Corporate branding with the help of corporate real estate

Nowadays, many companies try to attract customers by bundling all marketing efforts under a common corpo-rate brand to reflect the organization’s identity. The principle of corporate branding suggests that the corporate brand ought to be thoroughly embedded throughout the entire company in order to be successful. Therefore, also Corporate Real Estate (CRE) must be managed in accordance with it. This paper explores how CRE can add value to corporate branding. Literature study on possible links between CRE and the corporate brand suggests two possibilities: a direct influence of CRE on the perception of the corporate brand and an indirect link through the influence of CRE on employee behavior which influences the corporate brand. The direct influence has been explored further through field research on the importance of CRE aspects for corporate branding among 19 com-panies. They are split up into 4 different types of service providers: real estate brokers (6), architects (6), lawyers (3) and multinationals (4). Every company tries to form a unique corporate branding strategy, which requires a specific location and build-ing. But the branding ‘story’ within the distinguished organization types does appear to be similar. Corporate identity and its 6 characteristics (structure, strategy, culture, communication, behavior and design) formed a useful tool to determine the proper branding strategy for an organization. Especially ‘design’ and ‘communica-tion’ define the way CRE should communicate the corporate brand. All interviewees confirmed a possible role for CRE in supporting the brand. The results do not provide a single list of CRE aspects for all companies, be-cause it depends too much on company characteristics. But the CRE aspects with the highest scores on possible influence were ‘location access’, ‘location typology’, ‘recognition of the building’, quality of the finishings’ and ‘main entrance of the building’.