A

ARTIFACT – A visible representation of an idea; a product or by-product of designing.

ATMOSPHERICS – The identity of a brand environment, represented by its architecture, signage, textures, scents, sounds, colours, and employee behaviour.

ATTITUDE STUDY – A survey of opinions about a brand, often used as a benchmark before and after making changes to it.

AUDIENCE – The group to which a product, service, or message is aimed; also called the target audience.

AUTHENTICITY – The quality of being genuine, often considered a powerful brand attribute.

AVATAR – A brand icon designed to move, morph, or otherwise operate freely across various media.

AWARENESS STUDY – A survey that measures an audience’s familiarity with a brand, often divided into “prompted” and “spontaneous” awareness.

 

B

BACKSTORY – The story behind a brand, such as its origin, the meaning of its name, or the underpinnings of its authenticity or charisma.

BHAG – A “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal” designed to focus an organization.

BOTTOM-UP MARKETING – Customer-driven marketing, as opposed to top-down or management-driven marketing.

BRAND – A person’s perception of a product, service, experience, or organization; the art and science of brand building.

BRAND AGENCY – A strategic firm that provides or manages a variety of brand-building services across a range of media.

BRAND ALIGNMENT – The practice of linking brand strategy to customer touchpoints.

BRAND AMBASSADOR – Anyone who promotes the brand through interactions with customers, prospects, partners, or the media; ideally, every company employee.

BRAND ARCHITECTURE – A hierarchy of related brands, often beginning with a master brand, describing its relationship to subbrands and co-brands; a brand family tree.

BRAND ARTICULATION – A concise description of a brand that enables members of the brand community to collaborate; the brand story.

BRAND ASSET – Any aspect of a brand that has strategic value, which may include brand associations, brand attributes, brand awareness, or brand loyalty.

BRAND ATTRIBUTE – A distinctive feature of a product, service, company, or brand.

BRAND AUDIT – A formal assessment of a brand’s strengths and weaknesses across all of its touchpoints.

BRAND CHAMPION – Anyone who evangelizes or protects a brand; a brand steward.

BRAND COMMUNITY – The network of people who contribute to building a brand, including internal departments, external firms, industry partners, customers, users and the media.

BRAND CONSULTANT – An external adviser who contributes to the brand-building process, often in a strategic or advisory role.

BRAND DESIGNER – Any person who helps shape the brand, including graphic designers, strategists, marketing directors, researchers, advertising planners, web developers, public relations specialists, copywriters and others.

BRAND EARNINGS – The shape of the business’s cash flow that can be attributed to the brand alone.

BRANDED HOUSE – A company in which the dominant brand name is the company name, such as Mercedes-Benz; also called a homogeneous brand or a monolithic brand; the opposite of a house of brands.

BRAND EQUITY – The accumulated value of a company’s brand assets, both financially and strategically; the overall market strength of a brand.

BRAND ESSENCE – The distillation of a brand’s promise into the simplest possible terms.

BRAND EXPERIENCE – All the interactions people have with a product, service, or organization; the raw material of a brand.

BRAND GAP – The gulf between business strategy and customer experience.

BRAND IDENTITY – The outward expression of a brand, including its name, trademark, communications, and visual appearance.

BRAND IMAGE – A customer’s mental picture of a product, service, or organization.

BRANDING – Any effort or program to build a brand; the process of brand-building.

BRAND LOYALTY – The strength of preference for a brand compared to competing brands, sometimes measured in repeat purchases.

BRAND MANAGER – An obsolescent term for a person responsible for tactical issues facing a brand or brand family, such as pricing, promotion, distribution, and advertising; a product manager.

BRAND MANUAL – A document that articulates the parameters of the brand for members of a brand community; a standardized set of brand-building tools.

BRANDMARK – An icon, avatar, wordmark, or other symbol for a brand; a trademark.

BRAND METRICS – Measurements for monitoring changes to brand equity.

BRAND NAME – The verbal or written component of a brand icon; the name of a product, service, experience, or organisation.

BRAND PERSONALITY – The character of a brand defined in human terms, such as Virgin = irreverent, or Chanel = refined.

BRAND POLICE – Manager or team responsible for strict compliance with the guidelines in the brand manual.

