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Author: Joanna Schull

Building Brands with 5 W’s and an H

Posted on by Joanna Schull

The other weekend I went for a walk in Golden Gate Park with a friend and her stroller-bound daughter. It’s been quite a few years since my own kids were young, and while the experience was familiar I could also take it in from a fresh perspective. As we walked along the shores of Stowe Lake, her daughter gave us a lesson in how children take in the world:

“Mommy, why is that bird sitting on one foot?”
“Where do you think the geese sleep at night?”
“How did the big rock get all the way up the hill?”

While this form of inquiry is familiar in children, it’s also a big part of how we learn as adults. Anyone who has ever taken a journalism course has learned a version of the 5 W’s and an H. It’s a trusted framework for news, research, and storytelling. But it’s also an intuitive way to think about how to connect with your customers, understand what they need, and find new ways to deepen your bonds with them.

Ask “Who?”

Who are you for? Who are you not for? This might seem obvious at first, but it’s something that’s not always thoughtfully re-examined as part of a brand strategy refresh. In B2B brand positioning, this might mean deciding to focus on a new primary target within the organization (e.g., shift from selling lower in the org to higher). In B2C brand positioning, this might mean getting more specific about who you serve: for example, shifting from being “For Travelers” to being “For Business Travelers” or “For Vacationers with Children”’). This clarity brings a great deal of focus, not only in shaping your brand but your entire product offering.

Ask “What?”

Knowing your customer means being clear on what matters to them. What are the gaps in the current experience? What are the greatest pain points? What is wrong with the status quo? These ‘What’ questions can lead to the insights required to refresh a non-differentiated product or redefine the status quo within a category. (For a terrific example of the latter, look at AirBnB’s recent relaunch — instead of asking people “Where do you want to go?” they’re asking “What kind of experience do you want to have?”, effectively shifting their value from functional to experiential.)

Ask “When and Where?”

This isn’t what you might think. ‘Where’ is not where your customer lives or where you might reach them with messages or marketing. This is “When and where should you show up in customers’ lives?” Should your brand be omnipresent or appear only when the context heightens your relevance? This can apply to how your customers encounter your brand’s halo in the world (e.g. advertising, sponsorships, or social good), how frequently you communicate with them, and the brand experience of interacting with your products and services.

Ask “Why?”

Asking ‘Why should customers prefer us?’ is asking why your products or services are different and better than your competitors. Or why, when given a choice, customers should choose to do business with you (even at a premium). Maybe you’re easier to do business with. Or perhaps you have brand values that align with your customers’. “Why” should identify the advantage that differentiates you and makes you unique.

Ask “How?”

Your secret sauce shouldn’t be entirely a secret
Finally, it’s time to ask “How?” Not “How do we reach people?” or “How do we execute our strategy?”, but “How do we want to make people feel?” Do you want them to feel safe? Smart? Secure? Joyful? Inspired? Accomplished? When you think about your customers through this lens, you identify your brand’s emotional core, adding an additional dimension of differentiation, and a unique way to forge deeper, more meaningful connections with your customers.

In short, it’s all about asking the questions that will let you understand who your customer is, what they need, and how your business can not only meet those needs, but create an emotional connection with them while doing so.

Category Leadership: Branding at the Edge

Posted on by Joanna Schull

The thrill of discovery

One of the more exhilarating aspects of working with emerging technology companies is helping them map new ideas, evolving business models, and innovative technologies onto the existing brandscape. Sometimes there’s a clear way to position their offerings that gives them unique ownership of a positioning territory. But there are many times when a company’s offering is unique, original, or revolutionary to the degree that an existing category doesn’t describe them. We call this “branding at the edge” and it requires reframing the brand landscape in a way that allows our clients to define their category leadership, disrupt existing categories, or create new ones entirely. 

When it’s not clear what ‘it’ is called

We see this across multiple industries, but it is particularly true when technologies outpace their categories. Nomenclature and vocabulary don’t always keep up with advancements in the industry, especially for companies innovating in ways that go beyond traditional definitions. And the result is that a company’s offering gets mislabeled with nomenclature that describes a box that doesn’t fit what they do. They could be put in a category that’s shrinking or not reflective of where they’re leading the market. And this has an impact on how people categorize the offering and how customers connect with the company. 

