Video production and branding glossary

Brand ambassador

A brand ambassador is someone who talks about a company publicly and regularly, most often an employee. Unlike an influencer, they have a long term relationship with the firm and speak about it even when they are not being paid to.

Brand archetype

A brand archetype is a personality model a brand communicates through, for example the creator, the guide or the rebel. It works as shorthand for tone, visuals and behaviour.

Brand architecture

Brand architecture is the rule for how your companies, products and services are named in relation to each other and to the customer. It decides what gets its own name and logo and what sits under the parent brand.

Brand audit

A brand audit is a review of everything a brand communicates through, from the logo and website to invoices and emails, naming the inconsistencies. It is usually the first step before a rebrand.

Brand colour palette

A brand colour palette is the set of brand colours together with rules for where each one is used. It is not a list of favourite shades, it is the decision that keeps a website, print and packaging looking related.

Brand differentiation

Brand differentiation is whatever lets a customer tell your company apart from the competition before they read the name. It is not about being better at everything, it is about being unmistakably different in the one thing the customer cares about.

Brand guidelines

Brand guidelines are the document defining how a brand may be used: permitted and forbidden logo usage, colours, typefaces, writing style and photography. It is the binding reference for suppliers and employees alike.

Brand positioning

Positioning is the decision about who a brand is for, how it differs from the competition and why anyone should believe that. It fits into one sentence and governs everything else.

Brand story

A brand story is a short account of why the company exists and what problem it solves. It is not a year by year history, it is the one thing a customer or a new employee remembers after meeting you.

Brand typeface

A brand typeface is the type a brand writes everything in, from its website to its invoices. You do not buy the font itself but a licence for specific uses, and that licence is usually why materials from different suppliers stop matching.

Case study

A case study describes one project in the order of starting point, solution and result, backed by numbers and a client quote. It works as proof rather than a claim.

Claim and tagline

A claim is the lasting line that sits with the brand and states what the customer gets from it. A tagline or slogan belongs to a single campaign and changes with it.

Creative concept

A creative concept is a single idea from which a commercial, a key visual, social posts and an ad headline can all be derived. It is not the slogan and not the visual, it is why those two work together.

Design system

A design system is a library of ready interface elements together with rules for using them, so a website and an app look and behave consistently. Unlike a brand manual it is not read but used: it holds components a developer drops straight in.

Employer branding

Employer branding is building a company's reputation as a place to work, in the eyes of current and future colleagues. It shows up in job ads, on the careers page and in what insiders say about the company.

Iconography

Iconography is the set of icons and illustrations belonging to a brand, drawn to shared rules: the same stroke weight, the same corner radius, the same level of detail. It is what makes a website, a deck and a manual look like one company.

Key visual

A key visual is the central visual motif of a campaign from which every other format is derived. It holds a campaign together so the billboard, the social post and the banners read as one thing.

Logotype

A logotype is the brand written as type, the company name in a precisely defined form. People say logo for everything, but the logotype is specifically the wordmark, as opposed to a pictorial symbol.

Naming

Naming is finding a name for a company, a product or a product line that can be pronounced, remembered and, above all, legally used. It is not a search for a nice word, it is a search for an available one.

Packaging design

Packaging design is the only part of a brand the customer actually holds. It does three jobs at once: it says what the product is, it protects it in transit and it satisfies the legal rules of its category.

Pitch deck

A pitch deck is a short presentation built to convince one specific audience. The investor version revolves around market and growth; the sales version around the customer problem, the solution, the proof and the price.

Rebranding

Rebranding is changing a brand, which can cover the name, logo, visual identity and communication. It is done when the current brand no longer matches what the company is or who it sells to.

Sonic branding

Sonic branding is the audio half of a brand: a short audio signature, a defined musical territory and rules for how the brand sounds in videos, ads and apps. It is the visual identity's counterpart for the ears.

Tone of voice

Tone of voice is the defined way a brand speaks: vocabulary, sentence length, how it addresses people and what it avoids. It is the verbal counterpart to a visual identity and keeps communication consistent no matter who writes it.

Trademark

A trademark is a registered sign giving you the exclusive right to use a name or logo for particular goods and services. Without registration you can still use the name, but you have nothing to defend it with when somebody else starts using it too.

Visual identity

A visual identity is the set of visual elements a brand communicates with: logo, colours, typography, image treatment and graphic principles. It is more than a logo; it is the rule for how everything looks together.