BRAND PORTFOLIO – A suite of related brands; a collection of brands owned by one company.

BRAND PUSHBACK – Marketplace resistance to brand messages or brand extensions, often leading to changes in brand strategy.

BRAND STEWARD – The person responsible for developing and protecting the brand.

BRAND STORY – The articulation of a brand as a narrative; a coherent set of messages that articulate the meaning of the brand.

BRAND STRATEGY – A plan for the systematic development of a brand in order to meet business objectives.

BRAND VALUATION – The process of measuring the monetary equity of a brand.

BUZZ – The current public opinion about a product, service, experience, or organisation.

 

C

CATEGORY – The arena in which a brand competes; a consideration set.

CBO – A company’s Chief Brand Officer, responsible for integrating the work of the brand community.

CHALLENGER BRAND – A new or rising brand that is viable in spite of competition from a dominant brand in its category.

CHARISMATIC BRAND – A brand that inspires a high degree of loyalty; also known as a lifestyle brand.

CLUTTER – The conceptual noise of the marketplace; a disorderly array of messages or elements that impedes understanding.

CO-BRANDING – The purposeful linking of two or more brand for mutual benefit.

CO-CREATION – The collaborative development of a product, service, brand, or message.

COLLABORATION – The process by which people of different disciplines work in concert to build a brand; the practice of co-creation.

COMMODITIZATION – The process by which customers come to see products, services, or companies as interchangeable, resulting in the erosion of profit margins; the opposite of brand-building.

CONCEPT MAP – A diagram showing the connections among a set of concepts.

CONCEPTUAL NOISE – Cognitive clutter arising from too many messages or meanings; any competing ideas that undermine clarity.

CONSIDERATION SET – The range of brands that a customer considers when making a purchase decision; a category.

COOPETITION – The cooperation of two competitors so that both can win.

CORE COMPETENCIES – A set of capabilities (typically two or three) that gives the company a strategic advantage.

CORE IDENTITY – The central. sustainable elements of a brand identity, usually the name and trademark.

CORE IDEOLOGY – A combination of core values and core purpose.

CORE PURPOSE – The reason a company exists beyond making a profit; part of a core ideology.

CORE VALUES – An enduring set of principles that defines the ethics of a company; part of a core ideology.

CORPORATE IDENTITY – The brand identity of a company, consisting of its visual identifiers such as the name, trademark, typography, and colours; a company’s trade dress.

CREATIVE BRIEF – A document that sets parameters for a brand-building project, including context, goals, processes, and budgetary constraints.

CULTIVATION – The process of imbedding brand values throughout the organisation; internal branding.

CULTURAL LOCK-IN – The inability of an organisation to change its mental models in the face of clear market threats.

CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS – The anticipated benefits of a brand, whether explicit or implicit.

CUSTOMER GOALS – The “jobs” that customers “hire” a product, service, experience, or organisation to do for them.

 

D

DESCRIPTOR – A term used with a brand name to describe the category in which the brand competes, such as “fluoride toothpaste” or “online bank”.

DESIGN – In brand-building, the planning or shaping of products, services, environments, systems, communications, or other artifacts to create a positive brand experience.

DESIGNING – The process of design; bringing together strategic and creative processes to achieve a shared goal.

DESIGN MANAGEMENT – The practice of integrating work of internal and external design teams to align brand expressions with strategic goals.

DESIGN RESEARCH – Customer research on the experience and design of products or communication elements, using qualitative, quantitative, or ethnographic techniques.

DIFFERENTIATION – The process of establishing a unique market position to increase profit margins and avoid commoditization; the result of positioning.

DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION – A new product, service, or business that redefines the market; also called discontinuous innovation.

DRIVE FEATURES – Brand attributes that are both important to customers and highly differentiated from those of competitors.

DRIVER BRAND – In a brand portfolio, the brand that drives a purchase decision, whether master brand, subbrand, or endorser brand.

 

E

ELEVATOR PITCH – A one-sentence version of a brand’s purpose or market position, short enough to convey during a brief elevator ride.

EMERGENT ATTRIBUTE – A feature, benefit, quality, or experience that arises from the brand, as opposed to the core product or service; an example is the friendliness of Google.

