Overlay
Let's talk
Emotive Brand
Get in touch: [email protected] 510-496-8888

Hello!

Author: Giovanna Blackston Keren

The No Predictions Blog Post for 2024

Posted on by Giovanna Blackston Keren

Welcome to 2024. Have you already been bombarded with every person on LinkedIn’s latest and greatest predictions? The blog post titles can practically write themselves at this point. Artificial Intelligence: Everything You Need to Know in 2024, 10 Predictions for MarTech in 2024, What to Watch for in Social Media in 2024, and our personal favorite (and actual title), What’s Ahead in 2024? The Cookie Cutters May Tell!

Well, here’s some good news. We’re not here to add to the predictive noise by adding our own set of predictions for branding. Nope, we’re not going to do it. And this is why. As best as we can tell, there is a fair degree of unpredictability afoot in almost every important realm–the economic arena, the political atmosphere, the climate, the global stage. Making predictions, though enticing (and popular), feels foolhardy and a little bit inconsequential. So instead, at the head of this new year, we offer you some evergreen branding principles. Some hard-learned truths and tips that ensure that any brand creates resonance, builds trust, and ultimately, grows businesses. We’d put our money on these ahead of any predictions.

1. Find your highest possible ground
When it comes to finding the right altitude for your brand, it’s NEVER wrong to shoot for the stars. It may feel comfortable to stay within your comfort zone (yes, we see that roundabout logic) but if you want to break through, you’ve got to push out and reach higher. What can you say about your brand that is truly unique to you? What is the most elevated way of talking about its benefits to customers beyond the ever-popular “efficiency, speed and confidence”? Can you push it a tad further and still be believable? Seriously, this is your baby—let it soar.

2. Tell the truth, even if it’s ugly
We all have our warts, even our brands. The thing is, warts caked in make-up don’t fool anyone. And neither do your brand’s less appealing features. Find a way to reveal your warts in a truthful, perhaps charming or self-deprecating manner. Your customers will appreciate you not trying to pull the wool over their eyes, and will probably be more inclined to believe what you say about your best features because they’ve come to trust your honesty.

3. Anticipate (and embrace) a dialogue
It’s 2024. It’s a whole new world. When Web 2.0 emerged and enabled people to contribute their voices through social media, brand owners were given the shock of their professional lives. All of a sudden, customers were starting to take control of the narrative. A brand was no longer just what the company said it was, not if somebody disagreed with it. And so began the brand dialogue. Today, more than ever, especially with the advent of AI and an ever more vocal and self-empowered customer base, brands need to not just expect a dialogue, but to create its conditions so that customers feel welcome within the conversation.

4. Make the brand everyone’s business
When your company decides it’s time to refresh your brand, make sure that it’s not just the marketing department that feels implicated. Over the years, we’ve seen countless rebrands happen not just because a company feels like it needs to (re)establish its value proposition to the marketplace, but because it is an organic and systemic way to reinvigorate and realign the company itself. Get Finance, Sales, Customer Success, Operations, Engineering and Product involved—the rewards of making your brand relevant and important to every employee within every function are exponential.

5. Be consistent, and stay the course
A/B testing is great for your product but not really for branding. It’s tempting to try a few things and see what sticks. The problem is, the more messages you have in the market, the greater the risk for confusion or dilution. You really only get one chance to make the impression that’s going to stick, so once you find your highest possible ground (see #1) and everyone is bought in (see #4), go in deep and hard on that brand message. Don’t take your foot off the gas or get distracted. Soon, you’ll know if you’re on the right track.

We’ve got a few more good thoughts up our sleeves but we’ll leave it here for now so that you have time to go and read some Predictions blog posts (we read them too, for laughs). Give us a call if you want to hear more. Emotive Brand is a kickass branding firm that does really good work for brands everywhere.

The Case for Supreme Honesty as a Precursor to Killer Brand Strategy

Posted on by Giovanna Blackston Keren

Like anybody who’s worked in the industry for longer than two decades, I’ve enjoyed my share of deeply satisfying client engagements across multiple industries. There is one engagement in particular, however, that I will never forget, and not for the right reasons. It will actually go down in the books as one of my worst professional experiences. And this is why. We got fired for being dishonest. Let me explain.