This is when a company needs a technology descriptor. It’s not a name or a tagline, but rather the most important piece of nomenclature they can invest in. It helps customers quickly understand what category you play in. It signals to the press and analysts how you are challenging the status quo. And it names the territory you are claiming in the marketplace. Most importantly, a technology descriptor provides a handle that immediately describes what your product does — in a way that implies its value.  

Why this matters in category leadership

Positioning a brand (and messaging, and copy) without an agreed-upon technology descriptor is problematic—internally and externally. From an internal perspective, the process of coming up with a technology descriptor requires that leaders are aligned not only on how to articulate what they do but also where they want to go. The technology descriptor puts a stake in the ground of where a company wants to take a leadership position. Too high-level, and it doesn’t differentiate. Too specific, and it constrains future evolution. And this is first and foremost a strategic leadership conversation. Externally, a technology descriptor defines the category you want to either redefine or create. It can serve as a declaration of the territory you are claiming, or where you believe the industry needs to go. And it gives your brand a first-mover advantage for storytelling, positioning, and category and thought leadership.  

The solve

Coming up with a technology descriptor requires more than a brainstorming session that produces a catchy phrase. It’s more about defining the DNA of your offering and projecting how you want to grow and evolve your relationships with customers. To do this, we recommend looking at the business strategy and competitive analysis and seeking to understand how your new offering is different from what competitors offer or the current status quo.

A good technology descriptor needs to do a few things:

  • Differentiate your offering from existing players. This is a good place to use language that expresses a strength or differentiator, which will come into play when you do your positioning. 
  • Offer elasticity and expansion potential based on your known or presumed strategic plans
  • Balance the familiar with the new. It’s a good idea to use some terms that will ground your technology descriptor in ideas that people can immediately understand 
  • Get people excited about there being something new and better in this space. The ideal technology descriptor names the offering that people have been waiting for. It should give them a reason to rejoice.

A note about sequencing

Ideally, the technology descriptor should be determined before starting the Brand Positioning process as knowing what ‘it’ is that you’re positioning is generally helpful and will then inform the positioning statement and brand pillars. Together, the Technology Descriptor, Brand Positioning Statement, and Pillars form the strategic platform upon which to develop the rest of your brand’s assets.  

 

 

How to Prepare for Successful Business Transformations

Posted on by Joanna Schull

There’s a well-worn saying in business that the only certainty is change, and these past few years have proven that to be true by exponential levels. Entire industries have found themselves faced with the need to plan and transform their businesses in the face of tremendous unknowns including COVID-19, rising inflation, and a troubled economy. Now, as we enter September of 2022, with the world still in flux, what does it mean to look ahead, and begin planning for the future?

Business transformation matters now more than ever and agility and forward-thinking scenario planning have never been more important.

Building a Roadmap for the Future in Times of Uncertainty

Taking steps to significantly shift—or transform—a company’s business can be either proactive or reactive. Ideally, it’s the former, but external events, whether created by competitors, shifts in customer needs, governmental regulations, or global events can cause the latter to be true. At a high level, the process for either is the same. Here’s the overview:

  • Begin with fact-based strategic planning, competitive research, and situational analysis to create the essential foundation of data about the status quo.
  • Next, based on this foundation of data, leaders need to identify and analyze potential future states for the business.
  • Based on this analysis, leadership aligns with the agreed future state and begins the work of determining the specific changes and sequencing that will be required.
  • Evaluate the brand and business—are they aligned with each other, or do they need to be recalibrated to make sure that the brand is supporting the new business direction?
  • Finally, it’s essential to keep employees informed as the process unfolds, not only so they are kept in the loop, but also as a source of feedback and information.