EMOTIONAL BRANDING – Brand-building efforts that aim at customers feelings through sensory experiences.

ENDORSER BRAND – A brand that promises satisfaction on behalf of a subbrand or co-brand, usually in a secondary position to the brand being endorsed.

ENVISIONED FUTURE – A 10- to 30-year BHAG with vivid descriptions of what it will be like to reach the goal.

EXPERIENCE DESIGN – A focus on shaping the experience of a customer or user, rather than on the artifacts themselves; the design of interactive media.

EXTENDED IDENTITY – The elements that extend the core identity of a company or brand, organised into groupings such as brand personality, symbols, and positioning.

EXTENSION – A new product or service that leverages the brand equity of a related product or service.

EVANGELIST – A brand advocate, whether paid or unpaid.

 

F

FEATURE – Any element of a product, service, or experience designed to deliver a benefit.

FUTURE CREEP – The addition of unnecessary elements to a product, service, or experience; sometimes called featuritis.

FIELD TEST – A type of qualitative research in which prototypes of products, packages, or messages are tested in real environments instead of laboratories.

FIFTH DISCIPLINE – The organisational discipline of systems thinking, used to integrate four other disciplines: personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning.

FIRST MOVER – A company or brand that starts a new category.

FOCUS GROUP – A qualitative research technique in which several people are invited to a research facility to discuss a given subject; a type of research designed to focus later research.

FUTURECASTING – A technique used to envision future products, industries, competitors, challenges, or opportunities;  a combination of forecasting and imagination.

 

G

GENERIC – An unbranded product, service, or experience; a commodity.

GENERIC BRAND – A misnomer often applied to commodity product or store brand (since terms generic and brand brand mutually exclusive).

GLOBAL BRAND – A product, service, or company that competes globally (often a misnomer, since most brands, by definition, vary from culture to culture).

GUERILLA MARKETING – A marketing program that uses non-traditional channels to sell or advertise products or services.

 

H

HALO BRAND – A brand that lends value to another brand by association, such as a well known master brand and lesser known subbrand.

HARMONIZATION – The alignment of the elements of a brand across product lines or geographic regions.

HAWTHORNE EFFECT – The tendency for research subjects to behave uncharacteristically.

HOUSE OF BRANDS – A company in which the dominant brand names are those of the products and services the company sells, also called a heterogeneous brand or pluralistic brand; the opposite of branded house.

 

I

ICON – The visual symbol of a brand, usually based on a differentiated market position; a trademark.

IMT – An Integrated Marketing Team, comprised of various specialist firms collaborating to build a brand; a metateam or virtual agency.

INFORMATION ARCHITECT – A person who designs complex information systems to make them more navigable.

INFORMATION HIERARCHY – The order of importance of the elements in a brand message.

INGREDIENT BRAND – A brand used as a selling feature in another brand.

INNOVATION – A market-changing product, service, experience, or concept; the formal practice of innovation.

INTEGRATED MARKETING – A collaborative method for developing consistent messaging across media.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY – Intangible assets protected by patents and copyrights; the legal discipline that specializes in the protection of brand assets, including brand names, trademarks, colours, shapes, sounds, and smells.

INTERNAL BRANDING – An internal program to spread brand understanding through the use of standards manuals, orientation sessions, workshops, critiques, and online training; brand cultivation.

 

L

LEVERAGING A BRAND – Borrowing from the credibility of one brand to launch another brand, subbrand, or co-brand; a brand extension.

LINE EXTENSION – The addition of one or more subbrands to a master brand; the expansion of a brand family.

LIVING BRAND – A brand that grows, changes, and sustains itself; a healthy brand.

LOGO – An abbreviation of logotype, now applied broadly (if incorrectly) to all trademarks.

LOGOTYPE – A distinctive typeface or lettering style used to represent a brand name; a wordmark.

LOOK AND FEEL – The sensory experience of a product, environment, or communication.

 

M

MALL INTERCEPT – A market research technique in which researchers interview customers in a store or public location; a one-on-one interview.

MARKETING – The process of developing, promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service.

MARKETING AESTHETICS – The principles of perception used to enhance the feelings or experience of an audience.

