To give corporate identity real substance. Corporate identity, CI for short, began in the United States. There it clearly meant visual identity, that is, how a company looks (Hiraike, 2001, p. 1). In 1970, Motoo Nakanishi of the Japanese consultancy PAOS studied American CI for his book DECOMAS, short for Design Coordination as a Management Strategy (Yoshiba, 1981, p. 35; Nakanishi, 2004a). Most of the American projects, he found, dealt with naming and visual identity. In his view, they lacked the content to deserve the name identity. Identity, for him, is "the ground a company stands on". He thought it important to build such content in Japan and wrote his book to suit Japanese management (Nakanishi, 2004a, translated). Later critics in Japanese business still saw the same gap. Yasuo Kuroki, who led the development of the Walkman at Sony, observed that many Japanese companies saw CI as a treatment of symptoms, like ointment on a boil. So they simply changed their logo. Identity work, he argued, had to treat the cause instead. It had to change the company's constitution, the nature that makes it prone to boils in the first place (Kuroki, 1987, 2001, cited in Iwatani & Yaegashi, 2025, p. 95).

To keep the company's identity in step with change. Hiraike lists the situations that led Japanese companies to introduce CI. When companies moved into new businesses, a gap opened between what they actually did and their philosophy and name. When they handed power down to their units or spun units off, this worked like a centrifugal force and pulled them apart. A clear philosophy, spread inside and outside, was to hold them together. Going international called for new names, as when TDK and HOYA dropped their old Japanese names. Marketing moved on from competing on price and quality to standing out through brand and corporate image. And large companies suffered from "big-company disease". They grew rigid, morale fell, the sense of unity weakened and departments pulled in different directions. This called for a livelier corporate culture (Hiraike, 2001, pp. 3–4, translated).

To bring corporate culture into identity work. In the United States, CI had started with visual identity. Research on corporate culture ran in a separate stream. When the two streams met, CI gained depth (Hiraike, 2001, p. 5). Hiraike cites Fukami on how this happened. The idea of corporate culture came from America. It caught the attention of Japanese managers who wanted to change how their employees thought, and so it was taken up in connection with CI (Fukami, 1991, cited in Hiraike, 2001, p. 5). Wakabayashi and colleagues link this turn to the Japanese CI boom of the late 1980s, when CI projects surged, above all in large companies. Companies were now expected to state more than targets such as growth, advanced technology and high quality. They also had to name their reason for existing, their values and their social responsibility (Wakabayashi et al., 1991, pp. 81–82). A Chinese textbook chapter (attributed to He, 2010) sums up the result. After Japan adopted CI in the 1970s, CI grew from visual identity into a shared spirit and code of conduct. Business leaders championed it, and all employees practised it (He, 2010, "Basic Content" section, translated).

The model splits corporate identity into three levels. Mind Identity (MI) is the company's philosophy, the reason it exists and the goals it pursues. Behaviour Identity (BI) is the way its people act. Visual Identity (VI) is the way the company looks, from its name to its symbol mark (Hiraike, 2001, pp. 2–3). The philosophy is the root, and the other two levels spread it. Hiraike reaches this view by comparing Japanese definitions of CI. Some stress the visual image, some the company's philosophy and some the behaviour of its employees. He brings them together. At the core is the corporate philosophy, and it spreads in two ways, through the behaviour of employees and through visual communication to the outside (Hiraike, 2001, p. 2).

• One root, two branches: in the table shown above, MI sits at the top as the level that rebuilds the philosophy. VI and BI branch off from it side by side. VI gives the philosophy a form that people can see and hear, and BI spreads it inside and outside the company (Hiraike, 2001, p. 2, Table 1).
• Inside and outside affect each other: BI works mainly inside, through the company's culture. VI works outside, through visible signs. Yet each also reaches the other side. A friendly receptionist can leave visitors with a good image of the company. Staff who learn that outsiders think well of their company grow proud of it and start to act differently (Hiraike, 2001, p. 8). So BI and VI must not paint two different pictures. Both need to convey one and the same image (Hiraike, 2001, p. 5).
• Built up in stages: historically, CI started with VI, then put more weight on MI, and finally BI came into focus. Hiraike writes this as CI = VI, then CI = MI + VI, and finally CI = MI + VI + BI. For him, the last stage means that a company renews itself (Hiraike, 2001, p. 3).
• A fourth level in a Chinese textbook: the chapter adds Audio Identity (AI), identity through sound. It covers songs for staff and for the public, advertising music, short advertising lines and a company name that is easy to say and expresses the philosophy (He, 2010, "Basic Content" section).

