DSM’s purpose-led, performance-driven strategy affects everything we do within our company. It is crucial that our brand identity fits our ambition. We have a great opportunity to simultaneously revitalize and reinforce our brand, allowing us to stand out and create stakeholder preference and loyalty.
Today, the DSM brand identity is worth €846m.
It represents one of our most precious assets. It plays a key role in creating and maintaining stakeholder preference and loyalty. It’s vital to our purpose-led performance strategy; and it (literally) colors everything we do.
Prior to our rebrand in early 2011, DSM was a respected and successful company – but we were what you might call ‘a well-kept secret’.
It’s a testament to the work of everyone in our company that we have made great strides in setting DSM apart from the pack – and making a name for ourselves by embracing – and demonstrating – our commitment to sustainability and creating brighter lives for all.
However, like all successful brands, we will only prosper and survive by continuing to look forward and evolve in a competitive marketplace characterized by constant innovation, globalization and digitization.
Like any valuable asset, our brand needs to be protected and maintained (which is why these brand requirements are essential reading for everyone in terms of understanding how it works in practice and the thinking behind it). But it also needs to be nurtured and developed.
That’s why we are currently creating the DSM Brand Ambassador Training – because you, as much as any website or brochure – are the brand, and we want to give you the tools to explain and role-model what DSM stands for. We will inform you as soon as the DSM Ambassador Training is available.
It’s also why we created our End Market Narrative program, which is now providing a ‘brand bridge’ between the high-level DSM story and detailed value propositions on the Business Group level. The result: a single, cohesive story for the most important stakeholder of all, our customers.
Of course, those are just two examples. These Brand Requirements contain many more – including examples of how our businesses have taken the DSM brand and purpose and elevated them to a whole new level. At a time when there is more scrutiny than ever on big business and its responsibility to society, we have so much to be proud of at DSM. Our brand still has a huge role to play in sharing this with the world.
How far we go, really is in our hands. So, let’s grasp the future!
Minke Bijl
Senior VP Communications
Jan Sijstermans
Global Branding Manager
