What is Corporate Advertising?

Corporate advertising is a promotional strategy that is designed to not only interest consumers in products and services offered by the company, but also to cultivate a positive reputation among consumers and others within the business world. The focus of corporate advertising is on the company itself, with the attention to the products produced by the corporation being a byproduct of the advertising effort. This type of corporate marketing is often employed along with advertising campaigns that are directly focused on the goods and services produced by the company.

The main function of corporate advertising is to generate and enhance a sense of confidence and appeal among vendors and consumers. Depending on the exact nature of the corporate marketing approach, the advertising may also be developed with an eye of enhancing the reputation of the company among its peers in a community or within a given sector of the marketplace. In any application, the idea is to build the most agreeable public image for the corporation as possible.

It is not unusual for a company to engage in corporate advertising as a means of dealing with some incident or factor that has damaged the reputation of the company. Factors may include unsubstantiated claims made about the business practices of the company, or some aspect of the quality of the products produced by the corporation. Corporate marketing campaigns may also help to restore consumer confidence when a takeover or merger involving the company takes place. From this perspective, a well-crafted campaign is a powerful tool for use in damage control situations, and may be capable or restoring confidence after the public perception of the business has been tarnished in some manner.

While corporate advertising does include some mention of company products, the object of this type of advertising is not directly aimed at generating sales. Instead, corporate ads focus on the strength and reliability of the company as a whole, the integrity that the business employs in all its business relationships, and how the company seeks to better the circumstances of the geographic locations where it operates. As part of this process, it is not unusual for one or more of the leading products to be mentioned, but there is usually no mention of pricing or upcoming discounts of products found within corporate advertising campaigns. Those are left to product advertising efforts that focus specifically on the goods produced for sale.