Advertising and Brand Terms and Definitions
So you know what the heck people are talking about when they talk about advertising
When we create advertising, we are 100 focused on making something that’s interesting, clever, beautiful, and attention getting. Maybe it’s a TV campaign. Or a social video. Or a microsite in support of an event. It could be an overarching campaign that has lots of pieces. Or a single poster with a short life span, maybe even a small space online ad for something as mundane as a sales event.
But whenever you create any kind of communication, your ad is part of a bigger brand ecosystem. It has to fulfill the assignment at hand, but also represent the brand you’re creating it for. It’s no surprise that the best marketers, despite how many different ads they create, manage to stay true to their core brand essence and personality.
So let’s take a look at some terms and understand where an ad or series of ads fits in.
Some definitions might help, as you’ll hear these terms bandied about quite frequently: brand, archetype, vision, mission, objective, strategy, brief, campaign, tactics, and execution.
Brand:
Simply put, a brand is what people think of when they hear your name or see your product or logo. It isn’t the logo itself, or the trademark, rather it is the thoughts, feelings and associations one has in seeing that logo. And that comes from a brand’s behavior, the quality of its products and services, its defined purpose, yes, even it’s advertising. You know that Apple stands for easy of use, elegant design, and innovative products not simply because it says so, but because it delivers on that promise. If and when they announce the Apple car, you’ll already have expectations based on your perception of the Apple brand. When you create advertising, it should somehow reflect or be true to a brand’s values.
An even simpler way to think about brand: Ask, what is it that you want people to remember?
Archetype:
Brands can and do have personalities. Apple is a “creator.” Levi’s is an “outlaw.” Jeep is an “explorer.” The philosopher Carl Jung identified 12 universal archetypes that have been with us since the very first stories handed down. They include, in addition to these three: jester, lover, caregiver, everyman, innocent, ruler, sage, magician and hero. These archetypes represent universal patterns and images that derive from a collective unconscious. They’ve been with us since the dawn of story telling. Using a brand archetype to guide both your thinking and the work you create can help you represent a brand and identify and connect with an audience. Dove is a caregiver. Nike is a hero. Ben and Jerry’s is a jester. Google is a sage.
Vision (or brand purpose) and mission:
You will no doubt hear clients talk about vision and mission. And chances are they’ll get them confused. A brand vision is what a brand strives to be and live up to: its optimal and ultimate goal. Google’s vision is to organize all of the data in the world and make it accessible for everyone in a useful way.
In the case of Googe, its mission — how it goes about achieving that — is with a powerful search engine.
Vision is a brand’s aspiration. Mission is what the brand does every day to achieve that vision.
Mullen’s (now Mullen/Lowe) vision (its ultimate goal) was to be the most creative agency in the world. It’s mission (how it went about getting there) was to create remarkably compelling work that would propel challenger brands to leaders in their categories.
Objectives:
Here’s where we get a bit closer to the work we create. Every brand has a business or marketing objective. It wants to sell more product, differentiate itself from the competition, appeal to a new segment, introduce a new product, increase share of market, or maybe induce a different kind of behavior, i.e. cut back on energy consumption or save for retirement. Objectives tend to be what a client is trying to achieve for its business. Advertising is one way to help make it happen. Note that an advertising objective may not be the same as a business objective. Dove’s advertising objective may be to encourage a social conversation about beauty, or to make women feel good about themselves. But it’s business objective is to sell more beauty products and soap, secure more shelf space, and increase profitability. Advertising alone won’t accomplish the latter three objectives, but it will contribute as part of an overall marketing eco-system.
Advertising Strategy:
“A set of actions (a marketer will take) aimed at changing/modifying consumer behavior in order to meet specific brand and business objectives.” That may be one of the best definitions I’ve heard. It’s from the highly regarded strategist Ana Andjelic, formerly of Huge and Droga5, and now the global strategic lead at Havas Lux. The strategy should be the link between the objectives (what the business is trying to accomplish) and the creative brief. Dove’s objective is to sell more soap and skin care products to women. But it’s strategy is to win their support by redefining beauty in a more inclusive manner.
The Creative Brief:
Typically, the creative brief — developed by the client, account planner, account executive or some combination thereof — is a simple one or two-page document handed to the creative team giving them their input. Usually it includes:
- Objective
- Target audience
- Reason for advertising
- Insight (about our prospective customer) that can be leveraged
- Desired outcome
- Primary communication point
- Specifics: deliverables, media, timing, other mandatories
See folder on creative briefs, as creative briefs can take many forms, depending on whether they are asking for a message based ad, a social media initiative, or are open ended enough in that they only frame the problem the brand is trying to solve for a customer or prospect.
Example:
Jet Blue’s business objective is to fill more seats. A marketing strategy might be to go after business travelers since they fly more frequently and tend to be more loyal. The advertising strategy could then be to own the position of humanity and customer service, convincing travelers that Jet Blue treats them better.
In the case of JetBlue, the brief might be “use Jet Blue’s unique attributes — leg room, in seat video, free snacks — to impart how the airline creates a more human experience.” In such a case, the brief becomes pretty descriptive. It reflects that the client and agency have pretty much determined what they need to do with the advertising.
But there is more progressive thinking taking place in the whole strategy/brief these days.
In years past, when creative and media options were more limited, the process from objectives to strategy to brief was quite linear. Today, that’s no longer the case. If we once considered the brief the blueprint, outlining precisely what we were trying to do, today it might better viewed as “an invitation for business and creative discovery,” says according Andjelic. The brief might simply present the problem or the opportunity. It could even come before the strategy, initiating a discovery that leads to a more insightful strategy.