MARKET PENETRATION – The market share of a product, service, or company compared to others in the category.

MARKET POSITION – The ranking of a product, service, or company within a category, sometimes calculated as market share multiplied by share of mind.

MARKET SHARE – The percentage of total sales in a given category, usually expressed in the number of units sold or the value of units sold.

MASTER BRAND – The dominant brand in a line or across a business, such as Pepperidge Farm or Sony, to which subbrands can be added; a parent brand.

MEDIA – The channels through which brand messages are delivered, such as television, printed publications, direct mail, the Internet, and outdoor posters.

MEDIA ADVERTISING – One-way messages designed to sell, persuade, or create awareness of a brand through public communication channels.

MESSAGE ARCHITECTURE – The formal relationships among brand communications.

MISSION STATEMENT – A concise statement of the purpose or aspirations of an organisation.

 

N

NAME BRAND – A widely recognized product, service, or organisation.

NATURAL READING SEQUENCE – The order in which readers can most easily absorb separate pieces of information.

NEOLOGISM – A coined word or phrase that can serve as a brand name.

NEW LUXURY – Goods and services that deliver higher quality or superior performance at a premium price, such as Belvedere Vodka or Callaway Golf Clubs.

NIH SYNDROME – The tendency of a company, department, employee, or consultant to reject any idea “Not Invented Here”.

NOMENCLATURE SYSTEM – A formal structure for naming related products, services, features, or benefits; the naming portion of an organisation’s brand architecture.

 

O

OBSERVER EFFECT – A tendency for the presence of the observer to change what is being observed.

ONE-ON-ONE INTERVIEW – A market research technique in which subjects are interviewed one at a time.

ONE-STOP SHOP – A single firm that offers a full range of branding services, as opposed to an IMT.

OPINION LEADER – A person whose opinion or personality exerts an influence over other members of a group; also called an opinion maker.

 

P

PARALLEL EXECUTION – The process by which creative teams work simultaneously rather than sequentially.

PARENT BRAND – The main brand in a brand family; a master brand.

PERCEPTION – An impression received through the senses; a building block of customer experience.

PERCEPTUAL MAP – A diagram of customer perceptions showing the relationships between competing products, services, companies, or brands.

PERMANENT MEDIA – Environment brand messages that last for years, such as architecture or signage.

PERMISSION MARKETING – The practice of promoting goods or services with anticipated, personal, and relevant messages.

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 brand building.

POWER LAW – In brand building, the tendency for success to attract more success; a law that explains why the “rich get richer”.

PRIMACY EFFECT – The observation that first impressions tend to be stronger than later impressions, except for last impressions.

PRIVATE LABEL – A store-owned product that competes, often at a lower price, with widely distributed products; a store brand as opposed to a name brand.

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.

PROMISE – A stated or implied pledge that creates customer expectations and employee responsibilities, such as FedEx’s on-time guarantee.

PROSUMER – A category of products and services that combines professional-level features with consumer-level usability and price.

PROTOTYPE – A model, mockup, or plan used to evaluate or develop a new product, service, environment, communication, or experience.

PROVENANCE – A historical connection that lends authenticity or credibility to a brand.

PURE PLAY – A company with a single line of business; a highly focused brand.

 

Q

QUALIA – Subjective experiences that determine how each person perceives a brand.

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH – Research designed to provide measurement, such as polling and large-scale studies.

 

R

RADICAL DIFFERENTIATION – A bold position that allows a brand to stand out from market clutter; a zag.

RAPID PROTOTYPING: A process of producing quick rounds of mockups, models, or concepts in rapid succession, evaluating and reiterating after each round to develop more effective services and experiences.

REACH – The number of people exposed to an advertising or brand message.

RECENCY EFFECT – The observation that last impressions tend to be stronger than earlier impressions, including first impressions.

REPUTATION – The shared opinion of a product, service, or organisation among all the members of its audience.

 

S

SACRIFICE – The practice of eliminating any product, service, or feature that fails to strengthen a market position or brand.

SALES CYCLE – For buyers, the steps in making a purchase (often defined as awareness, consideration, decision, and use); for sellers, the steps in making a sale (often defined as finding and qualifying customers, defining the products or services, and accepting and acknowledging the order).

