Corporate com­mu­nic­a­tion – finding the right corporate com­mu­nic­a­tions

Companies are in constant contact – with customers, business partners, journ­al­ists, or their own employees. No matter who the com­mu­nic­a­tion is aimed at: A concrete strategy always makes sense. Using the right tone of voice is essential in order to com­mu­nic­ate your corporate identity. A suc­cess­ful corporate com­mu­nic­a­tion (CC) strategy helps the company control its impact on others correctly.

The broad field of corporate com­mu­nic­a­tions cannot be precisely defined. In principle, the measures are too diverse and overlap with many other areas of a company, such as marketing. In principle, however, corporate com­mu­nic­a­tion en­com­passes all com­mu­nic­a­tion that a company conducts. This can be found both in­tern­ally, in the way employees are addressed, and ex­tern­ally, if business partners (as in B2B marketing), customers (as in B2C marketing), or media (as in PR) are the ad­dress­ees.

In the sense of a corporate identity, corporate com­mu­nic­a­tion should create a uniform image on all channels. The ho­mo­gen­ous com­mu­nic­a­tion strategy should, for example, also reflect company culture and specify the type of con­ver­sa­tion. The aim of corporate com­mu­nic­a­tion is to be able to control the effect as ef­fi­ciently as possible through a uniform com­mu­nic­at­ive ap­pear­ance.

If one does not pursue a con­sist­ent strategy in all available ways, one either gives away potential or torpedoes their own efforts. To achieve this – es­pe­cially in larger companies – different de­part­ments need to pull together. That’s why changing corporate com­mu­nic­a­tion is not a quick task. If you want to stra­tegic­ally adapt your corporate com­mu­nic­a­tion and bring it into line, you will have to deal with a longer process.

If you decide to undergo the task, you can create several positive effects at once:

• Strengthen corporate identity
• Increase re­cog­ni­tion value
• Improve pro­fes­sion­al­ism
• Efficient control of external impact
• Improve work at­mo­sphere

Corporate com­mu­nic­a­tion covers any contract the company has with others. Roughly speaking, the ad­dress­ees can be divided into four different areas.

Often ignored in a uniform com­mu­nic­a­tion strategy, but actually the basis of efforts, is internal com­mu­nic­a­tion with employees. This com­mu­nic­a­tion is extremely diverse. Through e-mails and letters, forms and reports, circulars, notices, and news­let­ters, col­leagues com­mu­nic­ate with each other and man­age­ment com­mu­nic­ates with employees. These measures should also be carried out in the spirit of corporate identity and it should be checked whether all elements cor­res­pond to the corporate culture.

By using a corporate com­mu­nic­a­tion strategy in internal com­mu­nic­a­tion, it is possible to expose the employees to the branding and at the same time com­mu­nic­ate the values and norms of the company. In addition, well thought-out com­mu­nic­a­tion with employees ensures greater sat­is­fac­tion and a better working at­mo­sphere.

Besides the employees, the customers are the most important contact persons. If customers are not addressed ap­pro­pri­ately, they will not buy anything and con­trib­ute to the failure of a company. A good corporate com­mu­nic­a­tions strategy appeals to customers in the right way and turns buyers into loyal customers. This is where corporate com­mu­nic­a­tion and marketing meet. Everything around the range of ad­vert­ise­ments, the or­gan­isa­tion of news­let­ters, brochures, coupons and cata­logues, and the complete online ap­pear­ance, fall into this range.

However, not only the marketing de­part­ment has contact with customers. Support and billing de­part­ments also com­mu­nic­ate with buyers in one way or another. While the ad­vert­ising sector in most companies follows a uniform strategy, the other contact points with customers must also be brought into line with corporate com­mu­nic­a­tion.

Work with the press – an area of public relations – should also function along the same lines as corporate com­mu­nic­a­tion. Par­tic­u­larly in the form of press releases and press con­fer­ences, the company can make its corporate identity public through the media. Not just the type of com­mu­nic­a­tion, but also the contents are important here. For example, it can make sense to include corporate social re­spons­ib­il­ity measures in the media. In this way, the external image can be con­trolled.

Contact with investors, share­hold­ers, and other business partners must be made with great care. A dis­gruntled investor can cause the demise of a company. Therefore, both the content and form of com­mu­nic­a­tion are important. Contact takes place, not just in direct e-mails and con­ver­sa­tions, but also through reports and letters to share­hold­ers. Many companies create special brochures for their business partners in order to convey in­form­a­tion about the company. If these means of com­mu­nic­a­tion are also created in the sense of corporate identity, this makes a very pro­fes­sion­al im­pres­sion.

In order to drive a suc­cess­ful com­mu­nic­a­tion strategy, corporate com­mu­nic­a­tion has various means. If these tools are co­ordin­ated and con­sist­ently rep­res­en­ted, com­mu­nic­a­tion can be as efficient as possible. In par­tic­u­lar, corporate design, which is generally a pillar of corporate identity and corporate language, play a major role.

In the course of the corporate design, every form of com­mu­nic­a­tion of the company has common graphic elements. For example, they agree on a binding font to be used in all documents. Also the company logo is to be ac­com­mod­ated in every written com­mu­nic­a­tion situation: in letters and e-mails, for example in the let­ter­head and/or the e-mail signature. The corporate design is also continued in present­a­tions. For example, the colour scheme is usually fixed.

Corporate language can be assigned even more to the area of corporate com­mu­nic­a­tion – a special tone of voice, a form of ex­pres­sion that dis­tin­guishes the company ex­tern­ally and in­tern­ally. The language used by a company must follow general rules on the one hand and have an in­di­vidu­al (and uniform) character on the other. In addition to correct grammar and spelling, the former also means ex­press­ing oneself com­pre­hens­ibly. This sounds natural at first, but employees in technical pro­fes­sions in par­tic­u­lar sometimes find it difficult to formulate facts in a way that is un­der­stand­able even for laypeople.

The in­di­vidu­al char­ac­ter­ist­ics of corporate language are about finding the balance between out­stand­ing features and everyday con­ven­tions, to an extent. As a rule, you should stick to a language that is ap­pro­pri­ate for your target group: While it may not be a problem, for example, to speak the language of employees and B2C customers, investors may feel un­com­fort­able with such a casual approach. The most important thing, however, is that corporate culture is also reflected in corporate language. The way in which something is for­mu­lated allows the values and norms of the broad­caster to be derived.

In order for all employees to be able to in­ter­n­al­ise this language, a guide should be drawn up. This can be used to store concrete examples or lists of ex­pres­sions that should not be used or that should be used as far as possible. Ready-made text modules, which occur again and again in everyday com­mu­nic­a­tion, also make it easier for employees to deal with the com­mu­nic­a­tion strategy.

There are many ways in which a company can apply its corporate com­mu­nic­a­tion strategy in practice. Both in­tern­ally with employees, as well as ex­tern­ally, the most diverse pos­sib­il­it­ies can be found to use en­ter­prise com­mu­nic­a­tion ef­fect­ively. The measures do not always have to run off in writing.

Please note the legal dis­claim­er relating to this article.