B-roll

B-roll is supplementary footage cut over the main shot, typically over an interview. It hides edits, illustrates what is being said and holds the viewer's attention.

Call sheet

A call sheet is the schedule for a shoot day, sent to the whole crew and to the client the evening before. It carries the times, the address, phone numbers and who has to be where.

Colour grading

Colour grading is the adjustment of colour and contrast in post-production. First shots are matched so they cut together, then the footage gets the final look that fits the brand.

Company profile video

A company profile video is a short film, usually under ninety seconds, that says who you are, what you do and who for. It has one job: to let someone who has never met you understand in a minute what you would otherwise explain in a meeting.

Creative brief

A creative brief is a short document that defines a video's goal, audience, core message, budget and deadline before shooting starts. It is what a production company prices and plans against.

Drone footage

Drone footage is aerial material shot from an unmanned aircraft, showing a site, a building or an event from a distance you cannot get from the ground. In a corporate video it works as an opening and a connecting shot, not as the main content.

Explainer video

An explainer video is a short film, usually 60 to 120 seconds, that shows plainly how a product, service or process works. It is often animated, because it shows what you cannot put in front of a camera.

Frame rate

Frame rate is the number of frames per second the camera records. It decides how movement feels in the finished video and whether a shot can be slowed down smoothly.

Lavalier microphone

A lavalier is a small microphone clipped to clothing roughly a hand's width below the chin. In corporate video it is the safest way to get an intelligible voice, because it stays the same distance from the mouth even when the speaker moves.

Moodboard

A moodboard is a collection of reference images, frames and colours that shows how the final piece should look and feel before anything is shot. Its job is to make sure the client and the studio picture the same thing.

Music licensing

Music licensing is permission from the author or publisher to use a specific track in your video. A streaming subscription gives you the right to listen, not the right to publish that music with pictures.

Post-production

Post-production is everything that happens to a video after the shoot: editing, colour, sound, captions, graphics and exporting for each platform. It usually takes longer than the shoot itself.

Pre production

Pre production is the phase before the shoot where the script, locations, on camera talent, schedule and budget get locked. It decides what the shooting day will cost and whether it will finish on time.

Product video

A product video shows one specific product: what it looks like, how it is used and what it solves. Unlike a company film it does not talk about the business, it talks about the thing the customer is about to buy.

Rough cut

A rough cut is the first assembled version of a video: the right order and the right length, but no colour, no sound mix and no graphics. It goes to the client deliberately early, so a change of direction can happen before the heaviest work goes in.

Shot list

A shot list is a written list of the specific shots to capture on a shoot day. Unlike a storyboard it is not drawn, only listed, and its job is to make sure nothing is forgotten and to show what can realistically fit into a day.

Showreel

A showreel is a short montage of a studio's or creator's best work, usually under two minutes. It is a calling card for capability, not a case study of one project.

Storyboard

A storyboard is a frame by frame sketch of a video before it is shot. It shows what each shot contains, in what order and with what copy, so the client sees the film before day one of the shoot.

Three point lighting

Three point lighting is the basic setup of three lights: key, fill and back. It is used for interviews and pieces to camera because it separates the person from the background and gives the face shape.

TV commercial

A commercial is a short paid video, usually fifteen to thirty seconds, made to be bought into media space. It differs from a corporate film in pace and in budget: it carries one idea and has to land within the first two seconds.

Video subtitles

Subtitles are on screen text that transcribes what is being said. On social platforms they are effectively mandatory, because a large share of viewers watch with the sound off.

Voiceover

A voiceover is spoken narration recorded off camera that guides the viewer through a video. It is usually recorded after the rough cut so it fits the rhythm of the footage.

Aftermovie

An aftermovie is a short video recap of an event, made after it ends. It captures the atmosphere, key moments and attendee reactions, and is mostly used to promote the next edition.

Conference recording

A conference recording captures the talks and panels so they can still be watched months after the event. It is not the same as an aftermovie: the recording delivers the content in full, the aftermovie delivers the atmosphere in two minutes.

Hybrid event

A hybrid event runs at the same time for people in the room and people online. It is not a conference with an extra camera: the online audience needs its own direction, its own sound and its own host.

LED wall

An LED wall is a large screen assembled from modules that replaces a projector and screen at an event. Unlike projection it works in a lit room, because it emits light rather than reflecting it.