I was working for a large branding firm at the time. The kind of branding firm that everyone in the business knows and respects. Not one that often gets fired. We engaged with a large technology firm and began our work, meeting with multiple stakeholders, trekking back and forth for meetings, workshops, and presentations. As the engagement progressed, a pattern began to emerge. We would present strategy and our clients would ponder our recommendations, then chip away at them, slightly watering them down, innocuously at first, more insidiously as time went on. We knew it wasn’t right but the client was fairly insistent and for some reason (fear? intimidation?) we let it go. Until it was too late and the final brand strategy was so incongruous, so off-point, and so entirely useless that the client was left with no choice but to fire us for a poor outcome. Ugh.

The culprit here? No one particular individual, no one particular meeting, but a bad case of dishonesty between our team and the client that prevented us from saying “No, we don’t agree with what you’re saying, we think you’re making some poor choices, and this is why.” This dishonesty cost us the assignment.

The best brand strategies are a reflection of the most honest client/agency relationships.

Honesty in branding is critical. Not just because honesty is the common basis for relationship-building and the development of trust, but because honesty gives agencies the runway they need to develop the most trenchant and compelling brand solutions. Being honest shows up in a variety of instances and includes asking tough questions, pushing back on embedded assumptions, challenging executive consensus, and saying no more often than you may be accustomed to doing.

Allow me to tell a modern-day success story to demonstrate this point. We recently engaged with another technology client. At our kickoff meeting and subsequent briefings, our client regaled us with stories about how much better they are than the competition because they provide a better and fairer solution for their customers. We investigated more deeply, conducting interviews with some of these customers, and what we learned caused us to suspect that this company was not necessarily providing a better solution, but perhaps a different solution to a persistent problem. Emboldened by the belief that honesty was our best policy, we ran a workshop with our client and told them exactly what we thought was going on. We presented several opportunities to truly change the paradigm in their industry and to help them to stand out from the competition in a meaningful and groundbreaking way. In our client’s words: “Emotive Brand brought us a not terribly flattering series of findings and challenged us to think more deeply about our brand. We discovered a disconnect between how we saw ourselves and how our clients and prospects believed we delivered on our promises. [Emotive Brand’s] unique combination of strategy and creative pushed us in a direction that was truly bold.”

Not only did we not get fired for disagreeing with their point of view, but our clients were delighted that we had shed new light on their business and the opportunities it could afford. We knew we had done something right when after making our case, the company’s founder started a slow round of applause that took hold across the full client team. Definitely a proud moment. And a personal vindication for the travesty that had occurred earlier in my career!

Perception vs. Reality: Honesty Wins

There is a weird perception in the client service industry that in order to satisfy the client, the “service provider” must do what they’re told at every turn. The truth that both parties need to keep top of mind is that while the client holds the purse strings, they are hiring not a “service provider” but a consulting body that can provide valuable expertise and experience that the client lacks. To simply “do as one’s told” is undermining the basis of the relationship.

I’ll end with some key things to consider before hiring an agency to transform and elevate your brand.

1. Identify why you (really) need an agency.

Are you looking for a team to execute the vision you already have, or are you hoping to uncover new thinking that may challenge you and your team’s existing thinking?

2. Determine your and your extended team’s “tolerance” for honesty.

Not everyone is on board for honesty. Will your team be uncomfortable or delighted by honest input from an outside body?

3. Let your agency know where you stand on the honesty spectrum.

Before you hire an agency, let them know where you stand and what you would expect from them. They should be allowed to enter the relationship with their eyes wide open.

4. Stick to the plan.

If you say you want honesty, be prepared to hear the truth. It may make you uncomfortable as you work through notions that you previously held sacred …but it will be so worthwhile.

5. Expect the appropriate results.

There is a positive correlation between the degree of honesty that you invite into the process and the incisiveness of the brand strategy that you can expect to see at the end. Decide what you want the results to look like and proceed accordingly.

Please feel free to get in touch with us for some honest conversation.

Too. Many. Choices. Yes, Over-Branding Is a Thing.

Posted on by Giovanna Blackston Keren

[et_pb_section][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text]

I walked into my favorite hair and body care store last week, looking for my usual hair product — you know, the one that protects hair before you heat-style it. I couldn’t remember the name of the product but I figured I’d easily recognize it once in the store. I couldn’t have been more wrong. As it turns out, the product I use is just one member of a family of products prone to over-branding that all have adjacent but different uses.

