In today’s hyper-competitive world, it’s never been more important to have a stellar brand. Product marketing and branding ensure your products make an impression on the right customers or target consumers. But with similar terms like “Brand Positioning”, “Brand Voice”, and “RTB” thrown around, it can be hard to decipher what’s what.

We took our branding lingo and broke them down into 20 simple definitions. Consider it your cheat sheet for brand marketing.

1. Brand: All elements of a company or product’s look and feel, personality, and marketing. This encompasses every creative or marketing element of the company, including the name, logo, packaging design, advertising look and feel, messaging tone of voice, product assortment, innovation pipeline, customer experience, digital advertising, social media presence, and more ‍

2. Brand Strategy: The blueprint for how your brand and customer experience come to life through design, messaging, products, advertising, and activations

3. Brand Positioning: The place you want to own in the target consumer's mind; often in relation to other competitive products or brands that solve a similar need.

4. Mission & Vision:

     Mission statement: The mission is the "how" — it clearly defines the company’s business objectives and its approach to reaching those objectives. Your mission is what the company will do in order to achieve the vision.  

     Vision statement: The vision is your internal "why" — describes the desired future position of the company and the ultimate goal of what the company wants to accomplish.

5. Brand Purpose: The “why” behind what you do and the higher order reason that your brand exists beyond simply to make money. Brand Purpose is the external way you talk about your Vision Statement.

6. RTB: Reasons to believe (RTBs) are the functional support and product benefits to back up a more emotional positioning‍

     Positioning: Choosy moms choose Jif.

     RTB: ... because our peanuts are always fresh-roasted to make a nutritious spread that kids find delicious.

7. Brand Manifesto: Longer-form narrative that explains your brand’s positioning and purpose. Manifestos are often written in a way that motivate employees or rally consumers around a common mission

8. Visual Identity: The complete design system that makes up your brand, including logo, packaging, color palette, typography, brand photography/illustration, icon system, etc.

9. Brand Architecture: A tool that organizes your brands, sub-brands, and products/services in a clear hierarchy so customers can easily find the best product for them

10. Brand Personality: The traits that define who our brand looks, feels, sounds, and acts like, and sometimes more importantly, who our brand doesn’t look/feel/sound/act like

11. Voice and Tone: The way the brand sounds in messaging, from word choice to grammar(!)

12. UX: User Experience (UX) is the way your customer interacts with your products or services; often refers to a digital interface

13. CX: Customer experience (CX) is how customers experience your product or brand over a long period of time

14. Customer Journey: The end-to-end process that a customer goes through over time with your brand or product. Can be regarding a specific purchase or more broadly how (s)he might find, adopt, and use your product

15. Consumer Insights: Research on your consumer or customer. Can be done through qualitative (conversation-based) or quantitative (numerical data-based) methodologies

16. IDIs: In-Depth-Interviews (IDIs) are conversations with consumers about a specific topic

17. Ethnographies: The study of someone’s life. Can be done through a mobile app or in-home.  

18. Segmentation: A survey methodology that divides a broad market into sub-groups of consumers, current or potential, based on shared characteristics or demographics

19. DTC: Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) products can be sold to consumers without going through a 3rd party retailer, e.g., Warby Parker, Casper, Dollar Shave Club. Some DTC brands have grown enough to move into brick-and-mortar retailers; however, they are unlike traditional "mall" shopping experiences because the in-person shopping experience is meant to be another form of marketing and to deepen relationships with their consumers.

20. CTA: Call to Action (CTA) is the next step we want our audience to take. Typically in reference to e-commerce, e.g., “Learn More” or “Buy Now”

Now that you can speak the language, contact us to see what brand marketing looks like in action.

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