Who coined the formula is open. No author found presents the three levels as a model of his own, so this profile rests on secondary sources. The earliest dated use of the three labels in the available sources is a book by Satoru Okada from 1986. Hiraike's table follows Okada's summary (Okada, 1986, cited in Hiraike, 2001, p. 2). Inoue and colleagues cite the categories Mind, Behaviour and Visual from a later work by Igari and Jo (1993, cited in Inoue et al., 2021, p. 5).

In Japan, CI was introduced mainly by Nakanishi and his firm PAOS (Yoshiba, 1981, p. 35). Nakanishi first used the name DECOMAS around 1966, when he presented a manual of design rules he had made for TDK. His book of that title followed in 1971 (Nakanishi, 2004a). Yoshiba, a designer writing in 1981, describes DECOMAS as design integration. It sets basic elements such as name, mark, typeface and colour and applies them in twelve fields, from business forms to vehicles. The finished system is written down in a manual, which the company then follows. The aim is a unified visual image (Yoshiba, 1981, pp. 36–37). Its successor COCOMAS, short for Corporate Communication as a Management Strategy, put corporate communication at the centre (Yoshiba, 1981, p. 42).

In this account, neither DECOMAS nor COCOMAS uses the labels MI, BI and VI. Yet Nakanishi's definitions from that time already hold the three ideas. For him, CI rebuilds the company's philosophy, turns it into a style and a way of behaving and lets it become part of the company's constitution (Yoshiba, 1981, p. 55). He gives special weight to elements that appeal to the senses, such as the symbol mark and the corporate colour (Nakanishi, 1982, cited in Hiraike, 2001, p. 2). Looking back in 2004, Nakanishi calls the split into MI, BI and VI a theory that was widely used in the CI boom and "not wrong". He does not present it as his own (Nakanishi, 2004b, translated).

Nakanishi writes that his book DECOMAS reached Korea and Taiwan and later mainland China. In the countries that write with Chinese characters, it was received as the first book on the subject (Nakanishi, 2004a). The Chinese textbook traces the Corporate Identity System (CIS) itself to Europe and the United States, from where it spread to East Asia (He, 2010, "Different Models" section). Its chronicle dates Taiwan's first corporate mark to Formosa Plastics in 1967. On the mainland, the health-products maker Taiyangshen came first, in 1989, with a corporate mark and a visual identity system (He, 2010, "Chronicle" section).

None of the sources lays down a fixed method. They show how companies, consultants and scholars in Japan and China worked with the three levels. Hiraike sees CI as a way of adapting to change. It starts with a review of the philosophy. If the philosophy no longer fits the company's environment, it is changed (MI). Then it is spread inside the company, through strategy, structure, management systems and rituals (BI). Outside, it is spread through name, mark, logotype, colour and buildings (VI) (Hiraike, 2001, p. 8).

Not every project needs all three levels. Hiraike sorts CI projects into nine patterns, using three questions. Does the philosophy need to change, or only to be made clearer, or neither (MI)? Does the culture need to change (BI)? Does the visual expression need to change (VI)? At one end, a check finds nothing to fix. One pattern changes only the visual identity, which is what CI meant when it began in the United States. At the other end, philosophy, culture and visual expression all change. This is CI in its typical form, a movement to renew the whole company. Small projects suit the short term, large ones the long term (Hiraike, 2001, p. 9, Table 2).

