Correspondence: James Rubin, University of Virginia, Danden Graduate School of Business Administration, 100 Darden Blvd., Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA. E-mail: RUBINJ@Darden.virginia.edu

¹is Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia. He teaches, among other things, corporate communication and media, entertainment and sports management. He has written mainly in the genre of case study, recently on cases focusing on corporate branding and CSR. He has published, with Mary Jo Hatch, on the intersection of literary theory and corporate branding. His affiliations include the Arthur Page Society, the Conference for Corporate Communication and the Corporate Communication Institute. He wrote his dissertation at the University of Virginia on aristocrats, criminals and merchants as exemplary figures in the 18th century.

²is Professor of Management at Copenhagen Business School and partner in the Reputation Institute. She is co-editor of Corporate Branding: Purpose, People, Process (with Yun Mi Antorini and Fabian Csaba, Copenhagen Business School Press, 2005) and the author of On Studying Organizational Cultures: Diagnosis and Understanding (De Gruyter, 1995). Her articles on corporate branding, organisational culture, identity and reputation management appear in Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, Corporate Reputation Review, European Journal of Marketing, Human Relations, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management Inquiry and Organization Studies. Together, Hatch and Schultz have edited two books of potential interest to readers of this one: The Expressive Organization: Linking Identity, Reputation and the Corporate Brand (with Mogens Holten Larsen, Oxford University Press, 2000) and Organizational Identity: A Reader (Oxford University Press, 2004). Their most recent book Taking Brand Initiative: How Companies can Align Strategy, Culture and Identity through Corporate Branding was published by Jossey-Bass in 2008.

³is Adjunct and Visiting Professor at the Copenhagen Business School and Professor Emerita at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic and Postmodern Perspectives, now in its second edition (with Ann Cunliffe, Oxford University Press, 2006), and The Three Faces of Leadership: Manager, Artist, Priest (with Monika Kostera and Andrzej Kozminski, Blackwell, 2005). Her articles on corporate branding, organisational culture and organisational identity appear in Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Brand Management, Human Relations, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly and Organization Studies.

Received 15 April 2008; Revised 15 April 2008; Published online 13 June 2008.

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the intersection of business strategy and proactive, self-reflective corporate branding in the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk. With headquarters in Denmark, Novo Nordisk has 23,600 employees in 79 countries. The company has a leading market position in Europe, key segments in the United States, and strong positions in Asia. Still, the highly, even hyper-competitive, US market remains crucial even for a smaller, more specialised company like Novo Nordisk. American pharmaceuticals are now polling at all time lows in terms of public trust (if we leave out for the moment the exceptional example of Johnson & Johnson (J&J)), and there is a looming healthcare crisis of Type 2 diabetes in the United States as well as parts of the developing world. Can a company that announces 'growth—but not at any cost' sustain growth in North America? The question for Novo Nordisk in this market becomes whether there is room for a socially and environmentally responsible pharmaceutical brand that 'does the right thing' to differentiate itself from competitors. One of the most respected and recognised of Scandinavian corporations, will Novo Nordisk's brand values, so consistent with northern European culture, be 'lost in translation' by North American stakeholders even while the ways in which global companies come to define and act on brand values and meaning may well determine the future of Anglo-American business thinking? To address these questions, we draw on a multi-year project involving two case studies with the Danish company. Focusing on issues raised by the relationship between Novo Nordisk's brand strategy in Denmark and its North American subsidiary, we discuss Novo Nordisk's reaffirmation of its core identity in terms of continuity with its rich heritage in the care of diabetes and its brand platform of 'changing diabetes'. Charlotte Ersbøll, the company's Vice President of Corporate Branding, explains that 'changing diabetes' emphasises the continuous fight against diabetes and how Novo Nordisk is demonstrating leadership in this fight through action. Novo Nordisk makes for a particularly timely example. We explicitly try to capture the difference, or at times dissonance, between stakeholder relationships in Nordic brands and in the United States. As a logical extension of Danish values, particularly their emphasis on employees and community, the company made extensive investments in a process of internal discovery that was originally conceived of as aligning corporate culture, internal brand identity and external branding. In fact, this process also led to a more expansive and richer concept of the brand with greater potential for alignment with internal and external stakeholders. The strategic trajectory from identity and values to connecting with all stakeholders through a brand has become more sophisticated and is gaining wider acceptance with managers. Yet it is a step many companies avoid to their ultimate cost. This study of Novo Nordisk originates with the Corporate Brand Initiative based at Copenhagen Business School. While the findings of case studies are still unfolding, Novo Nordisk suggests that successful corporate branding is closely tied to corporate culture; corporate branding is cross-functional; corporate branding may be mandated by top management, yet to succeed, executives at the top of a global brand must remain open to creative ideas from global subsidiaries; investment in a brand should be seen as a long-term strategy.