60 Phrases You Need To Build Your Brand

Brand this, brand that, there’s a multitude of competing jargon, terms and meanings which can be both time consuming and confusing for all involved.

Deciphering what language is relevant for you and your company can assist with communication and support your planning and strategy.

To take the work out of it for you, we have compiled the Brand Dictionary: From A-Z.  With this consolidated list of terms, you can now sound like a brand expert in no time.

Importantly, with the benefit of a little more clarity, you’ll be one step closer to creating a better relationship and understanding of your own brand. This will benefit you, your employees and your customers.

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THE BRAND DICTIONARY: FROM A - Z

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A

1. Brand Ambassadors – people who represent and talk about your brand in a positive way and embody the brand values they are endorsing. Also known as brand influencers.

2. Brand Assets – building brand elements, such as logos, colours, typefaces, tag lines, music, characters, taste, smell, shape and advertising style. When these are strongly linked to a single brand, they can be called distinctive assets, and are a vital part of brand equity.

3. Brand Association – The emotional, intellectual and visual recall of a brand. To what the brand can be linked and connected to.

4. Brand Architecture – is the structure of brands within an organisational entity. It is the way in which the brands within a company’s portfolio are related to, and differentiated from, one another.

5. Brand Awareness – The measure of how many people know a brand exists.

6. Brand Audit –  A report that reviews a brand in several categories to evaluate the brand’s overall performance.

7. Brand Axes – A visual representation of where brand opportunity lies.

B

8. Branding – The active process of brand development.

C

9. Brand Category – A collection of businesses sharing the same purpose.

10. Brand Charter – The document that defines the purpose and values of an organisations brand.

11. Brand Clarity – The precise region where brand purpose and brand objectives juncture in relation to market position and target audience.

12. Brand Competitive Review – Analysis of a brand’s competition within the market that defines the other brands present to the consumer.

13. Brand Connection – The bond between the consumer and the brand.

14. Brand Consistency – The ability of the brand to be consistent throughout all brand messaging and usage. Consistency is the cornerstone of building an effective brand.

D

15. Brand Development – The methodical evaluation, construction and continued monitoring of brand.

16. Brand Discovery – a qualitative, research-based approach to measuring a brand’s performance.

17. Brand Differentiation – What separates one brand from another within the mind of the customer.

E

18. Brand Efficacy – Brand’s ability to produce the desired result.

19. Brand Elements – logos, colours, typefaces, tag lines, music, characters, taste, smell, shape and advertising style.

20. Brand Equity – The value a brand possesses over other brands.

21. Brand Engagement – the process of forming an emotional or rational attachment between a consumer and a brand. 

22. Brand Experience – Sensations, feelings, cognitions, and behavioural responses evoked by brand-related stimuli that are part of a brand’s design and identity, packaging, communications, and environments.

F

23. Brand Face – Who the consumer believes themselves to be when using or deciding to purchase a brand.

24. Brand Family – A group of brands under the same umbrella of development.

G

25. Brand Guardians – A group of individuals who monitor the brand as it is implemented from the Brand Charter.

H

26. Brand Hierarchy – The use of brand to move customers up the value chain.  i.e. BMW moves consumers from a lower priced model to higher priced models throughout the life of the customer.

27. Branded House – A centrally focused group of brands that is clearly connected and coherent. A very large family of brands.

I

28. Brand Identity – The way a brand visually presents itself to the consumer.

29. Brand Influence – The area covered by a brand in terms of reach to consumers, a market niche fulfilled by brand and brand message.

30. Brand Innovation – improving brand relationships and experience with consumers. Practices that drive brands to be customer-centric and challenge for the future.

K/L

31. Brand Loyalty – Extended brand preference and deliberate decision to repeat purchase of the brand.

M

32. Brand Management – Tracking how the brand is adhering to the Brand Charter from planned marketing activity. The process of directing an organisation’s brand.

33. Brand Meaning – How the brand is defined in the mindset of the consumer.

34. Brand Message – The expression of the brand meaning to the consumer.

35. Brand Model – The organisation of the brand.

36. Brand Monitoring – The process of ensuring and measuring brand advantages allowing a brand to make adjustments to meet the expectations of an ever-changing market.

N

37. Brand Narrative – The meaning your brand has that contributes to the wider community. A combination of a brand’s unique values and journey.