The family has a common name but each sub-product has a distinct name to indicate its use. Easy, right? No, not easy. A knowledgeable and patient sales associate took five minutes to walk me through the products and explain how they differ. It went something like this: ‘If you want to straighten your hair quickly, and also get some heat protection, but not up to 450 degrees, choose X. Now, if you want your hair to straighten slowly, but progressively every day, but don’t need the heat protection, choose Y. If you want it straight some days, and curly others, but need maximum heat protection on Wednesdays and Saturdays, choose Z.”

Clearly, the last one is made up, but for all the clarity she was able to provide, she might as well have said something similarly convoluted. I felt more confused than ever as I stared at the glut of products on the shelf, each sure of its own individual worth. Determined to get the upper hand on the situation, I pretended I knew exactly what was important to me and boldly opted for option Y. I mean, who doesn’t want progressive straightening?

Proliferation of choices. This may be one of the greatest afflictions of the modern economy. We have, as a society, found ourselves spoiled for choices. From hair styling products to sous vide cookers, to home gym apparatus, to car model options, choices are endless and the impact of the choices we make, usually rather opaque. A free-market economy on the supply side, and a broadly held sense of entitlement on the demand side, have created this problem. But even branding as a discipline has exacerbated the problem, sometimes through intentional over-branding, and sometimes through neglectful, lazy branding. Let’s dig in.

Over-Branding as a Key Contributor To Overwhelm

There are many definitions of branding, but perhaps at its most simplistic level, branding is a tool for matchmaking – between products and customers. Branding creates a line of sight between what a product offers and what a customer needs (or thinks she needs). In this respect, the primary responsibility of a brand (and those who manage it) is to clearly and compellingly communicate its value proposition so that buyers can find what they want or need, and make the right choice.

Over-branding happens when brand managers get greedy. In an attempt to create a brand that is all things to all people, they cram too many ideas into one offering, leaving customers overwhelmed and confused. (Think of the hair care product situation I shared.) In other instances, brand managers fail to heed the warning signs of a saturated market. I’m reminded of a story my mentor used to recount about a trip to the hardware store in search of a hammer. When she was shown to the correct aisle, she was greeted by a display of 25 hammers, the differences between them imperceptible. As she would say “All I needed was one hammer, what could possibly justify the glut of choices in this category?” Brands need to work hard to justify their existence and not simply exist because there is room on the shelf.

Lazy Branding Can Be Just As Damaging

Everyone loves to brand their product. Everyone loves to give their product a trademark and to justify putting money behind it to promote it. Not every product or program or initiative needs to be branded, and sometimes doing so is more a reflection of not wanting to do the work to determine whether a particular brand is warranted. If we agree that branding needs to be 100% focused on helping customers navigate choices and find what they need, then brand managers need to be more judicious about what gets branded and how well it serves and communicates the ‘cause.’ If you determine that a brand is additive to existing options, you better be sure that it meets the needs of the marketplace instead of some other agenda. Of course, these kinds of decisions need to be made much further upstream using tools like Portfolio Architecture and Nomenclature Strategy – both designed to rationalize and organize products within a portfolio through the lens of customer need states.

In case you’re thinking this is all very consumer-centric, don’t be fooled. B2B brands can fall prey to the lure of over-branding and lazy branding. There are stand-out brands with complicated portfolios that have done a great job of responsibly ‘justifying’ the existence of each of the members of the portfolio. Adobe is a great example of just such responsible branding. Each of its tools is organized at the highest level by the needs of its customers, creatives, or marketers, and focused on its key benefit to the audience to which it’s designed to cater.

At the risk of pushing the metaphor too far, I’ll end by saying that matchmaking between people bears a high degree of responsibility. You can’t, and shouldn’t, put two people together simply because they both desire companionship. Similarly, you can’t put every product or brand in front of just anyone and hope to elicit affinity or choice. Think carefully about what your customers really need, believe in, hope for, aspire to. Decide whether your product can deliver on these things and, if so, carefully craft your brand messaging to connect your brand with its rightful customer.

Emotive is an Oakland-based brand strategy and design studio.

[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]

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.