Let’s go into more detail on each step:

Set the Foundation

Successful transformations—or sometimes, evolutions—need to start with a clear-eyed understanding of both the current state of the business, as well as upcoming external forces that will have an impact. It’s good to approach this phase of the process with a structured set of internal and external research aimed at uncovering the business’s strengths and weaknesses, competitive threats, and unmet customer needs. In addition, it’s important to have a good understanding of known external impacts that can be anticipated—things such as regulatory changes and general business trends and market predictions.

Identify Your North Star

Armed with this foundational set of information, it’s now time for a business’s leadership team to identify potential paths forward. Oftentimes, these will exist along a continuum, starting with slight shifts to the existing business, then growing in ambition to encompass more ambitious pivots and expansions. Each potential direction is then analyzed to understand its implications: How will it impact revenue? Do we have the right talent to execute the direction? How will it change our customer base and competitive set? How does it impact our product roadmap? How will analysts and investors react? After assessing the options, the leadership team needs to discuss, align, and set a direction.

Create An Execution Plan

The next step is the planning phase: What changes need to be made in order to begin making the desired shifts? In what sequence do they need to occur? What are the potential ripple effects of those changes? It’s important to do this work in a cross-functional manner, giving all parts of the organization insights into the changes occurring. This helps to eliminate overlapping efforts and activities that could compete with or contradict each other, in addition to providing an integrated roadmap that ensures everyone knows how the change efforts fit together and combine to achieve the end result.

Align Your Brand

When making a shift, it’s essential to make sure that your brand is supporting and reinforcing your new business strategy. This starts with making sure that your brand positioning supports your chosen direction followed by your messaging and external expression of your brand: digital touchpoints (web, social, etc.), sales support materials, PR, AR, IR, and all external-facing communications. Don’t neglect the visual expression of your brand. Many companies, especially former startups entering their next phase of maturity, find that they have outgrown their previous look and feel and need to evolve into a more ‘mature’ level of design sensibility.

Bring People Along on the Journey

The most successful transformations are inclusive, and while it is important that leaders lead the process, it is equally important to involve perspectives and participation from across the organization. This includes involving different divisions, geographies, functions, and levels within the company as part of the planning process in order to get their input as plans are developed. This not only ensures that critical details aren’t overlooked but also builds engagement and buy-in to the process.

A Shared Understanding Speeds Execution

Ultimately, change is about disciplined execution and dedication to doing the work required to make change stick across multiple parts of the organization and ensuring that the people of the organization understand what the change is, how the business is going to adapt, and why it matters because organizations with a shared understanding about the reasons behind change are more likely to move forward with certainty, even in uncertain times.

Take a deep dive into our most recent B2B transformations: Coast, Snow Software, FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies

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

Your Brand’s Competition? The Last Great Brand Experience Your Customer Just Had

Posted on by Joanna Schull

When creating a brand strategy the competitive landscape audit is an essential part of the process. You must know your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, and understand consumer perceptions in order to effectively differentiate your brand and create a compelling brand experience. A competitive audit of your immediate competitors only tells half the story.

Your Real Competition Is The Last Best Brand Experience Your Customer Had

While your customers will always compare your products and services to your direct competitors, they’re also constantly comparing the experience they’re having with you to something else: the brand experiences they’re having in other parts of their lives. Or, as Paul Papas from IBM Interactive Experience once said: “The last best experience that anyone has anywhere becomes the minimum expectation for the experiences they want everywhere.”

It can be argued that this has always been true, but in recent years, technology, advances in logistics, and the ability to craft increasingly more personalized, relevant, and need-predictive brand experiences has raised the bar on what defines a ‘great customer experience.’

It’s Not A Single Facet Of The Experience—It’s Multiple Facets

Here’s an example that may resonate with anyone who has raised children over the last couple of decades. The other day I walked into my kitchen to find my normally even-tempered college-aged daughter glaring at her laptop.

Attempting to lighten the mood I asked: “What’s up?”

She replied: “Remember that field bag I bought online? The one that took over two weeks to arrive? It’s fine, but they sent the wrong size and it took me half an hour on the chat bot to get them to issue me a return authorization. Now I have to print the label AND pay for the return. Can you believe anyone still does business that way? I’ll never buy anything from them again.”