O

38. Brand Optimisation – When the brand is fulfilling all of its promises, gaining market share and maintaining equity to the best of its ability.

P

39. Brand Parent – The original or most widely recognised brand in a family of brands.

40. Brand Performance – the result of desirability and profitability in a brand. Brand metrics are defined and used to measure performance. A well performing brand delivers top-line growth while reducing costs to improve the bottom line.

41. Brand Permission – What the brand can and cannot do according to the implications of the Brand Charter.

42. Brand Personality – The look and feel of the brand through the eyes of the consumer. What the brand wants to outwardly emit to the consumer. Should directly engage key buyer personas.

43. Brand Planning – Brand development, strategic management and implementation.

44. Brand Positioning – A set and deliberate stance the brand takes in order to differentiate and reach the customer.

45. Brand Purpose – relates to a brand’s core product or service that not only puts it at an advantage commercially, but it also benefits a broader community who may, or may not be consumers of the brand.

46. Brand Preference – The deliberate decision to choose one brand over another.

47. Brand / Product Relationship – The tangible relationship between the brand and the product represented by the brand.  The brand must make sense from the perspective of the product.

48. Brand Promise – The brand’s guarantee to fulfil a specific need for the consumer and for itself in an ever-changing market.

Q/R

49. Brand Reach – The ability of the brand to influence a certain radius of customers.

50. Brand Recall – Simple, immediate recognition and memory of a brand.

51. Brand Roadmap – The projected path of action upon which the brand needs to tread in order to steal share from the competition and increase market share.

52. Brand Recognition – Similar to Brand Recall.  The ability of a consumer to recognise a brand, know that it exists, and know that it is a purchasing alternative.

S

53. Brand Strategist – An individual dedicated to the development and analysis of brand and branding practices.

54. Brand Strategy – The plan of execution conducted for a brand in order to increase the brand’s market share and optimise brand functioning.

55. Brand Story – The story behind the brand’s derivation and meaning.

56. Brand Style Guide – The document defining the rules of the brand usage regarding language, printed materials, design, etc.

T

57. Brand Target Audience – The group of consumers the brand wishes to influence or the consumers who already use brands within the considered set.

58. Brand Trigger – A specific characteristic or message of a brand that causes change.

59. Brand Transformation – Maintaining the elements of the brand that are performing, and either removing or modifying those that aren’t, in order to grow the brand.

60. Brand Typography – The font and visual appearance of lettering.

U-Z

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OTHER IMPORTANT BRAND RELATED TERMS

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Business – A group working toward a purpose.

Competitive Set – The group of competitive brands within the market.

Considered Set – The consumer’s set of brand options prior to purchase/selection.

Elasticity – The range of viability for a brand’s product/service.

Incidence – The frequency of an event occurring. In research, this can be used to describe the response rate or the number of times an event or behaviour occurs in a given sample or population.

Leading Role – A brand position in which a single product represents the entire brand.

Marketing – Tangible execution of brand messaging

Market Matrix – The visually plotted space on a set of axes that represents the space for brand opportunity within the market space.

Marketing Plan – The steps marketing follows in order to convey a message.

Market Place – The generalised intangible area where market trends occur.

Market Share – The overall amount of the market from which a brand benefits and owns

Market Space – The area in which any given brand is bought and sold.

Mind Map – An image, centred around a key concept, with related words and concepts that represent semantic or other connections linked with the key concept using lines and/or arrows

Naming Strategy – The process in which the name of a brand emerges as the phonetic/semantic representation of the brand.

Opportunity – The unoccupied space where a brand has potential to increase market share.

Qualitative – Non-numerical values/codes resulting from research. Qualitative data is usually not statistically predictive of a population and is usually used as the foundation for quantitative research.

Quantitative – Numerical values resulting from research. Quantitative data is usually statistically predictive of a given population as long a sound research methodology was used in gathering the data.

Raw Data – Uncleaned data from research studies.

Return on Investment (ROI) – The financial return/sales you receive directly from your investment in brand development

Single Minded Proposition – The single most important thing you can say about the brand that causes a consumer to change their perception of that brand and that necessitates a change in consumer purchasing decisions.

Target Market – A market defined by a certain characteristic.

Web Strategy – The plan of effectively exhibiting the brand via the web through search engine optimisation (SEO), messaging, design, and content management.