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Author: Giovanna Blackston Keren

Why It Pays to Aim High: Reflections on the Inauguration

Posted on by Giovanna Blackston Keren

I’ve not always been American. I moved to the United States at the age of 13, reluctantly at first, because who wants to move anywhere at age 13? But in a very short time, and especially by the time I started college, I was fully bought into the proposition of America. At the tender age of 17, my friends back in the UK were finishing their A-levels and already having to close the aperture on their future careers by declaring what they would study at University. I, on the other hand, was looking at a veritable smorgasbord of classes and majors offered by Barnard and Columbia Colleges—two massive educational edifices flanking Broadway in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.

Options and choices. To me, this defines the American offering—the choice of what to study, who to spend time with, where to live, what to believe in, when and how to talk, and the freedom to live out one’s choices and their natural consequences, as long as they fit into the framework of the Law and good citizenship. I freely availed myself of the choices I was offered, charting my own course, creating my own options where I didn’t like what already existed, certainly abetted by my white, middle-class privilege, and limited only by constraints of my own making. And it was good. America was good.

Then 2016 happened. Then 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. And just two weeks ago, January 6th happened. And I’ve been disgusted. Disenfranchised. Ashamed. Embarrassed. One man, his supporters, and his scared, beholden party took practically everything about the American proposition and turned it on its head. And I lost myself in my assumed home country. The American flag that my husband insisted we fly outside our home had become wretched to me.

No one was more surprised than I as tears flowed freely down my cheeks as I watched Joe Biden and Kamala Harris take their oaths and assume their place of national leadership this morning. I rejoiced as I watched the National Mall and Capitol festooned with American flags, Lady Gaga choking back her own tears as she sang the National Anthem, J Lo bedecked in suffragette white, and Hillary Clinton in the purple of bipartisan unity. I imbibed the significance of Latina Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor swearing in the first woman of African American and Asian descent to the office of Vice President. I lapped it all up—the rampant and unabashed paeans, symbolism, Americanism, and historic significance that made up this morning’s ceremony.

And as I reflected on my reactions and emotional state, it slowly became clear to me. America is an enduring brand and I am completely beholden to it. America has a clearly defined value proposition and set of values and beliefs. And no matter who assumes the role of “brand manager”—in the case of the last 4 years, Donald Trump—those values and beliefs are evergreen. Further, we, as target audiences and consumers of Brand America have only the original brand strategists, the Founding Fathers (and their wives, one presumes), to thank for having the clarity of vision and foresight to set the brand bar high, to ensure that it would and could withstand the slings and arrows it would have to endure over its lifetime.

And so, herewith my humble offering as a consumer of Brand America, and also a student and sometimes teacher of brand strategy:

  1. Aim high. Brands that move people must operate at the highest, most inspirational level. You can always scale back but you can never go high again if you start low. It’s no accident that the Pledge of Allegiance, pithy though it may be, is emotive and rich in language.
  2. Choose your stewards wisely. In the hands of the wrong brand manager or even the wrong celebrity spokesperson, your brand can suffer almost irreparable damage. 45? Enough said.
  3. Consider your brand’s context. When this country was formed, our society and its norms were vastly different than they are today. Even enduring brands, like America, must evolve their expression and take an honest and sincere look at how they walk and talk to ensure that they are culturally and socially appropriate, relevant, and inclusive.

For now, I rest. Tomorrow brings a new day for this brand I’ve appreciated for several decades. As we all know, brand stewardship today is a two-way dialogue between its creators and its consumers. I for one will be happy to participate in Brand America’s revival and rediscover its relevance and message for myself and my fellow Americans.

 

Image Source: Getty Images

Do You Guys Do Messaging?

Posted on by Giovanna Blackston Keren

Do You Guys Do Messaging?

When clients ask us to share our ‘typical’ brand strategy process, we are careful to respond that there is no typical process as all client needs truly are different. The right-for-this-client scope of work comes as a result of a deep process of inquiry into our clients’ circumstances, budget tolerance, depth and expertise of team, and an assessment of what we think they will need to really make their brand perform in the market. Invariably, the question comes, “what about messaging, do you guys do that?” Indeed, what about messaging? A classic component of the strategy line-up, we’ve been doing a fair bit of thinking about this deliverable of late.

Messaging, also referred to as Messaging Framework, Messaging Grid, or Messaging Platform, is classically a compendium of messages, written in plain-speak (i.e. not in Brand Voice), designed to translate the core strategic tenets of the brand positioning into relevant and motivating messages for each of the brand’s core audiences (current and prospective customers, partners, employees, etc.). Sometimes, each message will be accompanied by a ‘message pod’—a sample piece of copy, written in Brand Voice, to help a client understand how this message would actually execute in situ.

Why are Messaging Frameworks useful?

What’s great about the Messaging deliverable is that it takes strategy out of a Keynote (or PowerPoint, as the case may be) and demonstrates in real, marketing-jargon-free words what the ideas actually mean in practice. The deliverable goes a long way to take theory into practice and also show how versatile the idea is in its ability to be relevant and motivating for a variety of audiences. A seeming ‘score,’ but to be honest, we’re wondering if this is really the most useful tool for our clients.

