Brand

Brand, in our view, is essentially the sum of the experiences consumers have with your product, services, communications and people.

Brand Alignment

Harvard Business Review reported “Successful visionary companies are 1% vision and 99% alignment”. Brand alignment comes after a programme of communication throughout an organisation to gain buy-in and commitment to Corporate Branding Strategy and values. This does not come from a single ‘show-and-tell’ staff conference

Brand Attributes

The specific and different dimensions or aspects of a product/service that a potential customer self-selects and uses to make judgments about the benefits of alternatives. Brand attributes can be functional or intangible, and have varying degrees of importance to different people.

Brand Building

The systematic process of understanding and managing the perceptions and experiences customers have with a brand in a manner that creates added value and preference over competitive alternatives.

Brand Champion

The person who knows the brand inside out and who protects it at all times.

Brand Equity

The advantages (if any) from the collective and unique set of distinctions - real and/or perceived - attached to your product/service offering by customers. Brand equity shows up in these areas: awareness, familiarity, image/identity, associations, availability, preference and loyalty.

Brand Essence

The heart of a brand, its DNA. Frequently boiled down by ‘experts’ into the lowest common denominator. This manages to ignore the fact that a brand is a rich set of emotions and often unique to each individual. An effective Corporate Identity Company will retain the richness that makes a brand in describing the brand essence

Brand Experience

The totality and quality of what is promised and what is actually delivered throughout the customer’s or user’s engagement with the brand. Strong brands represent a consistently authentic, desirable and positive experience for the customer.

Brand Extension

Using brand equity to take the brand into new product or service territories

Brand Guidelines

A set of rules that inform how a brand communicates - too often a straight-jacket. We believe that it should be a spring-board to effective communication.

Brand Identity

Brand identity is the collective set of names, symbols, colors, personality (“look and feel”) and key associations/attributes that provide the cues and messages customers should and will use to define and judge what a brand is all about. In contrast to image, identity should represent what is true and authentic about a brand. Identity can and should be carefully and consistently managed.

Brand Image

Brand image is how you are perceived to be from an external perspective. Image is the selective and often personally judgmental set of associations and perceptions people have about a brand based on impressions and/or experiences. Image is the way a customer imagines or believes a brand to be. Oftentimes brand image and identity are not aligned. Image is more difficult to manage than identity because it’s influenced by events beyond control, like media, competitors and market conditions.

Brand Loyalty

The degree to which customers are loyal to the brand, as expressed by their ongoing endorsement and repurchase of the brand, and by the degree of support and allegiance to the brand, considering all available alternatives. Increasing brand loyalty is the source of most of the economic advantages of brand building.

Branding

Or Brand Management. The active management of reputation to create permanent competitive advantage. Applied to all aspects of products, services and organisations

Brand Mark

The brand landscape; the expanse of brands and brand-related items (logos, ads, and so on) within a culture or market.

Brand Mission

The internal statement of purpose, or a specific goal, that drives and guides all activities shaping customer perceptions and experiences with a brand.

Brand Personality

Brand personality is the aspect of a brand’s identity that reflects the “human” persona of the brand. It’s the observable tone, behaviors and manner of a brand. A good brand personality creates opportunities to contrast with key competitors and be appealing to the target audience. It should be reflected in the tone and manner of all communications.

Brand Positioning

The memorable and differentiating idea about a brand that customers/prospects (should) have in their minds. A positioning is also a promise that’s experienced every day, in ways big and small, through messages, products and people. If done well, a positioning defines an emotional link or bond between the brand and the customer. (Note: A brand positioning should include personality to be complete.)

Brand Promise

A brand promise statement answers these questions: What can you expect and how will you benefit from the brand? What’s motivating and differentiating about the brand experience? What problems does the brand solve?

Brand Slut

A consumer with no loyalty to a particular brand.

Brand System

The interdependent set of named and/or trademarked products, features, and services that a company has created and developed over time. A brand system needs to be managed on a collective, not just an individual brand basis.

Brand Values

All too often an undifferentiating set of adjectives that describe how an organisation wants to be seen. However, at its best, a motivating set of phrases that describe how an organisation goes about its business for which they consequently become famous

Brand Vision

Sets long-term direction and aspirations for building the brand. The vision has emotional potential from a customer and internal perspective, shapes/inspires the brand experience and is consistent with the business mission.

Brand Wagon

The current trend towards using branding concepts and techniques in marketing.

Brand Width

The amount of brand recognition enjoyed by a product or service.

Corporate Brand Management

Active management of corporate (communication) assets to ensure consistent activity around a common goal - as consistency creates trust and without trust a brand cannot exist. Often achieved with a Corporate Branding Consultancy

Corporate Identity

Or Company Identity. The ‘suit of clothes’ that a company wears to each of its various audiences at its ‘moments of truth’. This includes architecture, interior and graphic design, tone of voice and has the logo as the most powerful single expression

Endorsement

A Business Naming convention adding credibility to a product or service by formally relating it to the parent company through the corporate identity. Can also be used to create a sense of ‘group’ to a diverse organisation

Logo

The most valuable single communication asset owned by a company, service or product. Note: Anything that is valuable is rare.

Mission

Or ‘Mission Statement’. A definition of success created by management in consensus, creating a common and measurable ambition

Moments of Truth

A phrase reported by Tom Peters to describe the moments when a brand has an interaction with its customer - and can therefore influence perception

Proposition

The offer to the customer

Strap Line

Or tag-line. A carefully crafted public expression of the Mission that complements the Brand Naming and the Company Identity

Sub-Brand

As the name suggests, a derivative of a brand

Vision

All too often ‘To be No1’ or ‘the most profitable.’. It should be a beautifully crafted and motivating set of words that describe how the Mission will be achieved. Viz. Disney’s vision ‘To make people happy’.

Visual Identity

A sub-set of the corporate identity that deals with the ‘look and feel’ of a brand

Wordmark

Naming a company to create a logo. The use of type alone to create a unique and recognisable logo

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