Brand and marketing terms can be intimidating and overwhelming, but they don’t have to be! This list is here to help business owners understand the basics of brand and marketing terms to become more comfortable with the language and concepts of the industry.

Awareness The percentage of the population or target market who are aware of the existence of a given brand or company. There are two types of attention: spontaneous, which measures the percentage of people who spontaneously mention a particular brand when asked to name brands in a specific category, and prompted, which measures the rate of people who recognize a brand from a specific type when shown a list.

Brand A brand is a mixture of tangible and intangible attributes symbolized in a trademark, which, if managed properly, creates value and influence.

Brand “Value” has different interpretations: from a marketing or consumer perspective, it is “the promise and delivery of an experience”; from a business perspective, it is “the security of future earnings”; from a legal perspective, it is “a separable piece of intellectual property.” Brands offer customers a means to choose and enable recognition within cluttered markets.

Brand Architecture How the organization structures and names the brands within its portfolio. There are three main types of brand architecture systems: monolithic, where the corporate name is used on all products and services offered by the company; endorsed, where all sub-brands are linked to the corporate brand using either a verbal or visual endorsement; and freestanding, where the corporate brand operates merely as a holding company, and each product or service is individually branded for its target market.

Brand Associations
The feelings, beliefs, and knowledge consumers (customers) have about brands. These associations are derived from experiences and must be consistent with the brand positioning and the basis of differentiation.

Brand Commitment
The degree to which a customer is committed to a given brand in that they are likely to re-purchase/re-use in the future. The level of commitment indicates the degree to which a brand’s customer franchise is protected from competitors.

Brand Earnings
The share of a brand-owning business’s cash flow can be attributed to the brand alone.

Brand Equity
, The sum of all distinguishing qualities of a brand, drawn from all relevant stakeholders that result in personal commitment to and demand for the brand; these differentiating thoughts and feelings make the brand valued and valuable.

Brand Equity Protection is implementing strategies to reduce risk and liability from the effects of counterfeiting, diversion, tampering, and theft so that the differentiating thoughts and feelings about the brand are maintained and remain valued and valuable.

Brand Essence
, The brand’s promise is expressed in the simplest, most single-minded terms. For example, Volvo = safety; AA = Fourth Emergency Service. The most powerful brand essences are rooted in a fundamental customer need.

Brand Experience
How a brand is created in the mind of a stakeholder. Some experiences are controlled, such as retail environments, advertising, products/services, websites, etc. Some are uncontrolled, like journalistic comments and word of mouth. Strong brands arise from consistent experiences which combine to form a clear, differentiated overall brand experience.

Brand Extension
Leveraging the values of the brand to take the brand into new markets/sectors.

Brand Harmonization Ensuring that all products in a particular brand range have a consistent name, visual Identity, and, ideally, positioning across several geographic or product/service markets.

Brand Identity
The outward expression of the brand, including its name and visual appearance. The brand’s Identity is its fundamental means of consumer recognition and symbolizes its differentiation from competitors.

Brand Image
The customer’s net “out-take” from the brand. For users, this is based on practical experience of the product or service (informed impressions) and how well this meets expectations; for non-users, it is based almost entirely upon uninformed images, attitudes, and beliefs.

Brand Licensing
The leasing by a brand owner of the use of a brand to another company. Usually, a licensing fee or royalty rate will be agreed upon for the use of the brand.

Brand Management Practically
involves managing the brand’s tangible and intangible aspects. For product brands, the tangibles are the product itself, the packaging, the price, etc. For service brands (see Service Brands), the tangibles are to do with the customer experience – the retail environment, interface with salespeople, overall satisfaction, etc. For product, service, and corporate brands, the intangibles are the same and refer to the emotional connections derived from experience, Identity, communication, and people. Intangibles are therefore managed by manipulating Identity, communication, and people skills.

Brand Mission
See Brand Platform.

Brand Parity A measure of how similar or different, different brands in the same category are perceived to be. Brand parity varies widely from one type to another. It is high for petrol; for example, about 80% of respondents (BBDO survey) see no real difference between brands. By contrast, brand parity for cars is low: only about 25% of respondents say one makes much the same as another.

Brand Personality
: attributing human personality traits (seriousness, warmth, imagination, etc.) to a brand to achieve differentiation. It is usually done through long-term above-the-line advertising and appropriate packaging and graphics. These traits inform brand behavior through prepared communication/packaging, etc., and through the people who represent the brand – its employees.

