Glossary

Segmentation

The practice of separating potential or existing customers into groups based on like characteristics, e.g. personality attributes, demographics, psychological make-up, and lifestyle, to name a few.  The purpose is to know these groups well, to better market brands to them.

Service Brand

A brand applied to services that are intangible, with no physical presence, usually provided personally to a person or organization.

Service Mark

A trademark law term for a registered mark that is applied to services only.

Signature

The permanent lock-up (see this term) and relationship among a logotype with a symbol where applicable, and with a tagline where applicable.

Silver Bullet Brand

A brand or sub-brand that profoundly influences the image of another brand.  It is used as a positive change agent to alter another brand’s image.

Stand Alone Brand

Part of Brand Architecture (see this term).  A brand that is named differently from other brands that share the same name in a portfolio.  Done because this brand’s image, benefits, or audiences, or combination are different from the main brand portfolio.

Strategic Planning

The functional part of a company that is concerned with where the company is going.  It involves industry trend analysis, business options, and competitor analysis, among other activities, and provides options and recommendations on future business initiatives.

Strategy

Strategy involves the utilization of resources to reach a set of Objectives identified as part of your Mission. If your mission, for example, describes your business as being on the leading edge of a particular field through service excellence, the organization has to be structured accordingly to deliver that strategy.

Strategy (Brand)

This is an analytical tool for a brand that is composed of analyses of a brand’s industry, trends, regulations, and competitors; options and recommendations for the brand based on these analyses; and a defined action plan with tactics to implement recommendations (see Goal, Strategy, Tactics). It reflects a company’s mission, business strategy, values, and culture, and successfully translates these into a meaningful, lasting customer experience.

Sub-Brand

A product or service brand that has distinctive benefits, features or attributes that necessitate its separation from its parent brand (see this term) by being named and positioned differently.

SWOT (Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats) Analysis

A consulting tool for analyzing those factors that influence a brand’s place in a category or industry and its future success in its marketplace.

Symbol

An abstract or representational graphic mark that is developed to reflect one or more aspects of Corporate Identity (see term).

Tactic

A specific marketing activity, one of many, initiated to help achieve a strategy.

Tagline

A line of text attached to a corporate signature (see term) that helps to provide category specificity to a business (Xerox – The Document Company) or provide dimension to a brand relative to its positioning (Avis – We Try Harder) or its vision (Safeway – Ingredients For Life).

Tone and Manner

The written or aural characteristics a communications piece must have to effectively reflect a brand’s personality.

Trademark

A trademark law term for a registered mark that is applied to products only.

Value Chain Analysis

Narrowly viewed for our purposes, this is a consulting tool used to evaluate the activities of a brand from production to consumption.  It is used to determine the branding implications of these activities, how the brand is being used, and where improvements can be made to better communicate the brand to its audience.  In larger contexts, it is the evaluation of all steps in a manufacturing to sales process to determine where improvements can be made to create value for customers.

Value Proposition

This is the accumulated benefits (functional, emotional, self-expressive) a brand communicates or needs to communicate to develop a strong and sustainable customer relationship.

Vision

A company’s declared reason for being – why it exists, an ideal, often without a time. While all companies have a responsibility to create value for their shareholders, increasing shareholder value is not a vision; it is an Objective. The best companies, those that sustain their market prominence in turbulent times, all communicate a compelling Vision to the marketplace. Vision is realized through Mission, Strategy, Objectives and Goals (see terms).

Visual Audit

A narrower focused analysis than a Communications Audit (see this term) centered only on the visual components of a company’s or its competitors’ brand or corporate identity.

Visual Identity

A term used to refer to only the graphic elements of a brand (name, logotype, symbol, colors).  Sometimes used interchangeably with Corporate Identity or Brand Identity (compare to these terms).

Wordmark

A hybrid cross between a logotype and a symbol.  It is a logotype that has a graphic device interwoven within it (eg, Hyatt, Gap, Linksys, etc).