In her (and perhaps my) defense, she is not spoiled or high-maintenance, but she is a Digital Native. She expects the brands she chooses to ship as quickly as Amazon, deliver Zappos-level customer service, and create products that are as easy and intuitive to use as Apple’s are. 

The younger generation not only expects more online, they also expect excellent brand experiences in-store. And these expectations aren’t limited to a single generation. Gladly’s 2021 customer expectations report found that 63% of consumers fall in love with brands because of great service; 62% will recommend a brand because of great service, and 45% will never shop with a brand again after two bad service experiences.

Customer Experience Is On The CMO’s Radar

Today’s CMOs are well aware that customer experience is a critical differentiator: 75.3% of all CMOs surveyed in the 2021 CMO Survey ranked ‘Strong Customer Experience’ as one of their top three investment priorities for 2021.

How can CMOs and their teams influence customer experience? Here are some suggestions to get you started:

Map Every Touchpoint

Build a 360° map to identify where your customer interacts with your brand. Include every step of the customer journey, from awareness, to consideration, purchase, billing, delivery, installation or first usage, ongoing usage and maintenance, independent troubleshooting or problem solving, and live support. Next, determine where the  most important interaction points are along the customer journey. Focus there first.

Compare And Apply What You Learn

As previously mentioned, your brand’s competition isn’t your direct set of competitors—it’s the last best brand experience your customer had. This is beginning to emerge in the consumer health care market. One Medical realized that individuals in urban areas had come to expect a higher level of service than was being offered by traditional medical groups. In response, One Medical implemented online appointments (possible inspiration: Open Table; Apple Genius Bar Reservations); the ability to have an online dialogue with one’s medical team via email, etc. The net result: One Medical patients were overwhelmingly more likely to stick with One Medical, and recommend the service to their friends.

Question…Innovate…Challenge The Status Quo

Look for opportunities within your industry to disrupt the status quo when it comes to the expected experience. Case in point: Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters. If you’re unfamiliar, Alamo Drafthouse  provides a premium movie experience: reserved seats, tasty food, drinks delivered to your seat. It’s an experience designed to appeal to people who were frustrated with the status quo movie experience (bad food, uncertain seating)—and in doing so, Alamo created a new standard for the urban movie-goer. This is but one example of how a company looked at what was missing, and subsequently attracted fierce brand loyalists! 

If you’d like to chat more about our approach to creating brands and customer experiences, please reach out. Emotive is an Oakland-based brand strategy and design studio.

 

Need Purposeful Brand Transformation? Let the Data Be Your Guide

Posted on by Joanna Schull

Re-Imagining and Evolving Your Enterprise Brand for Its Next Phase of Growth

There comes a time in most companies’ growth cycle when they realize they’ve evolved from a company into an enterprise—and that the brand positioning and messaging that got them to where they are today isn’t going to allow them to make the transformation to where they need to be tomorrow. In some cases, the ‘1.0 brand’ is actually doing the enterprise a disservice by not accurately representing their new or emerging position in the marketplace. The challenge, of course, is that evolving a successful brand can be intimidating and daunting. What if it’s a flop? What if it jeopardizes near-term sales? What if our investors, partners, or employees just don’t get it? These are all reasonable concerns. But there is a logical way forward.

Step One: Identify Competitive Opportunities

The first step in any brand reinvention: get immersed in the current state AND the future state of the business and the category. This entails getting a solid understanding of the current competitive landscape to look for the open space and areas for differentiation. Through this exercise, we’ll understand where a company is strong in relation to their current competitive set and where they have potential exposure. Because this exercise is about evolving the brand for the future, it also identifies opportunities to differentiate the company in the short term.

Step Two: Get the Right People in the Room

These days, the room might be a Zoom room or a series of Zoom rooms, but the purpose is the same: ensure that all the company’s leaders are aligned and clear on the future business strategy of the organization. To be successful, these types of bold brand transformations require executive sponsorship, ideally from the CEO and CMO, and input from the most senior stakeholders from across the organization. It’s not enough to involve just the marketing organization, or just the product organization, or only sales, etc. Doing so will almost certainly create blindspots in your brand strategy, and lack of belief down the road.