Audience:
Note: we should probably stop using terms like target in front of audience. Or penetrate in front of market. They sound rather militaristic. And in a more collaborative, social age, we want to create communities who participate with us rather than simply receive our messages. But for all intents and purposes, the audience is the group of people you want to connect with and motivate or influence. Don’t confuse them with your customers, though they may be. For example, Mass Mutual, the insurance company has a new program called Society for Grownups. It’s not advertising, but rather a service for young adults to help them navigate the change from post college to a more fiscally responsible adulthood. Mass Mutual has other campaigns with other audiences. But it knows there is value in doing something for this future customer. Note: an audience can be broad or narrow even for the same brand.
Consumer Insight:
What do we know about the prospective customers’ wishes, dreams, aspirations that are relevant to our product/brand that we can tap into. Dove connected with women around their frustration with the beauty industry’s portrayal of women. I saw a great student campaign for Winnebago that tapped into a mother’s concern that digital electronics and unsupervised time made it hard to keep a family close. So instead of selling size, freedom, travel or amenities, the campaign sold the advantage of bringing the family together again.
Campaign below by Amy Wheeler, VCU ‘14, now AD at Droga5
Problem to be solved:
Today, we often see briefs that are trying to inspire utility rather than a message. So rather than dictate a primary communication point (below) they define the problem you are trying to solve for the customer. It might be to simplify the purchase process; remove a frustration; make the experience of owning better; support future accomplishments or achievements; etc.
Primary communication point:
This is the old way of doing ads, but it is sometimes still relevant. What is the one thing the advertising should say or do? What point does it have to get across? In the above example, it’s possible that the brief asked for a message about “unifying family.” If it did, it was an interesting brief. And the creative took a nice leap off of it.
Tagline (sometimes also an overarching platform):
Don’t leave home without it (American Express). Just Do It (Nike). Impossible is nothing (Adidas). Think Different (Apple). The Ultimate Driving Machine (BMW). You Above All (Jet Blue). The Axe Effect (Obviously). Taglines serve a few purposes. One, they are an expression of what a brand or product stands for. They sum up an advertising message. They offer a way to unify different executions across different media. And they can be a guide and inspiration for subsequent campaigns (if the tagline extends beyond one campaign) or executions in an existing campaign. There are two primary kinds of taglines. Lines that describe extol the brand’s virtues and features: The Ultimate Driving Machine. We bring good things to life. That’s what BMW is and what GE does. Then there are lines that encourage, inspire, motivate and rally the reader. Just Do It. Think Different. Find Your Greatness. Let’s build a smarter planet. The former is an inside out view. The latter is an outside in view.
Campaign:
A cohesive body of work that is unified sometimes by look, feel, tone, and other executional elements. Though a campaign can also be characterized by less repetitive devices and more by purpose. Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty had a lot of different approaches — videos, ads, experiential, social. They were all part of one big idea, but they didn’t all look exactly the same. Same with IBM’s Let’s Build a Smarter Planet. The famous CP&B Mini Cooper campaign, on the other hand — Let’s Motor — was quite consistent in its style of type, photography and color palette. If you saw any one ad in the campaign, it instantly declared its membership in the club. There is no right or wrong, though in this new age of fragmented media there seems to be a trend toward cohesive versus consistent.
Concept:
This refers to a creative idea, usually before it is produced. What’s the idea? For a basic ad it might be the headline and visual. Or a visual idea and/or interpretation. Demonstrating VW’s driver assist by showing a small parking space on the street between a hearse and a porto-potty is a concept.
The idea of creating a new Oreo ad out of Oreo’s every day for 100 days to celebrate the cookie’s centennial is a concept.
Deciding to sell Walter White’s house on EBay to promote Century 21 and create a social media campaign around show’s final episode is a concept.
Layout (or rough):
A layout is a rough drawing or computer generated (using Illustrator, Photoshop, In-Design, or any other digital document maker) that represents the concept in rough form. What will it look like, type face, image, relationship among visual elements, etc. In a digital execution of website it might still be as rough as a hand drawn image, but would be represented as a wire-frame (a more specific allocation of space and what goes where) prior to it getting designed and built.
Execution:
This usually refers to a single, produced piece of work in the campaign. Could be an ad, a radio commercial, TV spot, etc.
From above layouts, the following executions:
Media:
Where the advertising runs, offline or online. Could also be a reference to the overall media plan for the campaign, to a specific media buy, or to the places (newspapers, magazines, TV shows, websites) where the ads run.
Content: (Paid, Earned, Owned):
In the age of the web where anyone and any brand can produce and distribute their own content, brands and marketers have websites, YouTube channels, Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, Instagram accounts, even a presence on Snapchat.
To stay top of mind and become part of the cultural conversation — without paying for media all the time, brands have three kinds of content.
Paid: This is media that clients buy and pay for. It includes everything from TV commercials, to online display ads and search, to print, radio and outdoor. Essentially a marketer is paying for a media property’s reach and readership or viewership
Owned: This is all the content that lives in channels the brand controls: websites, blogs, Twitter feeds, Instagram. It primarily serves existing customers or at least prospects who are aware of the brand and have sought it out. The good thing about owned content is that it’s cost efficient, flexible and enduring.
Earned: This refers to attention we generate via word of mouth, online buzz, or active sharing by customers and fans. It can be great because it’s credible and friends trust friends. Or it can cause problems as a marketer has no control over what does get said and shared.
Sometimes owned becomes earned. For example, Red Bull drops a guy out of a spaceship and streams it live on its site and YouTube. That is owned. But when it lights up the Internet and every blog and media site in the universe covers it, then it’s earned.
The better the concept, regardless of whether it starts out as paid or owned, the more likely it is to generate earned attention.
Obviously there are other terms worth knowing, so I may return with more.
If you’re not a student, or if you are, feel free to leave comments, suggestions or other categories for definitions that I should include.
Below, an example.
