The Corporate Brand

Why are there so many television programmes, books, newspapers and magazines devoted to business? Partly it is because as consumers, employees, managers and shareholders, companies define, enrich and nurture (and occasionally damage) our lives. Business may not offer us the depth of experience of religion or family, but its influence is all-pervasive. Partly it is because business is a spectacle; it has drama and excitement and adventure. It’s like the characters from the Commedia dell’ Arte ‘who display in their costumes and attitudes, the future contents of their parts’.1 The actors do not just interact with each other, they get the audience on their side, or against them, by their willingness to fight fairly, by their integrity as individuals and by their gestures. We can ‘read’ the character of an actor, such as the Harlequin, from his actions and his looks. Similarly we ‘read’ a company by its outward signs, such as its advertising, its brochures and its reported performance. What interests us as an audience is the unfolding of the action; the posturing; the personifications of good and evil. It’s IBM versus Apple, Boeing versus Airbus, British Airways versus Virgin, Coca-Cola versus Pepsi. Depending on our experience and image of the adversaries, and indeed our own sense of self, we identify with one or the other.