Brand Platform
The Brand Platform consists of the following elements:

Brand Vision The brand’s guiding insight into its world.

Brand Mission How the brand will act on its insight.

Brand Values The code by which the brand lives. The brand values act as a benchmark to measure behaviors and performance.

Brand Personality The brand’s personality traits (See also definition for Brand Personality).

Brand Tone of Voice How the brand speaks to its audiences.

Brand Positioning The distinctive position that a brand adopts in its competitive environment ensures that individuals in its target market can tell the brand apart from others. Positioning involves the careful manipulation of every element of the marketing mix.

Brand Strategy
A plan for systematically developing a brand to enable it to meet its agreed objectives. The strategy should be rooted in the brand’s vision and driven by the principles of differentiation and sustained consumer appeal. In addition, the brand strategy should influence the total operation of a business to ensure consistent brand behaviors and brand experiences.

Brand Tone of Voice See Brand Platform.

Brand Valuation The process of identifying and measuring the economic benefit – brand value – that derives from brand ownership.

Brand Values
The code by which the brand lives. The brand values act as a benchmark to measure behaviors and performance. (See also Brand Platform.)

Brand Vision See Brand Platform.

Branding Selecting and blending tangible and intangible attributes to differentiate the product, service, or corporation in an attractive, meaningful, and compelling way.

Consumer Product Goods (consumer goods) or services (consumer services) purchased for private use or other household members.

Core Competencies Relate to a company’s particular areas of skill and competence that best contribute to its ability to compete.

At a minimIdentityorate, identity refers to Identityation’s visual identity (its logo, signage, etc.), but usually taken to mean an organization’s presentation to its stakeholders and how it differentiates itself from other organizations.

Counterfeiting is When an organization or individual produces a product that looks like a branded product and is packaged and presented to deceive the purchaser.

Customer Characteristics
All distinguishing, distinctive, typical, or peculiar characteristics and circumstances or customers that can be used in market segmentation to tell one group of customers from another.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
tracks customer behavior to develop marketing and relationship-building processes that bond the consumer to the brand—developing software or systems to provide one-to-one customer service and personal contact between the company and the customer.

Customer Service
How the brand meets its customers’ needs via its various channels (for example, over the telephone or Internet in the case of remote banking or person in the point of retail or entertainment).

Demographics The description of outward traits that characterize a group of people, such as age, sex, nationality, marital status, education, occupation, or income. Decisions on market segmentation are often based on demographic data.

Differential Product Advantage A product feature that is valuable to customers and not found in other products of the same category.

Differentiation Creation or demonstration of unique characteristics in a company’s products or brands compared to its competitors.

Differentiators
Any tangible or intangible characteristic that can be used to distinguish a product or a company from other products and companies.

Diversion When a genuine product is sold to a buyer in one market/channel and then resold by the same buyer into another market/channel, without the consent or authority of the brand owner, to take advantage of a price arbitrage situation. The definition also applies to parallel trade, gray market, or gray market activities.

Endorsed brand (See Brand Architecture.) Generally, a product or service brand name that a master brand supports – either dominantly, e.g., Tesco Metro,o or lightly, e.g., Nestle Kit-Kat.

Focus Group A qualitative research technique in which a group of about eight people is invited to a neutral venue to discuss a subject, such as hand-held power tools. The principle is the same as an in-depth interview, except that group dynamics help to make the discussion livelier and more wide-ranging. Qualitative groups enable the researcher to probe deeper into specific areas of interest (for example, the nature of commitment to a brand). The result adds richer texture to understanding broader data (for example, quantitative), which may paint general trends or observations—also known as a group discussion.

Freestanding Brand (See Brand Architecture.) A brand name and identity used to identify a product or service in a portfolio is unrelated to the terms and identities of other products in the company’s portfolio.

Functionality What a product does for the buyer and user; the utility it offers the user; what they can do with it.

Goods A product consisting predominantly of tangible values. Almost all goods, however, have intangible values to a greater or lesser extent.

Group Discussion See Focus Group.

High Technology (high tech) is A term with vague and far-reaching meaning. This covers electronics, data technology, telecommunications, medical technology, and bio-chemistry. To be classed as a high-tech company, one definition is that at least 35 percent of staff should have a technical qualification. At least 15 percent of sales should be used for R&D. Another report states that the company must employ twice as many scientists and engineers and invest twice as much in R&D as the average of all manufacturing companies in the country.