Step Three: Go to the Source

Direct and unfiltered input is invaluable in understanding your client’s brand through the most important lens: The voice of the customer. There’s no substitute for getting insights about your client directly from the source, specifically, from current customers, investors, and even potential customers that turned elsewhere. This phase both confirms what we’ve already heard or suspected, but also reveals new perspectives. It’s not uncommon to hear an anecdote that uncovers a strength or advantage that our clients were unaware of, leading to additional insights and opportunities.

Step Four: Review the Data to Reveal the Way Forward

Taking a deep dive on the data—the competitive landscape, customer and investor interviews, and the company’s own internal roadmaps—reveals opportunities to tell a different, more elevated story that will set them apart today, and can evolve over time as the roadmap comes to fruition. We also find that bringing this data-driven approach to senior stakeholders and the individuals responsible for the future roadmap confirms and grounds the new brand positioning in the facts, resulting in much greater comfort and certainty. When the logic is solid, the way forward becomes clear.

Next Steps: Socialize and Execute

The shift from incubation and creation to execution and socialization is the next logical step in bringing a new brand to life. After months of work, it’s time for the internal brand team to share what they’ve been doing with the rest of the organization. This can be the make-or-break moment of truth. Employees invariably ask: Does it ring true? Is it credible? Is it something I can get excited about? Or, is it marketing fluff?

Our recommendation: Let your people see the work behind the work. When you socialize, show them how you got there and why this brand positioning is the most strategic, logical direction that’ll help your company bridge the gap between where you are today and where you want to be in the future.

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

Building an Agile Brand

Posted on by Joanna Schull

The notion of ‘business agility’ — the ability to quickly adjust business resources and assets in a way that enables your business to prepare for or react to shifting markets and global conditions has always been important — but the experience of COVID-19 and the past 12 + months have driven that point home relentlessly. As we enter into this next phase of ‘the new normal’ one thing is certain: the world and how we work is forever changed and will keep changing — building a brand that enables your business to respond is the new opportunity.

What’s required? The ability to adapt to changing market conditions, customer needs, and shifts in demand all while avoiding perceptions of being reactionary or haphazard. It’s the challenge of maintaining a steady focus on your company’s North Star while navigating an operational environment that may be in a state of flux. It’s the need to keep the sails full, and the boat moving forward while making the necessary changes to stay on track in real-time.

Brand as an Enabler of Business Agility

It is certainly true that the agile businesses of today owe a great deal of that ability to flex and pivot to underlying technologies and organizational structures, but it’s also true that a company’s brand and positioning in the marketplace is also a critical factor in enabling business agility. In our experience working with companies both big and small, we’ve uncovered some key factors that go into building a brand that supports the agile business.

Allow Your Brand To Aspire to More

No one has a magic crystal ball that can predict the future, but most companies do have a business plan and a roadmap that maps the trajectory of where they are today and where they aspire to be in the future. When working with our clients to develop a brand strategy and positioning, it’s our job is to help companies build a brand that is strategically focused and works in the present — but also allows for predicted future growth and unpredictable turns of events. This can be achieved through a disciplined process of understanding how the brand needs to support current sales, revenue development, and be elastic enough to still be relevant for future expansion.

Personality Matters

Your brand’s personality is another important aspect of branding that’s often overlooked when planning for an unpredictable future. If your company is large, established, and predictable, that’s an important aspect of your brand’s personality. When it comes time to pivot, flex, or change, lean into the credibility of your size, strength, and track record as a proof point as to why it’s ok for the business to shift. Conversely, if you’re a scrappy startup, your brand’s personality should reflect that — and when you find yourself needing to pivot or adapt to new conditions, use your reputation and personality as an ‘agile upstart or challenger of the status quo’ to help make sense of change.

Trust and Permission To Change

Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, brand building is ultimately about creating trust between your company and your customers. When it comes time for your business to make a sudden change — whether due to unforeseen competitive factors, global events, or simply to take advantage of new opportunities — the brand trust that you build with your customers today is what will give you permission to adapt down the road.

