best practice is a 2-tier branding strategy, not a 3-tier. It is corporate branding on its own and not in relation at all to product branding.


Illustrating with their examples, as to discuss the corporate branding of service marketing company, are the existing companies corporate branding:

HSBC: The World’s Local Bank

Corporate Core Brand: HSBC
Corporate Sub-Brand: The World’s Local Bank

Microsoft: Your Potentials, Our Passion

Corporate Core Brand: Microsoft
Corporate Sub-Brand: Your potentials, Our passion

Bank of Philippine Island (BPI): A Tradition of Leadership

Corporate Core Brand: BPI
Corporate Sub-Brand: A Tradition of Leadership

Metro Bank: You’re in Good Hands

Corporate Core Brand: Metro Bank
Corporate Sub-Brand: You’re in Good Hands

Fedex: We live to deliver

Corporate Core Brand: Fedex
Corporate Sub-Brand: We Live, To Deliver

The First tier is of course the corporate CORE BRANDING, which function mainly is to differentiate one company from the other. From the above you know their corporate core branding.

The Second tier is the SUB-BRANDING, which shows the company’s position or its abilities with regards to their service.




Corporate sub-branding is different from product product sub-branding. To clarify, there are two things to be noted. The first is the way the corporate sub-branding is executed. That is a question of the framing or wording of the corporate sub-brand as a corporate positioning. As from the example above, lest ask, who is talking or saying each of those corporate positioning promises or claims. From the above example, “the Worlds Local Bank” of HSBC’s corporate sub-branding, it is the company who is saying it. With, “Your Potentials, Our Passion” , still the company (Microsoft) who is talking. As also from the above example’s corporate sub-branding it is the company who are talking.


Now, the question is, Is this a wrong way of doing corporate sub-branding? Not an issue. It is a question of what is better.

What is better than the alternative of framing the sub-branding claim where it is the consumers who are talking rather than the company?

As a good example, lets take with McDonald.

Corporate Core Brand: McDonald’s
Corporate Sub-Brand; “ Love ko to”, or “I Love This” in English.

What is the relevance of doing corporate sub-branding where the consumers is talking the company’s position or claims?

When the source of the corporate sub-branding is the consumers, the message acquires a high identification value to the target consumers. It is because they like hearing what they themselves said. The message takes on the character of testimonial. As such being in testimonials character, it is 10 times more persuasive than a laboratory supported claim.



Now, how about corporate sub-branding for a new services company?


Aside from communicating the corporate positioning, can corporate branding second tier serve another marketing function? Yes, it can under another set of marketing circumstances. Again, from the example given by Dr. Ned Roberto and Ardy Roberto, with the “Isla Lipana and Company” It is actually the second largest auditing company in the Philippines. But it is a relatively unknown corporate brand to the general public. Even in the business community, its corporate core brand has low total unaided awareness ratio and even lower top of mind awareness.






What second tier branding strategy is appropriate to effectively address this problem? To overcome an awareness hurdle, its second-tier branding need is a legitimator. That is a maker, who’s known to the general public. And so Isla Lipana and Company did not resort to a corporate sub-branding to communicate its corporate positioning. Instead, it chose mark branding for its second-tier. Its 2nd-tier reads as,

Corporate Core Brand: Isla Lipana and Co.

Corporate Mark Branding: “A Member Firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers”


As the global leader in auditing services, PricewaterhouseCoopers is lending, in this case, its reputable name to overcome the general public skepticism over Isla Lipana corporate brand arising out of low awareness and market ignorance.

And So, in the 2-tier corporate branding strategy, the second tier is a matter of the corporate need and problem. If the need is to position the company, the second tier must serve this purpose via sub-branding move. This was true from the five examples. However, if the company’s branding problem is to overcome low corporate brand awareness, then the second tier must address that problem via the mark branding options as in the case of Isla Lipana and Co.


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