Intangible “Intangible” – incapable of being touched. (1) Intangible assets – trademarks, copyrights, patents, design rights, proprietary expertise, databases, etc. (2) Brand attributes – brand names, logos, graphics, colors, shapes, and smells. (See Service Brand.

Launch The initial marketing of a new product in a particular market. How the launch is carried out dramatically affects the product’s profitability throughout its lifecycle.

Market Leader A company that has achieved a dominant position – in scale (e.g., British Airways) or influence (e.g., Virgin) – within its field. This leading position often comes about because the company was the first to market a specific type of product and, with the protection of a patent, managed to consolidate its position before the direct competition was possible. Alternatively, a company may overtake a previous market leader through greater efficiency and skillful positioning.

Market Position
A measure of the position of a company or product in a market. It is defined as market share multiplied by the share of mind.

Market Segment
A group of customers who (a) share the exact needs and values, (b) can be expected to respond in much the same way to a company’s offering, and (c) command enough purchasing power to be of strategic importance to the company.

Market Share
A company’s share of total sales of a given product category on a given market. It can be expressed in volume (how many units are sold) or value (the worth of units sold).

Mass Marketing
Simultaneous standardized marketing to a vast target market through mass media. Other names for this are market aggregation and undifferentiated marketing.

Masterbrand
A brand name that dominates all products or services in a range or across a business. Sometimes used with sub-brands, sometimes used with alpha or numeric signifiers. (See also Monolithic Brand.) For example, Audi, Durex, Nescafe, and Lego are all utilized as master brands.

Monolithic Brand
A single brand name used to “master brand” all products or services in a range. Individual products are nearly always identified by alpha or numeric signifiers. Companies like Mercedes and BMW favor such systems.

Multibrand Strategy /Multiple Branding Marketing of two or more mutually competing products under different brand names by the same company. The motive may be that the company wishes to create internal competition to promote efficiency, differentiate its offering to different market segments, or get maximum mileage out of established brands that it has acquired. When a company has achieved a dominant market share, the multi-brand strategy may be its only option for further increasing sales without sacrificing profitability. For example, Lever Brothers sell washing powders under the Persil, Omo, and Surf names; Cadbury sells chocolates under the Dairy Milk, Bournville, and Fruit & Nut names; Heinz sells canned convenience foods under the Baked Beans, Spaghetti Hoops, and Alphabetti Spaghetti names.


Names
There are three basic categories of brand (or corporate) names:

  1. Descriptive name A name which describes the product or service for which it is intended, e.g., TALKING PAGES.
  2. Associative name A name which alludes to an aspect or benefit of the product or service, often using an original or striking image or idea, e.g., VISA.
  3. Freestanding name A name with no link to the product or service but which might have its own meaning, e.g., PENGUIN.

The following are also helpful:

  1. Abstract name A name entirely invented and has no meaning, e.g., ZENECA. Abstract names are a subset of freestanding names because they have no link to the product or service.
  2. Coined name Any name which is in some way invented. Coined words can be descriptive (CO-CREATE), associative (IMATION), and freestanding/abstract (ZENECA).

Niche Marketing Marketing is adapted to the needs, wishes, and expectations of small, precisely defined groups of individuals—a form of market segmentation aimed at tiny segments. Niche marketing characteristically uses selective media.

OEM market OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturers. The OEM market consists of companies using another company’s product as a component in their production. For example, a manufacturer of ball bearings sells both to OEM customers who build the approaches into machines and to end users who need the directions as spare parts for devices they have bought from the OEMs. Most manufacturing companies thus have an OEM market and a replacement market. The latter is usually called the MRO market or aftermarket.

They are offering
What a company offers for sale to customers. An offering includes the product and its design, features, quality, packaging, distribution, etc., and associated services such as financing, warranties, and installation. The name and brand of the product are also part of the offering.

Packaging Design The design of the pack format and graphics for a product brand.

Parent Brand A brand that acts as an endorsement to one or more sub-brands within a range.

It was passing Off The name given to a legal action brought to protect the “reputation” of a particular trademark/brand/get-up. In essence, the action is designed to prevent others from trading on the reputation/goodwill of an existing trademark/brand/get-up. The action is only available in those countries that recognize unregistered trademark rights (for example, the UK and US). In some countries, it is called “unfair competition action.”

