inextremis

Institutional Branding Is Not Corporate Branding with Better Manners

Strategy. Clarity. Trust. A publication for mission-driven organisations — European institutions, agencies and associations whose brand must hold, not merely impress.

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Corporate branding persuades. Institutional branding serves.
Table of Contents

A different brand logic, in seven movements.

Seven essays, a final synthesis and a working test — for leaders who need their institutional brand to hold over time.

  1. 00Introduction — A Different Brand LogicWhy institutional branding follows a different logic
  2. 01The Brand Does Not Serve the Same PurposeA corporate brand, a European institution and a European association do not expect the sam…
  3. 02Legitimacy Is Not Built Like PreferenceCorporate branding often seeks to make people prefer. Institutional branding first seeks t…
  4. 03Governance Changes the Very Nature of BrandingGovernance does not come after institutional branding. It transforms its very nature.…
  5. 04Institutional Audiences Are Not Corporate TargetsAn institutional audience does not merely receive a message. It judges the appropriateness…
  6. 05Strong Branding Is Not Necessarily More Expressive BrandingA strong institutional brand can be restrained, calm, rigorous, almost silent in certain c…
  7. 06In Institutional Branding, Operational Constraints Are Part of the StrategyA brand does not live in a platform. It lives in use.…
  8. 07The Success of an Institutional Brand Is Measured by Its Ability to HoldAn institutional brand does not succeed because it creates a moment. It succeeds because i…
  9. —Final Synthesis — A More Mature, More Governed, More Ambitious Creativity
  10. —The Institutional Brand Hold TestInteractive · 10 questions
  11. —Selected References & How inextremis Helps

“A strong institutional brand does not seek, first and foremost, to impress. It seeks to make an organisation more credible, more legible, more coherent, more governable and more able to hold up over time.”