Branding Glossary:
Terminology
Just to make sure that we are all speaking the same language, let’s define the key brand related terms used these videos. If nothing else, you’ll be a hit at your next Christmas party.
AOB’s: Acronym for Attitudes, Opinions, and Beliefs, each customer has their own set of AOB’s directing their behavior.
Belief: Belief = A change in customer Behavior
Brand: A brand is the tangible and intangible attributes residing within the Brand DNA visualized as a product, package or trademark, that when managed properly, inspires, and motivates customers to create and deliver value to its shareholders. A brand possesses functional and emotional ties between customers and a product or service.
Brand Architecture: 1. Referring to the hierarchy of brands within a portfolio of brands. 2. Referring to a specific brand and its family of line extensions.
Brand Awareness: The combined measurements of brand recognition and brand recall. Awareness develops in four stages: Exposure, Belief, Bonding and Missionary.
Brand Champion: Internal and external missionaries of the brand.
Brand Commitment: The degree of customer brand loyalty measured by future re-purchase intent.
Brand Culture: 1. The internal corporate attitudes, behavior and practices towards branding. 2. Brand culture initiatives driven by the customer, such as the nickname “Mickey D’s” for McDonald’s.
Brand Differentiation: Customer value perceived differences between competitive brands.
Brand Essence: The brand’s promise expressed as the ownership of a word within the customer mind map, such as FedEx=Overnight, or Volvo=Safety.
Brand Equity: The sum of all tangible and intangible assets of a brand including customer and stakeholder commitment.
Brand Experience: Customer AOB’s about your brand at every touch point.
Brand Expansion: Brand exposure to a broader customer base: geographic market, or distribution channels.
Brand Extension: Expanding the brand across new product or service categories and market segments from the brands current core customer A.O.B. boundaries.
Brand DNA: The elements that comprise the Brand Identity and the Marketing Mix.
Brand Guidelines: A set of internal controls, policies and procedures to provide and ensure a specified consistency of brand experience across your customer base. Brand Guidelines may include a brand vision, identity, guideline manual, history, legend, values, positioning, personality, tips, writing style guide, design style guide and related information.
Brand Icons: The set of visual, implied, written and audio memory associations, whose form symbolizes meaning, identifiable with the brand. The brand Icon is comprised of the unique attributes that customers identify with a brand. This may include a specific color, trademark, image, logo, product, word, saying, song, mnemonic device or other element. For example: Coca-Cola owns a unique bottle shape, the colors red and white, and Coke wave.
Brand Identity: Composed of the following elements:
- Customer AOB’s
- Customer Mind Map
- Brand Personality
- Brand Story
- Brand Icons
- Brand Mantra
- Brand Promise
- Brand USP
Brand Licensing: An agreement to license the equity of your brand to another product or service.
Brand Loyalty: A measurement of the strength of preference for a brand versus the competitive set.
Brand Mantra: The genetic code for the brand A Brand Mantra consists of three words that stand at the core of who and what your brand stands for epitomizing the essence of your brand. It defines who you are as a brand, and who you are not. A Brand Mantra stands as a beacon of clarity and vision, defining the essence of your brand and the core value you offer to the customer. It is the sole reason customers will part with their money for your brand.
For example, Nike: An Authentic, Athletic, Performance.
Brand Metrics: Analysis tools used to measure brand equity.
Brand Leadership Position: Where your brand will lead the category.
Brand Legend: The story behind the brand.
Brand Parity: The measure of difference in customer preference between competing brands within a category.
Brand Passion: Initiates Brand Desire
Brand Personality: What the brand itself would tell you if it could speak.Expressed in terms of human characteristics, the brand personality is a guide or document that embodies the consistent and unique distinguishable characteristics of a brand.
Brand Platform: (Also known as Brand DNA) A brand stands upon a foundation built from sales derived from its value proposition to the customer. In turn, customer demand is based upon a level of bonding between the core customers AOB’s and a brands DNA. The Brand Platform therefore, embraces all elements of the Brand DNA and serves to guide the tactical implementation the brands marketing efforts.
Brand Positioning: Where your brand resides within the Customer Mind Map is called brand position. The brand position is a distinctive and meaningful position of value within a competitive environment that differentiates a brand from all others. It serves as an internal document guiding the company’s marketing strategies and tactics. Commonly written as follows: For (X target market), (Your brand name here) is the brand of (frame of reference) that (point of difference) because (reasons).
