Corporate Identity
Working Paper Series
British Airways and Balmer’s AC3ID Test of Corporate Brand Management Professor John M T Balmer Dr Helen Stuart Working Paper No 04/26 July 2004
The working papers are produced by the Bradford University School of Management and are to be circulated for discussion purposes only. Their contents should be considered to be preliminary. The papers are expected to be published in due course, in a revised form and should not be quoted without the author’s permission.
W O R K I N G PA P E R S E R I E S
BRITISH AIRWAYS AND BALMER’S AC3ID TEST OF CORPORATE BRAND MANAGEMENT Professor John M. T. Balmer Professor of Corporate Identity Bradford School of Management Emm Lane Bradford West Yorkshire BD9 4JL England U.K. and Dr Helen Stuart Lecturer School of Business and Informatics McAuley Campus Australian Catholic University PO Box 456 Virginia Brisbane 4014 QLD, Australia.
ABSTRACT
There can be few organizations that have received as much media attention as British Airways (BA). This is particularly in regard to its various changes of identity/corporate brand that have been key elements of its changing strategy. As a consequence, BA has been the subject of considerable international interest. As such, its changing corporate identity and corporate branding strategies have received many plaudits, and sometimes censure. In this article the wisdom of the BA’s various changes of corporate identity is assessed using the Balmer’s AC3ID Test of Corporate Brand Management. The test is a diagnostic tool for examining the relationships (and possible misalignments) between the six identities that are found within many organizations. Our analysis confirms the efficacy of Balmer’s AC3ID test for its diagnostic ability in detecting key identity issues, given that the test encapsulates multiple disciplinary roots and time frames. As we will show in the article, the early changes to the BA identity brought into alignment some key dimensions described by
British Airways and Balmer’s AC3ID Test of Corporate Brand Management Professor John M T Balmer Dr Helen Stuart Working Paper No 04/26 July 2004
The working papers are produced by the Bradford University School of Management and are to be circulated for discussion purposes only. Their contents should be considered to be preliminary. The papers are expected to be published in due course, in a revised form and should not be quoted without the author’s permission.
W O R K I N G PA P E R S E R I E S
BRITISH AIRWAYS AND BALMER’S AC3ID TEST OF CORPORATE BRAND MANAGEMENT Professor John M. T. Balmer Professor of Corporate Identity Bradford School of Management Emm Lane Bradford West Yorkshire BD9 4JL England U.K. and Dr Helen Stuart Lecturer School of Business and Informatics McAuley Campus Australian Catholic University PO Box 456 Virginia Brisbane 4014 QLD, Australia.
ABSTRACT
There can be few organizations that have received as much media attention as British Airways (BA). This is particularly in regard to its various changes of identity/corporate brand that have been key elements of its changing strategy. As a consequence, BA has been the subject of considerable international interest. As such, its changing corporate identity and corporate branding strategies have received many plaudits, and sometimes censure. In this article the wisdom of the BA’s various changes of corporate identity is assessed using the Balmer’s AC3ID Test of Corporate Brand Management. The test is a diagnostic tool for examining the relationships (and possible misalignments) between the six identities that are found within many organizations. Our analysis confirms the efficacy of Balmer’s AC3ID test for its diagnostic ability in detecting key identity issues, given that the test encapsulates multiple disciplinary roots and time frames. As we will show in the article, the early changes to the BA identity brought into alignment some key dimensions described by