Branding 101 – A Glossary

There is a lot of noise in the marketplace. Everyone is talking about branding, and I find the term overused and frequently massacred. There are several additions or extensions of this word that are quickly losing their value due to misuse. The goal of this glossary is to be a quick reference guide. The fundamentals are important and establishing a shared vocabulary around this topic is paramount.

Literally

I’m a firm believer in definitions. When removed from a marketing context, the definitions for the word “brand” or “branding” shed light on why they’ve been applied within that context:

1. kind, or make, as indicated by a stamp, trademark, or the like
2. a mark made by burning or otherwise, to indicate kind, make, ownership, etc.
3. a kind or variety of something distinguished by some distinctive characteristic
4. a burning or partly burned piece of wood.
5. to label or mark
6. to impress indelibly

Brand

A brand is a feeling, belief or association in the minds of your audience about you that is positive or negative.

Branding

Branding is a detailed, disciplined process that fosters recognition, trust and loyalty. Because the brand rests in the mind of your audience, to brand something is to influence perception. By changing or encouraging a certain perception, you can affect behaviour.

Brand Strategy

Aligning an organization’s vision with it’s customer experience is the goal of brand strategy. An effective strategy unifies behaviour, actions and communication around a central idea. It builds on a vision, aligns with business strategy, is derived from your organization’s core values and culture and proves a deep understanding of your customer’s needs and perceptions. Brand strategy defines who you are, your positioning and what makes you different and valuable.

Positioning

Positioning is said to be the scaffolding on which companies build their brands. It’s a strategy that fuels planning, marketing and sales. Positioning changes, as the market and your target demographic changes. It transcends over-saturated markets and creates new opportunities.

Will Burke, CEO of Brand Engine explains the importance of positioning like this, “If you can’t say that you are the only, you need to fix your business, not your brand”. Positioning is where you differentiate.

Staying on Message

Your audience is interacting with the brand on several fronts and through several channels. They need to hear one voice. Consistency of language, customer experience and visual identity all contribute to a unified, and therefore crystal clear message.

Big Idea or Tagline

The big idea is like a lightning rod, surrounded by strategy, behaviour, actions and communications. A simply worded statement (or statements), internally it acts as a guide for distinct culture and externally as a powerful message to help consumers make choices. Big ideas lead to or double as taglines, and lead to other creative processes such as naming.

Brand Identity

Brand Identity is tangible. Your audience can see it, touch it, hold it, hear it, and watch it move. It encourages recognition and highlights differentiation. Through design, brand identity embodies the intangibles such as emotion, feelings or core essence. It’s also called corporate identity or your logo, but extends beyond that with shapes, colours, photography and typography.

Brand Architecture

This is the hierarchy of brands, messages, or branches within a single organization. It is the inter-relationship between the overall brand, and the “sub-brands” within it. Strategically, the individual messages have to speak out, without disrupting, but instead enhancing, the larger brand. From a Design standpoint, there needs to be correlation with the larger identity through colour, logotype, and other methods or a complete separation from the parent brand.

Stakeholders

Stakeholders are brand champions. Employees, Board Members and Volunteers are now called “internal customers” because their unique understanding and interaction with the brand is far reaching. Reputation and goodwill are extended beyond marketing through stakeholders. Gathering insight from stakeholders will inform a broad range of solutions and directly affects messaging and positioning.

Customer Experience

A major brand essential is attention to customer experience. It is the biggest contributor to your brand’s perception. Customers experience the brand through a variety of touchpoints, and each one needs to be considered. It builds loyalty and enduring relationships.

Brand Names

Your name is used every day, in a multitude of ways. You hear it in conversations and voicemails, see it in emails and on business cards and so on. The importance of a name cannot be under-estimated, and the effect of a bad name is unthinkable. Your name is an essential brand asset, working for you around the clock, 24/7. Ideally, your name becomes timeless, while the rest of your brand evolves around it.

Tags: big idea, brand, brand architecture, brand identity, brand names, brand strategy, branding, customer experience, definitions, glossary, Positioning, stakeholders, staying on message, tagline