Brand Power: The measure of your brands ability to dominate its product category.
Brand Promise: This is the promise that your brand delivers that the competitors do not. This promise is a guarantee from your brand to the customer that you will provide a certain value or benefit to the customer. For example: Avis’ Brand Promise is “We try harder.”
Brand Recall: The measurement of a customers’ unaided ability to identify a brand from memory.
Brand Recognition: The measurement of customers’ unaided ability to recognize a brand from prior experience, exposure, or knowledge of a brand.
Brand Relevance: A measurement of the alignment of a brands DNA with the core customer target groups’ AOB’s.
Brand Stewardship: The act of internally and externally managing the tangible and intangible aspects of a brand in regards to each customer touch point, with focus on enhancing the equity of a brand.
Brand Story: The personal history, story or legend behind the brand.
Brand Strategy: The strategic plan embraced by the brand and driven by its UPC that will provide the brands’ customers and shareholders with value.
Brand Tribe: A group of consumers with shared AOB’s that express loyalty for a brand.
Brand Touch Point: Everywhere the brand interacts with the customer is a Brand Touch Point, from the hold music, to the waiter who serves you, to a radio advertisement and the product cup.
Brand Unity: Assuring that everything under the brand umbrella inclusive of all brand touch points, is in harmony with the components of the brand identity.
Brand Value: The measurement of fiscal premium that customers are willing to pay for a specific brand versus its competitive set.
Brand Values: The brands’ own set of AOB’s.
Brand Value Proposition: The combined value set of functional and emotional benefits your brand offers the customer, measured against the competitive set value proposition.
Brand Valuation: A measurement of the tangible and intangible equity and assets of the brand.
Brand Vision: The principals that guide the long-term strategic path of your brand.
Brand USP: The USP (Acronym for: Unique Selling Proposition) is what differentiates your brand from all others. It answers the question: “Why should I buy your product over the competition?” For example: “Fresh, hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed.” led Dominos to dominate the delivery pizza category.
Change: Change in Belief = Change in Behavior.
Co-Branding: Where two brands combine forces to bring a product to market.
Competitive Positioning: Your market position versus the competitive set.
Competitive Set: The group of direct competitors within your product category for which your brand competes for customer dollars.
Core User: The only group that really matters to your brand: your products’ heavy user segment.
Customer Mind Map: Where the customer perceives your brand against the competitive set. A unique, imaginary mental diagram that exists within your customer mind that defines and positions you and your competitors’ brands based upon their perceptions (AOB’s), and total cumulative life experiences.
Customer Value Set: Consists of the value issues your brand offers in comparison to the competitive product’s Value Set.
Deep Branding: Brands that possess a soul and deep brand culture that bond with specific customers AOB’s that filling them with brand desire.
Marketing Mix: Composed of a Unique Set of The 6 P’s
1. Product
2. Placement
3. Positioning
4. Price
5. Packaging
6. Promotion
Demographics: The collection and organization demographic data useful in defining core target audiences for a product or service within a specific group of people, often inclusive of: age, gender, nationality, marital status, education, occupation and income.
Differentiation Drivers: The core differences that separate a market category into similar segments based upon the end benefit a customer derives from a specific manner of product consumption, providing the insight to position your product or brand accurately within the overall category.
Elevator Pitch: A brief statement that powerfully and succinctly conveys a brands reason to exist, commonly containing the brand USP and expressing the brand value proposition.
Emotional Brand: efforts directed specifically towards instinctive, emotional and sensory perceptions.
Focus Group: A qualitative research deep-probing technique involving group dynamic analysis within a neutral venue to discuss specific topics of interest relating to customer AOB’s. Focus groups deliver an understanding, which may indicate general trends or specific observations.
Intangibles: Proprietary brand assets incapable of being touched, such as: Goodwill, customer loyalty, trademarks, copyrights, patents, mnemonic and visual graphics, devices and cues, proprietary expertise, databases, logos, colors, shapes and smells associated with the brand.
Market Share: The measurement of total sales or volume at a specific time of a product within a given category.
Memory Recall Based Selection: A selection process based solely on memory recall, where customers fulfill an established shopping routine disengaged from thought.
Niche Marketing: Selecting a specific market segment and catering your marketing efforts solely to this group through selective media.
