Brand
Brand positioning
The clearest answer to why someone should choose a brand over the alternative. It names who the brand is for, the need it meets and the distinctive benefit it offers, in a sentence a customer would repeat. More in what is brand positioning.
Distinctive brand asset
A colour, logo, shape, sound, character or phrase uniquely linked to a brand, which lets people recognise it before reading a word. See distinctive brand assets.
Mental availability
How easily a brand comes to mind in a buying situation. The more memory structures a brand builds, the more likely it is to be recalled and chosen.
Physical availability
How easy a brand is to find and buy, across places, formats and moments. It works alongside mental availability to drive growth.
Brand architecture
How a company organises and relates its brands, sub-brands and products, so the portfolio is clear to customers and efficient to market.
Tone of voice
The consistent personality and style in which a brand writes and speaks, which makes its communication recognisable across channels.
Rebrand versus refresh
A refresh evolves an existing brand system; a rebrand replaces it. A refresh is the safer default because it protects recognition. See rebrand or refresh.
Strategy and ideas
Human truth
An honest observation about how people feel or behave that a brand can credibly act on. A strong one feels obvious and surprising at once. See why insight beats output.
Creative platform
A durable central idea big enough to run for years and across markets, where the idea stays fixed and the expression adapts, rather than a one-off execution.
Master idea
The original, sharply made expression of a campaign that everything downstream inherits from. If the master is strong, scale stays high quality.
Creative brief
The short document that sets up a piece of work: the business problem, the audience, the single most important thought and the measure of success. See how to write a creative brief.
Media and effectiveness
Brand versus performance marketing
Brand building creates future demand by making a brand known and preferred; performance captures existing demand and is measured in immediate response. They work best as one system. See brand and performance.
Creative effectiveness
The degree to which creative work moves a business outcome, such as trial, preference or share, rather than only winning attention. See how to measure it.
Share of voice
A brand's share of total category advertising or attention in a period. Sustaining a share of voice above market share tends to support growth.
Reach and frequency
Reach is how many distinct people see a message; frequency is how often each one sees it. Most brand campaigns favour broad reach over heavy frequency.
Earned, owned and paid media
Owned media is what a brand controls, such as its site; paid media is bought, such as ads; earned media is the coverage and sharing a brand attracts but does not pay for directly.
Production and scale
Transcreation
Recreating the intent, emotion and impact of an idea in another language and culture, rather than translating the words literally. See what is transcreation.
Localisation
Adapting content for a specific market, including language, references, formats and casting, so it feels native rather than imported.
Personalisation at scale
Producing many individually relevant versions of a piece of content, for example video addressed to a person by name in their language, while protecting the craft of the original. See how we make 100,000 personalized videos.
Key visual
The single anchor image or layout that carries a campaign across formats and markets, keeping it recognisable as one idea.