brand strategy

Brand Personality

The characteristics that are attributed to a brand name to which the consumer can relate. This can be accomplished by having a consistent set of traits that specific consumer segments enjoy.

Brand Positioning

The space that a brand occupies in its competitive environment ensures that individuals can recognize and choose a brand over others. This involves the careful manipulation of all marketing elements in order to position the brand’s space in the market while being unique. 

Brand Strategy

A strategy that helps guide a business in the development of a brand and its marketing operations. Brand values are the attributes that establish a brand’s unique transactional philosophy, underline its purpose, and guide its decisions and behaviors.

Brand Values

A set of guidelines that help shape every aspect of your business. This also supports dictating your brand message, identity, and personality.

Differentiation

The process of researching, identifying, and marketing unique characteristics of a brand, as compared to those of its competitors.

Messaging

A message that is strategically written to target an audience segment and or encourage them to purchase/engage with a brand. This is a properly developed messaging that helps the brand “communicate” with the customer. 

Mission Statement

A short statement of why an organization or a brand’s overall goal, existence, products that are provided, services while explaining more on its primary market and operations. 

Personas

This creates a consistent understanding of the audience for brand positioning and targeted communications. Personas (a.k.a. customer personas) help describe an audience segment’s occupation, desires, actions, beliefs, and anything that might contribute to their brand behavior.

Tagline

 A short phrase that communicates a brand’s personality and energy in a catchphrase that typically happens to be memorable Example: Disneyland’s “The happiest place on earth.” or Nike’s “Just do it.”

Value Proposition/Statement

A brand’s value typically highlights brand integrity, dedication, or importance and can be essential in brand positioning.

Brand Voice

This is the way a brand speaks to their customers - the tone of voice, way they speak and craft messaging, and the type of persona they convey when speaking/writing.

Branding terms.

Brand Audit

A thorough examination of a brand that helps uncover performance, position, and customer insights. This is something a brand requires in order to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for refinement or new initiatives which result in aligning teams while prioritizing and managing needed corrections.

On-Brand

This deals with the act of consistently being on-brand while building lasting, loyal relationships with its customers. 

Rebranding

Updating or revising a current branding position when a company and or brand feel is no longer compatible with its identity. Rebranding may consist of a change in the target audience, how the brand’s internal and external circumstances have shifted, and competitors’ positioning.

Repositioning

This happens when a product’s target audience(s) has shifted or the product is used in a different manner than originally positioned. You can always reposition a product in order to create an alternate consumer perception.

Touchpoint

Touchpoints allow a brand to build a relationship with the consumer which should always leave a lasting impression.  This can be considered as a company's website, customer service interaction, business card, product packaging, social media post, or an online review.

art direction

Instruction on how to visually communicate an aspect of the brand - typically the way in which we build a particular aesthetic for a photo/video shoot. (When provided by us within a project) This includes guidance on location, colors, mood, hair/makeup, clothing, props, and suggested poses/shots.

Brand Assets

The elements, such as color schemes, animations, resources, and fonts that assist with the identity of a specific brand. The individual elements that come together to form the outward-facing brand. The union of all these elements is what creates a cohesive brand identity.

Brand Guidelines

A document or rulebook explaining the principles of a brand helps provide more guidance towards understanding the vision, mission, personality, and attributes. It can also serve as a guide that explains how each element fits together. Synonyms: Brand Standards, Style Guide

Brand Identity / Branding

Brand identity reinforces the brand’s position which helps articulate the intended brand message.  This deals with distinguishing all verbal, visual elements and messages that can appeal to the customers like the brand name, logo, tagline, tone, and typography.

Brand Pillars

The core aesthetic components that make up a brands visual identity and guide the look and feel of the design throughout the brand design process. These pillars help to identify and define the core visual elements (i.e. identifying certain textures or patterns that might be a highlight in your design, things like shadowplay in brand photography, etc) that help to shape the brand identity but are more abstract than a color palette or logo.

Color System

The strategic selection of color, tones, and hues of a brand’s master color guide. This typically consists of primary, secondary palettes of print and digital color values that help to ensure a sense of hierarchy, consistency, usability, and harmony.

Icon

An icon helps users recognize a brand, illustrate what a brand does and navigate to or through its app and website. This is usually a small, graphic representation of a brand that lies within a user interface. For example, Facebook’s “Like” button is an example of an icon.

Logo

A brand’s symbol and or other design that helps identify its products, uniform, vehicles, etc. This is generally composed of text (brand signature) and image (brand symbol), that serves as a company’s flag. The terms logo and trademark are used synonymously. Example: Nike’s swoosh.

Submark or Symbol

Symbols, the graphical portion of a logo, provide an instant way for consumers to recognize a brand. A well-known symbol, like McDonald’s Golden Arches, the Pillsbury Doughboy, or Starbucks’ Mermaid can be seen and recognized without any words.

Typography hierarchy

A system of fonts that informs the consistent and distinct typography of a brand’s visual identity. This usually is the order of importance that generally helps your design effectively communicate its message.

Visual Identity

The imagery and graphic information that help express the brand and how it's different from the rest. This can include its logo, typography, packaging, and literature systems.

Wordmark

This is consists of a text-only typographic that uses the full company name without other visual graphic elements. Examples: Google, Sony, Coca-Cola.