Brand Dictionary: An A-Z of design industry terms.
Helping you unpack branding gobbledygook, and become a brand-building geek.
Brand
A ‘living’ business asset. A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service or company. It’s the way people understand, navigate and talk about a company and it simplifies their decision-making when choosing one product or service over another. A brand helps to ensure long-term relationships by driving demand, commanding a premium and engendering loyalty.
See also: Branding
Brand ambassador
Employees who represent and passionately promote a brand but are not directly tied to the brand, marketing or communication functions. Ideally every employee in an organisation lives the values of the brand, but brand ambassadors go a step further: they rally other employees, advance the brand story, embody the values and help others to do the same. Brand ambassadors can come from any function in an organisation and can be at any level of seniority or tenure. They’re usually natural leaders and influencers who other employees seek out for information.
Brand architecture
How a company defines the relationship between its brands to help people understand what the company offers, and how to choose the brand that best meets their needs. A brand architecture organises brands and products to create clarity for the customer. There are three primary brand architecture approaches:
Monolithic – (also known as ‘branded house’) where the company brand is used on all products and services offered by the company
Endorsed – where all sub-brands are linked to the corporate brand by either a verbal or visual endorsement
Freestanding – (also known as ‘house of brands’) where the company brand operates merely as a holding company, and each product or service is individually branded for its target market.
There are multiple variations of these primary structures.
Brand engagement (or employee engagement)
Great brands are built from within – and it starts with an organisation’s people and culture. Brand engagement, also known as employee engagement, is the process of linking internal culture and employee behaviour to business goals via the brand. It ensures that the brand proposition becomes central to daily operations and decision-making, that the brand values are embodied day in and day out, and that these guide all interactions with customers.
A great brand engagement program connects the organisation’s human resources activities (employee activation, training, assessment and goal setting) with the brand and business strategy to encourage on-brand behaviours and positively impacts both employee satisfaction and business performance.
Brand identity
A brand identity is the overall look and feel of a brand. The tangible part that you can see and touch, or hear and watch. A brand identity brings together different visual and written elements (logo, tagline, copy, graphics, photography) to form a consistent look and to differentiate a business or product from its competitors. It’s also how a business is perceived by consumers and how it can appeal to a particular market.
Brand mission (or mission statement)
A brand mission is a statement or short paragraph expressing a company’s core purpose or reason for being. It provides direction for the entire organisation and guides a company’s decision-making and strategic planning. It is different from brand vision or vision statement – the mission is what is accomplished every day while the vision is an expression of a future state to be pursued.
See also: Brand vision
Brand mark
A brand mark is an image, element or symbol that provides visual recognition for a business, organisation or product, such as Nike’s ‘swoosh’, Apple’s apple symbol or Twitter’s bird icon. Its purpose is to promote and aid visual recognition.
Brand personality (or personality attributes)
The attribution of human characteristics or personality traits to a brand as a way to achieve differentiation. These traits inform a number of key brand assets: how a brand looks (brand identity or visual identity), how a brand speaks (brand voice or verbal language), and how a brand acts (brand behaviours).
Brand positioning
The distinctive position a brand adopts in the marketplace to ensure differentiation – often as a statement that describes the competitive, relevant and differentiating place the brand occupies in its defined market. Brand positioning is the unique experience that helps an organisation’s key target audiences tell the brand apart from direct and non-direct competitors. A strong positioning gives a brand a clear role in the world and is a combination of tangible and intangible benefits that help people connect with and choose the brand over any other.
Brand promise
A brand promise outlines the reciprocal relationship between the brand and its audience – it communicates the benefits and experiences the audience should expect in a way that connects emotionally, and therefore guides the organisation internally in order for its people to help deliver on that promise.
Brand proposition (or brand statement)
The most inspiring and compelling information an organisation can convey about its brand to its audience. A brand proposition is strong, concise, authentic and meaningful to people, and clearly outlines the benefit they get from the brand – one that no other brand can provide in the same way. It typically combines what a brand does exceptionally well, with its aspirations for the future. It is sometimes used interchangeably with brand promise and even brand purpose.
See also: Brand promise; Brand positioning; Brand purpose
Brand purpose
A brand purpose reflects a company’s fundamental raison d’être – its reason to exist beyond making money. It is the expression of an organisation or company’s role in the world, and how that connects to its business strategy. It outlines the defendable, ownable and actionable impact that the brand has on its audiences, and how it delivers genuine value.
