Corporate Brand, Architecture & Interior Design

In "Apples, Insights and Mad Inventors" Jeremy Bullmore states that the
contribution of architecture to corporate brands is widely debated but
infrequently practised. At a time when all are agreed that corporate brands
need to be as clearly differentiated one from another as repeat-purchase
consumer goods, tens of millions can be committed to buildings and interior
design without a single reference being made to the likely effect on the
ultimate customer. It is as if senior management believes that creating a
competitive reputation can safely be left to the hired hands in the
marketing department and is nothing whatsoever to do with them.

These are wasted opportunities : contacts between brand and brand user
which have to happen; but because their primary function is other than
brand communication, are thought to have no brand effect. The majority of
marketing companies do not think of them as media; do not monitor them as
media ; and therefore make no attempt to integrate them with the more
conventional media. Their customers, however - their buying public - make
no such distinction. And so substantial sums of money, which could have
reinforced brand values from unexpected directions, are at best
under-utilised and at worst counter-productive. There are many more brand
encounters of this kind - all essentially anarchaic in nature. By failing
to confirm the brand's true spirit, they challenge it; and so brand
authority is needlessly diminished.