Perceptual Mapping Graphic Analysis
and presentation of where actual and potential customers place a product or supplier about other products and suppliers. Most perceptual maps show only two dimensions at a time, for example, price on one axis and quality on the other. There also are methods of graphically analyzing and presenting measurement data in three or more dimensions.

Positioning Statement A written description of the position that a company wishes itself, its product, or its brand to occupy in the minds of a defined target audience.

Power Branding A strategy in which every product in a company’s range has its brand name, which functions independently, unsupported by either the company’s corporate brand or its other product brands. Power branding is a resource-intensive strategy since each brand must be commercially promoted and legally protected. This strategy is used mainly by manufacturers of consumer goods. Lever’s and Procter & Gamble’s detergents are good examples of power brands.

Product Brand A brand synonymous with a particular product offering, for example, Cheerios.

Rebrand When a brand owner revisits the brand to update or revise based on internal or external circumstances. Rebranding is often necessary after an M&A or if the brand has outgrown its identity/marketplace.

Relative Market Share Your company’s market share compared to your competitors. A large share confers advantages of scale in product development, manufacturing, and marketing. It also puts you in a stronger position in customers’ minds, which positively influences pricing.

Relaunch Reintroducing a product into a specific market. The term implies that the company has previously marketed the product but stopped marketing it. A relaunched product has usually undergone one or more changes. It may, for example, be technically modified, rebranded, distributed through different channels, or repositioned.

Repositioning Communications activities to give an existing product a new position in customers’ minds, expanding or otherwise altering its potential market. Many potentially valuable products lead to an obscure existence because they were launched or positioned inadequately. It is almost always possible to enhance the value of such products by repositioning them.

Rollout The process by which a company introduces a new product or service to different geographical markets or consumer segments.

Selective Media Media that, unlike mass media, reaches only small and identifiable groups of people, for example, members of a particular profession or industry or other groups defined by geographic, demographic, or psychographic data (otherwise known as targeted media).

Service Brand A product consisting predominantly of intangible values. “A service is something you can buy and sell, but not drop on your foot” (The Economist). In this sense, a service is something you do for somebody or a promise you make to them.

Share of Mind There is many definitions of share of mind. At its most precise, share of mind measures how often consumers think about a particular brand as a percentage of all the times they think about all the brands in its category. More loosely, the share of mind can be defined simply as positive perceptions of the brand obtained by market research. At the same time, market share measures the width of a company’s market position; the share of mind can be said to gauge its depth.

Share of Voice
The media spending of a particular brand compared to others in its category.

Sub-brand A product or service brand with its name and visual identity to differentiate from the parent brand.

Tangibles “Tangible” – capable of being touched. (1) Tangible assets – manufacturing plant, bricks and mortar, cash, investments, etc. (2) Tangible brand attributes – the product and its packaging. (3) Tangible brand values – valuable brand qualities that exist through experience and knowledge.

Target Market The market segment or group of customers that a company has decided to serve and at which it consequently aims its marketing activities.

Top-of-Mind
What is present in the uppermost level of consciousness; the manufacturer or brand that people in market surveys name first when asked to list products in a specific category. Top-of-mind is the highest degree of share of mind. A company typically needs a percentage of voice in its class to attain that position.

Trademark
“Any sign capable of being represented graphically which is capable of distinguishing goods or services of one undertaking from those of another” (UK Trade Marks Act 1994).

Trademark Infringement
A trademark registration is infringed by the unauthorized use of the registered trademark, or of one that is confusingly similar to it, on the registered goods or services, or in certain circumstances, on parallel or dissimilar goods and services.

Trendsetter Someone or thing that breaks a traditional mold or routine and gains a following because of it. iMac is an example of trendsetting in design as now office supplies come in the standard colors and translucent packaging of an iMac.

User Segmentation Division of potential customers into market segments according to how and for what purpose they use a product. Do they use it to clean their teeth or make cakes (baking powder)? For oiling their hair or for frying food? (True story concerning the use of Brylcreem in Nigeria). As a decongestant chest rub or as an aphrodisiac? (True story concerning Ribby Rub in the Caribbean).

Visual Identity What a braIdentity like – including, among other things, its logo, typography, packaging, and literature systems.

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