There are of course multiple other factors that make business agility possible, from its technical infrastructure and organizational structure, to how a company thinks about and manages change — but ultimately those must be supported by a strong, flexible, and trusted brand that permits you to change in the mind of your customers.

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

Igniting Growth and Pushing the Envelope for SaaS Brands

Posted on by Joanna Schull

SaaS Brands

These days, it’s a SaaS world and we’re just living in it. From infrastructure and identity to platforms and productivity, Everything-as-a-Service continues to reign supreme. But what does it take to succeed and become one of the SaaS brands that can achieve the annual recurring revenue (ARR) required to drive predictable growth in an ever-crowding market?

According to Gartner, worldwide public cloud services are predicted to grow by 17% this year, from $227.8 billion in 2019 to $266.4 billion in 2020, with revenue forecasts for SaaS brands (cloud application services) expected to reach over $116 billion alone.

And while, as the SaaS market may seem mature after nearly two decades, according to a study by Synergy Research Group, it still only accounts for about 20-25% of total enterprise software spending, meaning there’s plenty of room for growth for both established players and new market entrants. There are challenges, but there are also plenty of opportunities to rise above the fray.

The Market Is Crowded and Continuing to Grow

According to a 2019 survey, data provided by Chiefmartech identified over 7,000 solutions in the marketing segment alone. This market saturation can lead to a lack of differentiation between SaaS brands and ‘buyer fatigue’ from an overwhelming number of choices and plans to consider. This is only likely to increase as investors continue to seek (and see) favorable returns on investments in the SaaS space, spawning multiple versions of even niche solutions.

Ease of Switching Can Lead to Churn

Another impact of the crowded marketplace and sheer volume of offerings is the ease of switching from one SaaS solution to another. SaaS brands, by the nature of the offering, are more scalable and easy to implement vs. traditional on-premise software solutions that require purchasing hardware, installation, and ongoing maintenance and management. Couple this with the fact that many SaaS offerings are nearly indistinguishable from each other and you’ll find the reason the average mid-sized organization is seeing 39% change in their SaaS stack from year to year.

The Target Audience Is…Everyone

Because SaaS has low barriers to adoption relative to traditional IT solutions, it’s increasingly common that the purchaser of a SaaS solution is not from within the IT organization, but is instead in another part of the business with a discretionary budget to spend. As a result, SaaS brands need to remember that their brand needs to be able to communicate beyond a strictly IT audience.

Expectations Are High

The consumerization of IT and what’s known as the ‘Amazon Effect’ continue to raise user expectations as they expect B2B and SaaS solutions to deliver the same level of customization, user experience, and ease of use as they experience from B2C companies and their daily consumer electronic experiences. As a result, SaaS solutions need to over-deliver on overall usability and the customer experience in order to attract and retain active users and preserve AAR.

To overcome these challenges, smart SaaS brands are adopting business and brand strategies and practices from the B2C world and adapting them to the B2B SaaS world.

1) Define the position you want to own in the market.

To stand out in a crowded market, SaaS brands must clearly define what position they want to hold in the market and in the minds of their target audiences. Being clear about how your SaaS offering is specifically differentiated from the rest of the competitive field is the starting point for driving preference.

2) Build a rational and emotional connection.

Like B2C brands, SaaS brands must communicate what the brand does, how it does it, and why the brand matters. At Emotive Brand, we think about this in terms of building a rational and emotional bond with customers—enabling people to know what you stand for, why your brand is different, and feel an emotional connection to your brand. The rational connection may drive initial purchase and adoption, but it’s the emotional connection that builds long-term preference and stickiness.

3) Invest in customer experience.

Create a customer experience that measures up to expectations set by leading B2C brands. This means paying attention to all touchpoints, from the sales process to product functionality and usability, to ensure that each and every interaction reinforces the connection with the product and the brand.

4) Differentiate with design.

Another way for SaaS brands to stand out is by investing in design. A distinctive and ownable visual identity can help differentiate from competitors and build recognition with purchasers and users. Of course, the focus on design needs to extend beyond branding and visual identity to include UX and product design to create an experience that keeps users engaged and utilization and renewal rates up.