SEGMENT – A group of people who are likely to respond to a given marketing effort in a similar way.

SEGMENTATION – The process of dividing a market into subcategories of people who share similar values and goals.

SHELF IMPACT – The ability of a product, package, or brand to stand out on a shelf by virtue of its design.

SIGNATURE – The defined visual relationship between a logo type and a symbol.

SILO – A department separated from other departments according to product, service, function, or market; a disparaging term for a non-collaborative department.

SLOGAN – A catchphrase, tagline, or rally cry; from the Gaelic “sluagh-ghairm,” meaning “war cry”.

SOCIAL NETWORK – A network of people that can be leveraged to spread ideas or messages using viral marketing techniques.

SOCK-PUPPET MARKETING – A disparaging term for “fake” brands built on frothy advertising campaigns, such as those of the dot-com era.

SPECIALISATION – The strategy of focusing and deepening a business offering to better compete with larger companies or to better collaborate with other specialists.

SPEECH-STREAM VISIBILITY – The quality of a brand name that allows it to be recognised as a proper noun (as opposed to a generic word) in conversation, such as Kodak or Smuckers.

STAKEHOLDER – Any person or firm with a vested interest in a company or brand, including shareholders, employees, partners, suppliers, customers, and community members.

STORE BRAND – A private-label product that can be sold at lower prices or higher margins than its widely distributed competitors, sometimes incorrectly called a generic brand; a private-label brand.

STRATEGIC DNA – A decision-making code derived from the intertwining of business strategy and brand strategy.

STRATEGY – A plan that uses a set of tactics to achieve a business goal, often by out-maneuvering competitors.

SUBBRAND – A secondary brand that builds on the associations of a master brand.

SUSTAINING INNOVATION – An incremental improvement to an existing product, service, or business.

SWOT – A conceptual tool that analyzes Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

SYMBOL – A sign or trademark designed to represent a brand.

 

T

TACTIC – An expedient maneuver used in support of strategy.

TAGLINE – A sentence, phrase, or word used to summarize a market position, such as Mini’s “Let’s motor” and Taco Bell’s “Think outside the bun”.

TARGET MARKET – The group of customers a company has decided to serve.

TEAM DYNAMICS – The psychological factors that influence collaboration, including trust, fear, respect, and company politics.

THOUGHT LEADER – A brand that leads the market in influential ideas, though not necessarily in market share, such as Apple Computer.

TIPPING POINT – A leverage point in the evolution of a market or society where a small effort can yield a surprisingly large result, not unlike “the straw that breaks the camel’s back”.

TOUCHPOINT – Any place where people come into contact with a brand, including product use, packaging, advertising, editorial, movies, store environments, company employees, and casual conversation.

TRADE DRESS – The colours, shapes, typefaces, page treatments, and other visual properties that create a recognisable “face” for a brand.

TRADEMARK – A name and/or symbol that indicates a source of goods or services and prevents confusion in the marketplace; a legally protectable form of intellectual property.

TRIBAL BRAND – A brand with a cult-like following, such as Harley-Davidson, eBay, or American Idol.

TURFISMO – The tendency of managers to protect their autonomy at the expense of collaboration.

TV-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX – The dominant system for launching and sustaining national brands during the last half of the 20th century, now weakened by the spread of new media and tribal brands.

 

U

USP – The Unique Selling Proposition of a product or service, as championed by advertising executive Rosser Reeves in the 1950s; a type of differentiation.

 

V

VALIDATION – Customer approval or feedback for a proposed message, concept, or prototype.

VALUE PROPOSITION – A set of benefits, including functional, emotional, and self-expressive benefits.

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 commoditisation; the opposite of a vicious circle.

VIRAL MARKETING – A technique by which social networks are used to spread ideas or messages, through the use of affiliate programs, co-branding, e-mails, and link exchanges on-line, or off-line, through use of word-of-mouth advertising and memes.

VIRTUOUS CIRCLE – The opposite of a 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 a sustainable competitive advantage.

VISION – The story a leader tells about where an organisation is going; the aspirations of a company that drive future growth.

 

Z

ZAG – A contrarian strategy that yields a competitive advantage; the differentiating idea that drives a charismatic brand.