Brand Identity · Verbal system · Component
The vocabulary
What the organisation calls its own things, settled once — because three names for one feature is a brand problem before it is a documentation problem.
The deliverable
What it is
Internal vocabulary escapes. The name a team uses in a meeting appears in a support reply, then in documentation, then in a sales deck, and the customer now has two words for one thing.
The customer’s own word is usually better than the internal one, and finding out what it is takes an afternoon.
One level in
What it is made of
Each element is a constituent part of the component. Follow one to see the attributes it carries.
The preferred terms
The word the organisation uses for each thing.
3 attributes: Term · Refers to · Not
LearnThe customer words
What customers actually call these things.
3 attributes: Customer term · Source · Adopted
Learn
Collect what customers actually call things from support tickets and search queries. It is usually simpler than your word.
The other components in verbal system
The tone of voice
How the brand writes, expressed as pairs rather than as principles — because a principle nobody can apply to a sentence is not a guideline.
LearnThe naming rules
How new things beneath the brand are named, decided in advance — because a convention decided per launch is an argument rather than a decision.
Learn