Brand Glossary.
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A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
| Audience |
The key group of people most likely to use the brand. Core audience. Key audience.
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| Benefit |
An advantage derived from using a brand. The benefits judged most important by the audience and the brand’s promoters form the core of the brand.
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| Bottom-up marketing |
Customer driven as opposed to company-driven marketing. Word of mouth (WOM).
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| Brand study |
A qualitative study used to determine the essential attributes and core value of an organization’s brand.
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| BHAG |
A big, hairy, audacious goal.
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| BMAP |
Benefit Mapping And Priority. This is the acronym that of the RobinsonBrandBuilding brand study.
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| Brand |
The perception in the mind of a person of an organization and its products or services.
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| Brand agency |
A company that strategically manages brand building across a wide range of communications channels.
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| Brand alignment |
The practice of delivering all brand encounters aligned with the brand’s core value.
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| Brand ambassador |
Anyone who promotes the value of the brand to its users. Ideally this would include every employee in the company. See brand alignment.
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| Brand asset |
Any aspect of the brand that has value: messages; design; recognition; awareness; loyalty, etc.
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| Brand attribute |
A distinct feature of a brand usually described by an adjective.
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| Brand audit |
A formal analysis of a brand’s strengths and weaknesses across all encounters. See brand study.
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| Brand designers |
People who help build a brand: graphic designers; web designers; strategists; researchers; web developers; PR specialists; copywriters; etc.
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| Brand earnings |
The share of revenue that can be attributed to the brand.
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| Brand equity |
The value of the brand as an item on the balance sheet and/or its market position value.
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| Brand essence |
The brand distilled to its simplest promise. See elevator speech.
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| Brand experience |
A brand encounter and/or the perception of all brand encounters.
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| Brand gap |
The space between the brand’s objectives and a customer’s actual experience.
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| Brand identity |
Name; trademarks; logos; communications; visual appearance. The outward expression of a brand.
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| Brand image |
The mental picture of an organization, and/or its products and services.
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| Branding |
The process of brand building.
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| Branding blueprint |
After the BMAP study, the blueprint provides a graphic representation of exactly what needs to be done to create, promote and build the brand based on the information gained from the BMAP.
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| Brand integration |
The discipline to keep brand messaging consistent across all communication channels.
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| Brand loyalty |
The tendency to use the brand over and over.
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| Brand personality |
The character of a brand usual expressed as a noun. “Friend” “Listener”
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| Brand story |
An articulate narrative that expresses the meaning of the brand.
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| Brand strategy |
A plan to develop a brand to meet business objectives.
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| Category |
The market arena in which the brand competes. Eg. Brands in the cola category; cars in the sporty category; brands in the ketchup category.
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| Charismatic brand |
One that inpires a high degree of loyalty. Aka lifestyle brand; passion brand. Eg. Macs; Starbucks; BMWs.
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| Clutter |
The white noise of the market place composed of a disorderly outpouring of messages.
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| Cognitive dissonance |
holding a belief plainly at odds with the evidence, usually because the belief has been held and cherished for a long time. Psychiatrists sometimes call this "denial."
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| Commoditization |
The phenomenon where customers come to see products, services, or companies as interchangeable. The ensuing market becomes a price-lowering battle to the bottom. The opposite of branding.
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| Conceptual clutter |
Competing messages that undermine clarity.
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| Core value |
The operating principal that defines the organization and is the base of the brand triangle created by the RobinsonBrandBuilding BMAP study.
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| Corporate identity |
The brand identity of a company. It is an amalgamation in the mind of clients of every brand encounter. These might include website, customer service, directions for use, advertisement, and media stories.
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| Creative brief |
A document that sets parameters for a brand-building project, including context, goals, processes, and resource availability.
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| Customer expectations |
The anticipated benefits of a brand. See Brand promise.
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| Descriptor |
A term used with a brand name to describe the category in which the brand competes. “Fluoride toothpaste.” “Estate planners.” “Online brokers.”
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| Differentiation |
The process of establishing a unique market position that can increase profit margins and avoid commoditization. The result of positioning.
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| Earcon |
An auditory icon like UAL’s Rhapsody in Blue. Aural icon.
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| Elevator pitch |
An easy-to-understand version of a brand’s purpose and market positioning short enough to convey in a brief elevator ride.
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| Evangelist |
A strong brand advocate, best unpaid.
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| Feature |
Any element of a product, service or experience designed to deliver a benefit.
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| Followship |
The art of building on collaborator’s ideas. The opposite of the NIH syndrome.
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| Guerilla marketing |
A marketing program that uses non-traditional channels to promote.
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| Hawthorne effect |
The tendency for research subjects to behave uncharacteristically.
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| Icon |
Logo. Trademark.