Packaging Design: The single most powerful tool available to the Brand Steward in gaining market share. The package is a presentation of the brands visual value proposition to customer, and often becomes the salesman in closing the sale at the retail shelf.
Pick Factor: The ability of a brand to call attention to itself and be recognized by the customer.
Primary Brand Conceptual Messages: Commonly utilized advertising copy.
Product Benefit: A competitive advantage associated with a product, due to its function or attributes. A USP is a benefit unique to the category.
Product Channels: Where the product will be sold (Food Service, Retail, C-Stores, Schools, Club stores, etc.
Product Launch: The initial marketing rollout of a new product(s) or brand within a specified region(s) and channel(s).
Psychographic: The collection and organization behavioral data useful in defining core target audiences for a product or service within a specific group of people, often inclusive of: personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyles. Psychographic information is the study of customer AOB’s.
Retail-tainment: Making your brand into a fun experience for the customer.
Response Facilitators: Items assisting customers to respond to your sales pitch, such as a: web address, prepaid postcard or 1-800 number.
Risk Relievers: Items that help to eliminate the risks associated with the purchase of your product, such as: Free product trial, guarantee or warranty.
SKU’s: (Acronym for: Shelf Keeping Unit) Referring to a specific consumer package goods product item sold by a retail store.
Stick Factor: (Once a product is picked from the shelf) – The ability of the brand to motivate and compel customers to move your product from their hand into their shopping cart.
Stimulus Based Selection: The type of shopping occurring impulsively and in an unplanned selection.
SWOT Analysis: (Acronym) An analysis tool used in understanding a brands’: Strengths, Opportunities, Threats and Weaknesses.
Sub-Brand: In brand hierarchy, a brand with unique identity that exists under a parent brand. (Corvette Sub-Brand resides under the Chevrolet parent brand.)
Tagline: A memorable and recognizable phrase that reinforces the brand USP and brand value. Also called a slogan, used to summarize a brands market position inside a catch phrase, such as Nikes’ “Just do it.”
Tangibles: Proprietary brand assets capable of being touched, such as: Bricks and mortar, cash, investments, equipment, property and physical assets.
Target Market: A select, targeted customer group that shares a specific set of psychographics and demographics.
Thin Brands: Brands that lack a soul, or Deep Brand culture.
Touch Point: Every point where a brand comes into contact with a customer, such as customer service, on-hold music, advertising, packaging, refunds, guarantee, etc.
Tribal Brand: A brand whose customers become intensely loyal and cult-like, such as Starbucks and Harley-Davidson.
Value Analysis: A measurement of customer perceived value propositions. The Analytical Method by which a Brand Steward may understand the relationships behind the four basic value perceptions its customers hold, (Basics, Value, Irritations and Unimportant.) required to identify, position and visualize the core values of a brand versus the competitive set.
Value Perception Grid: A method of visually evaluating your Value Analysis data.
Value Themes: Customer patterns that exist within each category of Value Perception.
Visual Identity: A brands visual equity and visual identifiers, such as: Logo, images, color, packaging, etc.
Visual Thunder: The ability of your brands’ packaging graphics and message to literally stop your customers dead in their tracks like a deer in headlights, ready to absorb your brand message.
UPC Shipping Container Symbol
The UPC Shipping Container Symbol (SCS) is very similar in structure to the Universal Product Code (UPC). Both employ a unique UCC Company Prefix (assigned by the Uniform Code Council) and a 1 to 5-digit Item Number (assigned by the Manufacturer, depending on the number of digits in the UCC Company Prefix). Each employs a Check Digit at the end of the code.
USDA Compliance
A web of compliance regulations are set by the US Department of Agriculture who must approve every food and beverage label. Regulations are very specific and always changing. Many large firms have a regulatory person on staff, or hire a consultant to assist with the latest legal regulations associated with food products.
Other Regulations
Different types of meat (Chicken, Beef and Pork) require different USDA symbols that allow any product to be tracked back to the original processing plant. Here are some of the items on your package that will fall under jurisdiction of the USDA:
Product Name, Net Weight, USDA Inspection Legend, Handling Statement, Ingredients Statement, Nutrition Facts, Safe Handling Instructions.
For food products, you will have to submit all labels to the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service for approval prior to sale. To get started, go here: http://www.simplybarcodes.net/