When are Messaging Frameworks not what the doctor ordered?

Messaging Frameworks, while noble in intent, can sometimes end up DOA. There are a few reasons we’ve seen this happen. In some cases, our clients have a robust team dedicated to writing content. These teams are well-equipped to take Messaging and turn it into copy and content that extends and enhances their existing messaging. However, for many companies, this is simply not the case. Content is cranked out by all kinds of people, not necessarily writers, and trying to take messaging into copy can feel like a herculean task. Similarly, younger organizations, especially tech companies, are not well-positioned to write content that sits above product descriptions, features, and benefits. For them, brand is a new language and often the reason they’ve turned to a branding firm for help. Figuring out how to infuse their heavily product-focused content with brand messages is simply not in their skill set. Or in their timelines.

What’s a better option?

We’ve been asking ourselves how we can better meet our clients’ needs by giving them content they can actually use. The answer turns out to be not a Messaging Framework at all. The fact of the matter is, there are a variety but not infinite number of touchpoints that are suited for brand messaging. Rather than developing a framework of messages that must then be matched with a need and then recast in Brand Voice, we are asking our clients to tell us exactly what they need from the get-go. A sparkling new “About” section for your website? Check. We can do that. We know who the audience is and we know what key ideas we want to convey to them. We’ve got the Brand Voice down. Easy. How about a blurb for your LinkedIn profile? A sales outreach email? A CEO announcement to employees? PR boilerplate? Check. Check. Check and check.

It’s a new world. Time is money. Brands are erected in months, not years. We are increasingly helping our clients get right to the point with brand-led content they can use out of the gate. There may still be utility for a Messaging Framework for large, distributed companies with plenty of writers with time on their hands. But from our perspective, brand-led, ready as-is content is the way to go.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency in Oakland, California.

Embracing an Agile Workflow to Yield an Agile Brand

Posted on by Giovanna Blackston Keren

A lot of branding firms talk about the importance of incorporating agility into their clients’ brands. The best brands have to stand for something distinct and meaningful – and at the same time, be ready to acknowledge what is happening out in the marketplace so they can adapt and adjust to maintain their edge.

There is less discussion about the process of branding and the need to imbue it with a degree of agility as well. Speed is a given – we’ve all been schooled on how clients no longer have time for long, drawn-out branding processes that will yield a new brand in the market within 12-18 months. But speed is not the same as agility. Agility means finding ways to utilize existing knowledge, assets, and insights to leapfrog into new territory.

Leading in Partnership

This notion comes at odds with how branding firms do things. Most branding firms have their “proprietary method,” often used to claim some sort of ascendancy or advantage over other firms. But in an effort to demonstrate expertise, there can be arrogance to lording one’s “method” over a client, especially if the method favors doing everything from scratch instead of looking for and accommodating existing intellectual capital. By ignoring the previous work a brand has cultivated, you may be sacrificing integrity for agility.

To truly imbue the branding process with agility, branding firms must exercise a degree of humility, respect for work that has been done, and a commitment to finding the foundational nuggets worth building upon. In a sense, this process is akin to inspecting a house before starting renovations – an architect worth his or her salt will identify the load-bearing walls and build upon and around them rather than tearing them down for no reason. This constitutes a stance that we call leading in partnership – taking the best of what exists and providing a path forward.

Bolstering a Strong Foundation

A client we worked with recently had conducted a tremendous amount of work identifying customer insights and pain points for each of the decision makers in all of the lines of business they sold to. Instead of recommending new research, either to validate these insights or uncover new ones, we took them as fairly gospel and used them as the foundation for building out their brand idea. When we brought back our thinking, clearly connected to the knowledge that they had uncovered, it was easier for our client to understand how we were laddering up to the brand idea. It validated the work they had done internally and made for a much easier sell-in. All in all, considerably more agile.

That is not to say that there isn’t room for additional validation of existing intellectual capital, especially if there is a suspicion that it may have been developed in an internal vacuum. But questioning what we believe to be true in an effort to reach a greater unknown can often be conducted in parallel path with brand execution, so that things keep moving forward. Again, agility.

Be an Agile Listener

Even for startups and small businesses without a robust legacy to build upon, we believe that approaching a project with a sense of humility will ultimately lead to a better partnership and increased agility. Branding firms should be able to say “So, you’re a startup – maybe you don’t know everything about your category yet, but you’ve created this idea and you possess enough strength of conviction to know that it is an idea worthy of the market. Let’s build something that feels like a natural extension of your brand.”

We will always have a rich library of proven methodologies to pull from, based on decades of expertise and hundreds of case studies. But if we’ve learned anything from our long-lasting relationships with clients, it’s that being an agile listener gets you much further than being the loudest person in the room.

To learn more about how your brand can adopt an agile workflow, contact Founding Partner Tracy Lloyd at [email protected].

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design firm in San Francisco.