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| Identity package |
The graphic representation of a brand that appears on everything from stationery to billboards.
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| Living the brand |
When everyone in the organization and its brand consultants are completely on board with the brand and behaving accordingly.
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| Look and feel |
The sensory experience of a product or a communication.
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| Marketing |
The process of developing, promoting, selling and distributing a product or service.
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| Market penetration or share |
The share of sales of a product or service compared to others in the category.
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| Market position |
The ranking of a product or service within its category.
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| Meme |
An idea that spreads like a virus from one person to the next.
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| Message architecture |
A formal relationship and plan among brand communications.
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| Mission statement |
A concise statement that expresses the purpose and goals of an organization.
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| Name brand |
A widely recognized product, service, or organization.
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| NIH |
The tendency to reject any idea “Not Invented Here.”
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| Observer effect |
The tendency for the presence of an observer to cause changes in what is being observed.
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| Opinion leader |
A person whose opinion or personality exerts and influence over other members of a group; also called an opinion maker.
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| Parallel execution |
The process by which teams work simultaneously rather than sequentially.
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| Parallel thinking |
A brainstorming technique in which everyone thinks in the same directions at the same time, generating a range of usable and unusable ideas. “Yes and…” It is the opposite of the Socratic method in which one person succeeds by proving another wrong.
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| Perception |
Information perceived through the senses. And the mind’s construct of any aspect of reality.
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| Permanent media |
Environmental brand messages that last for years, such as architecture or signage.
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| Permission marketing |
The practice of promoting goods or services with anticipated personal and relevant messages that the prospect permits receiving.
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| Positioning |
The process of differentiating a product, service or company in a customer’s mind to obtain a strategic competitive advantage. The first step in building a brand.
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| Power law |
In brand building, the tendency of success to attract more success.
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| Primacy effect |
The observation that the first impressions tend to be stronger than later impressions, except for the last impression.
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| Product placement |
A form of paid advertising in which products and trademarks are inserted into non-advertising media such as movies, television programs, music and public environments.
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| Pure play |
A company with a single line of business; a highly focused brand.
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| Qualitative research |
Research designed to provide insight using one-on-one interviews like the RBB BMAP brand study.
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| Quantitative research |
Research designed to provide measurement, such as polling.
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| Reach |
The number of people exposed to a brand message.
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| Recency effect |
The observation that the last impression tends to be stronger than earlier impressions, including first impressions.
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| Reputation |
The shared opinion of a product, service or organization among all the members of its audience.
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| Segmentation |
The process of dividing a market into subcategories of people who share similar values and goals.
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| Slogan |
A catch phrase, tagline, or rally cry.
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| Sock puppet |
A fake advocate, usually cloaked behind a fake user name on the Internet, who is pretending to espouse a real cause when in fact he (or she) is being paid to promote a product. See astro turfing.
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| Social network |
A network of people that can be leveraged to spread ideas or messages using viral marketing techniques.
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| Subbrand |
A secondary brand that builds on the associations of a master brand.
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| Tagline |
A sentence, phrase or word used to summarize a market position. “Just do it.” “Think outside the bun.”
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| Target market |
A group of customers that an organization has decided to serve.
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| Touchpoint |
Any place where people come in contact with a brand, including product use, packaging, advertising, editorials, movies, store environments, company employees, and conversation.
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| Trademark |
A name or symbol that indicates a source of goods or services and prevents confusion in the marketplace; a legally protectable form of intellectual property.
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| Tribal brand |
A brand with a cult-life following: Harley-Davidson; Macs.
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| USP |
Unique selling proposition of a product or service.
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| Value proposition |
A set of benefits, including functional, emotional, and self-expressive benefits.
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| Vicious circle |
In brand strategy, a death spiral that leads from a lack of differentiation to lower prices, to smaller profit margins, to fewer available resources, to less innovation, to even less differentiation, and finally to commoditization.
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| Viral marketing |
A technique by which social networks are used to spread ideas or messages, through the uses of blogs, forums, emails, word of mouth and memes.
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| Virtuous circle |
The opposite of s vicious circle; a growth spiral that leads from differentiation, to higher prices, to larger profit margins, to more available resources, to more innovation, to further differentiation, and then to sustainable competitive advantage.
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| Vision |
The aspirations of a company that drive future growth.
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| Voice |
The unique personality of a company as expressed by its verbal and written communications; the verbal dimension of a brand’s personality.
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| Word-of-mouth advertising |
People voluntarily promote a brand, resulting in a very high level of authenticity.
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| Wordmark |
A brand name represented by a distinctive typeface or lettering style. A logotype.
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| Zag |
A disruptive innovation that yields a competitive advantage; the differentiating idea that drives a charismatic brand.
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