Brand touchpoint (or touchpoints)
A brand touchpoint can be defined as any way a consumer interacts with a business, organisation or product, for example through a website, an app, in a store or through any form of printed or digital communication. Touchpoints are the varying ways that a brand interacts and communications with their customers, allowing them to have experiences every time they ‘touch’ any part of a product or service.
Brand values
A set of beliefs or attributes that represent the code by which an organisation lives and operates – its strengths and how it positively impacts people, what it stands for, the things it holds dear, the principles that define how it behaves. It is literally documenting what a company values above all else. These attributes guide the actions of the organisation and are embodied both in business practices as well as in employees, acting as a benchmark to measure performance and behaviours. Brand values stem from the most core purpose and belief of an organisation and help deliver a brand’s promise in the marketplace. Also known as: company values, corporate values or values.
Brand vision
The expression of an organisation’s future aspirations and where all the initiatives and work it undertakes will eventually lead it. The brand vision provides a sense of direction and of the role it plays in the world by creating a clear picture of its future. It also helps an organization – and its people – understand why they are doing what they are doing. In some cases, it focuses on the good the company does in the world.
See also: Brand purpose; Brand mission; Brand values; Brand personality; Brand proposition
Brand voice (or tone of voice)
A distinct way of speaking and communicating to make certain a brand is clearly heard, quickly recognised and easily remembered in a noisy marketplace. A brand voice brings a brand to life through writing style – a customised approach designed to showcase the singular personality of a brand through stylistic language tactics. It’s how a brand says what it says.
A brand voice is applied across all brand touchpoints and is closely aligned to a brand’s visual identity. Also known as: tone of voice.
Branding (or brand/branding design)
The process of creating a unique name, image, identity and language for a business, organisation or product. It’s achieved through the consistent use and combination of visual and verbal language and aims to establish a significant and differentiated presence in a marketplace to attract and retain customer loyalty. Branding is the process of connecting good strategy with good design.
Branding agency (or branding studio/designer)
A branding agency is a creative firm that specialises in creating and launching brands, as well as rebranding existing businesses or organisations. The role of a branding agency is to create, plan and manage a brand strategy for their client, but also to assist in the launch of a brand and provide ongoing brand management services in the form of: campaign management; advertising; marketing; and many other forms of print and online/digital promotion.
Logo, logotype or wordmark
Logo is short for logotype. A logotype – or wordmark – is the way a company, product or service name is designed. It typically incorporates a simple graphic treatment, such as a custom designed typeface or unusual rendering of letter forms, to make the name immediately identifiable and uniquely ownable. Examples of brand names that utilise a logotype or wordmark approach are Coca-Cola and IBM.
Messaging
Messaging is a verbal strategy for communicating what makes an organisation, business or product different from its competitors through language and writing. It enables a brand to tell its story. By emphasising the same messages – but with fresh, varied expressions – audiences come to understand what a brand stands for in a consistent, relevant and authentic manner. What you say is just as important as how you say it.
Naming
The practice of developing a brand name for a business, organisation or product. Brand names are valuable economic assets that should be carefully created and protected by their owners.
Trademark
Often used as a synonym for ‘brand’, a trademark is something that helps us identify the goods or services of one particular company and distinguish them from those of another company. A trademark can take many forms but most often is established or already exists as name, a tagline or a logo. A trademark is proprietary and usually registered with the trademark office in every country it’s used, giving it protection and legal rights for its owner.
Verbal identity
Verbal Identity is a customised communications strategy that guides and defines how a brand tells its story in a consistently compelling way. It creates emotional connections with employees, customers and stakeholders alike. It uses language to express ideas and bring strategic thinking to life – from conveying personality through a distinct brand voice, to ensuring clear and consistent messaging throughout all key brand touchpoints. Also know as: verbal strategy.
See also: Brand voice; Brand touchpoints
Visual identity
A visual identity is the overall look of a brand’s communications achieved by the consistent use of particular visual elements to create distinction, such as the combination of specific typefaces, colours, graphic elements and imagery. Its primary role is to maximise ownership, recognition and memorability in a market place.
See also: Brand identity
Still unsure of the difference between your brand and your branding? Want to sort your positioning from your purpose?
We’re here to help. Talk to a brand consultant (minus the gobbledygook). Contact our branding agency in Perth.