Livestream

A livestream is a real time broadcast of an event to the internet. Compared with recording for later, it additionally needs live vision mixing, a stable connection and a backup, because there is no second take.

Run of show

A run of show is a minute by minute schedule of an event with exact times, names and who does what. The host, the sound engineer, the lighting tech, the camera crew and the projection operator all work from it.

Sound reinforcement

Sound reinforcement is the equipment and the operator that make a speaker equally audible at the front and the back of a room. It covers speakers, microphones, a mixing desk and a person riding the levels through the programme.

Teaser

A teaser is a short video that builds interest ahead of an event or product launch without giving the content away. It usually runs fifteen to thirty seconds.

Webinar

A webinar is an online talk with registration, where the audience sees the speaker and can ask questions. It differs from a live stream in that registration gives you contact details, which makes it a sales tool rather than a reach tool.

Carousel post

A carousel is a post made of several slides you swipe through sideways. It works for explaining things step by step: each slide carries one idea and a reason to swipe to the next.

Community management

Community management is the daily work with people under your posts: replying to comments and messages, moderating the discussion and catching a complaint early, before it becomes a problem. It is not content creation, it is what happens after publishing.

Content creator

A content creator is someone with their own audience who talks about a product in their own words for a fee. Follower count is the least important number: what matters is whether their audience matches your customer.

Content plan

A content plan is a schedule of what a brand publishes, where and when, usually a month ahead. It lists topics, formats, dates and an owner, so content is not made at the last minute.

Crisis communication

Crisis communication is how a brand responds once a negative story starts spreading on its own. It settles who decides, what gets said in the first hour and what is never said at all.

Engagement rate

Engagement rate is the share of people who reacted to a post out of those who saw it. It tells you whether the content held people long enough to stop scrolling, not how many people it reached.

Organic reach

Organic reach is the number of people a post reached without you paying for it. On company pages it has been falling for years, so today it is more a measure of content quality than a way to reach new people.

Reels

Reels are short vertical videos on Instagram that are shown to people beyond your followers. For companies they are currently the main way to reach a new audience on the platform without paying for it.

Short form video

Short form video is a vertical format of roughly a minute or less, made for Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts. It is won or lost in the first two seconds, and most viewers see it with the sound off.

Social media algorithm

An algorithm is the system deciding who sees which posts and in what order. It does not reward regularity or hashtags, it rewards how long people stay with the content and whether they react to it.

UGC (user generated content)

UGC is content made by users or creators rather than by the brand itself. It works on social because it reads as a recommendation from someone you know rather than an ad, even when it is paid.

Buyer persona

A buyer persona is a short description of a typical customer: what they are trying to solve, what worries them and how they decide. It is not demographics, because age and gender say very little about a buying decision.

KPI

A KPI is a number you act on. A metric is any number you can measure. The difference is consequence: when a KPI drops you change something, when an ordinary metric drops you merely note it.

Marketing budget

A marketing budget is the amount set aside for promotion in a period, split between producing content, buying space and tooling. How it is divided usually matters more than how large it is, because scattering it across too many things is the common failure.

Marketing strategy

A marketing strategy is a decision about who you sell to, what makes you different and where your money and time go. It is mostly a list of things you will not do, which is why it fits on one page.

Performance marketing

Performance marketing is paid promotion where every euro can be traced to an outcome, usually an enquiry or an order. It works on people already looking for something, unlike brand building, which works on people who do not know you yet.

Answer engine optimisation

AEO, or answer engine optimisation, prepares content for AI search: the answers written out by ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews. You compete not for a click but for a sentence in somebody else's answer.

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are three measurable indicators Google uses to judge how a website treats its visitor: how fast the main content appears, how quickly it responds to a tap, and whether the layout jumps around under their hands.

SEO

SEO is shaping a website and its content so search engines can find it, understand it and show it to people looking for what you offer. It is not a trick played on an algorithm, it is answering questions earlier and better than the competition.

Company podcast

A company podcast is a regular audio or video show published by a brand. It does not work as a quick reach tool, it works as a way to build a relationship with a narrow audience over dozens of hours of listening.

Video podcast

A video podcast is a podcast filmed at the same time, so one recording produces both an audio episode and a video. The main reason is not the picture but the clips: an hour long conversation yields short videos for social media.