Because a full CI changes the whole company, Hiraike calls for strong leadership from the top. The leader first creates a vision, which includes changing the philosophy. Then the leader wins the commitment of staff through the culture and of outsiders through visual expression. Finally, the leader makes the change stick, so that the new culture does not slide back (Hiraike, 2001, p. 8). Hiraike also names six ways to overcome resistance. Dissatisfaction with the present should be brought into the open, and people should take part in the change. They need a vision of the desired future, time to let go of the old state and training in advance. Regular meetings and checks then keep the change alive (Hiraike, 2001, p. 9).

The Chinese textbook sets five principles for introducing a CIS. It should set the company apart, follow strict standards, be easy to communicate, keep all parts consistent and be planned as a strategy for the whole company. The textbook sees advertising as the main way to spread VI, MI and BI. But it also calls advertising a double-edged sword that cannot build an image on its own (He, 2010, "Basic Principles" section).

Wakabayashi and colleagues describe four stages after a CI launch. First, new values are set, such as a new logo, philosophy and goals. Staff share them best when they all take part in creating them. Second, these values are communicated inside and outside, and VI is established. Third, each department turns them into its own activities. Yet at this stage CI is still "a company event" and does not change how each employee behaves. Only in the fourth stage do new structures, rules and a new working climate emerge. Together they form a new corporate culture (Wakabayashi et al., 1991, p. 82, translated).

The sources point to four mistakes in practice.

• Doing all three at once: in the CI boom, many companies tried to tackle MI, VI and BI at the same time and "built a mountain of failures". A newly created philosophy and new behaviour cannot become one at the same moment. Nakanishi sees this as one reason the boom cooled so quickly (Nakanishi, 2004b, translated).
• Stopping at the logo: by 1991, the effect of CI was fading in many companies. The main reason, Wakabayashi and colleagues find, is that the companies were so busy with VI that they never got as far as changing employees' attitudes and behaviour (Wakabayashi et al., 1991, p. 81). Most CI work renewed only the top layer, the concepts and images. It expected the lower layers of structures, rules and behaviour to follow almost by themselves (Wakabayashi et al., 1991, p. 83). Ten years earlier, Yoshiba noted that logos by famous designers had become the main talking point. CI was therefore understood as a management strategy only on the surface. The supermarket chain Daiei was said to have spent 40 million or even 100 million yen on the design of its new mark. This had given rise to the view that "CI is expensive" (Yoshiba, 1981, p. 36, translated).
• Leaving philosophy and behaviour to designers: companies often hire design or media firms to plan and even carry out a CIS. The Chinese textbook warns that MI and BI belong to management and lie beyond what such firms can do. Asking them to design codes of conduct "puts the cart before the horse" (He, 2010, "Essence and Limitations" section, translated).
• Letting the change fade: repeating the same CI message for three or four years leads to "CI fatigue" (Wakabayashi et al., 1991, p. 82, translated). In one steel company, the CI office was dissolved four years after the launch. Its design work, centred on the logo, passed to the general administration department (Wakabayashi et al., 1991, p. 82). A new culture that is left alone slides back to its old state (Hiraike, 2001, p. 8).

• American, Japanese and Chinese models: the Chinese textbook reports that scholars distinguish three national models. The American model stresses visual design and a rational approach. For American designers, corporate identity is mainly the visual system, VI. The Japanese model stresses philosophy and the spirit of the staff. Japanese business and design circles added BI and MI to the visual system. The Chinese model tries to combine both and, in the textbook's words, is still searching for its way (He, 2010, "Different Models" section, translated).
• Birkigt and Stadler, Balmer and Soenen: Inoue and colleagues set the categories Mind, Behaviour and Visual beside two other schemes. Birkigt and Stadler speak of behaviour, communication and symbolism, Balmer and Soenen of soul, voice and mind. Inoue and colleagues see common ground in the categories for the philosophy and for symbols. The remaining category differs: soul, behaviour or communication. They count soul and behaviour as culture. Communication, in their view, is not an element of identity, because it is a means of passing on messages (Inoue et al., 2021, p. 5).