As businesses continue to look for ways to streamline and simplify how they use and deploy technology to meet specific business needs, the SaaS market will continue to grow. The crowded market presents opportunities and challenges. Claiming a clear position in the market, building an irresistible brand that champions superior user experience, and differentiating with stellar design can help SaaS brands achieve the growth and recognition they need to succeed.

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

Company Culture Trends for 2020

Posted on by Joanna Schull

At Emotive Brand, we’ve always been strong believers in the role that a company’s culture and people play in a business’ success. Yes, a sound strategy, a strong brand, and great execution matter, but ultimately, it’s a company’s people that make it happen—because without their efforts and belief in a company’s strategy and vision, even the best strategic plans will falter. Or as the saying goes: “Culture eats strategy for lunch.”

There are tried and true ways to build a strong culture: a compelling vision and mission; values that are co-created across the company vs. handed from the top down; metrics that align with and reinforce the behaviors that will lead to success; and lastly a commitment to supporting and living the culture from each and every leader.

But there are additional trends and forces at play that are impacting companies of all sizes. Some are a result of advances in technology and its impact on how work happens. Others are the result of sociological shifts in people’s expectations about what work is—and is not.

Here are a few of the key issues and trends we’re tracking for 2020.

1. Employee Happiness and Autonomy Matters

Research from the London School of Economics uncovered strong connections between employee happiness or satisfaction, and positive business outcomes and customer loyalty. “We find a significant, strong positive correlation between employees’ satisfaction with their company and employee productivity and customer loyalty, and a strong negative correlation with staff turnover,” Krekel, Ward, and De Neve wrote in their paper after analyzing the Gallup studies. “Ultimately, higher wellbeing at work is positively correlated with more business-unit level profitability.”

2. AI and ML Have Arrived

If the last few years of corporate transformation have been defined by the shift of essential business functions from on-premise IT to the cloud, the next wave of transformation will be in how AI and ML are integrated into the workplace. Forward-looking organizations are those who are not only using AI and ML to free employees to do meaningful work vs. repetitive tasks, but who are also using AI and ML to make work easier, by automating and streamlining aspects of the workday, from solving basic HR questions to resolving more complex IT requests. The result? Happier and more productive employees.

3. Work Is Wherever You Are

From large global enterprises to small organizations comprised of workers spread around the world, we’re continuing to see more geographically dispersed teams who may not be together for months at a time, but who must collaborate on a daily basis across time zones. The cultural implications of this way of working are significant—and when handled properly, advantageous. Developing collaboration and trust between team members, reduced hierarchical control, and more democratic governance is key to navigating this shift.

4. Enable Transparent and Honest Communication

This is about more than making employees feel heard—in many instances, it’s about getting mission-critical input and data that comes directly from customers, the factory floor, or the front lines of the sales force. And when the news isn’t good, it’s even more important to ensure that the people who have the bravery to raise the red flag aren’t penalized for their honesty. Cultures that embrace the values of honesty and transparency among employees find that those behaviors extend into the company’s dealings with customers and partners, and in turn, help to establish an external reputation as trustworthy.

In all, companies who invest in building a corporate culture that values employee happiness, promotes honest dialogue, and uses technology to enable employees to collaborate more effectively and efficiently will see those investments pay dividends over the long run.

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

Business Imperative: Socializing Strategy

Posted on by Joanna Schull

One of the first things we learn in business is the importance of “having a plan.” Preferably, it should be a strategic plan, complete with milestones, action items, KPIs, and other important measures. This is definitely true. You need to have a plan, and you need to be socializing strategy.

As someone who’s been in the consulting game for many years, I can’t count the number of times I’ve sat down with new clients only to discover that while there may, in fact, be a carefully (and expensively) constructed strategic plan, it’s a mystery to most employees. Chances are, they learned about the strategic plan via an online WebEx, saw some slides, listened to an executive talk, participated in some Q&A, and called it a day—and then promptly forgot the whole thing and went back to business as usual.

There’s a better way of socializing strategy—it comes down to following a few key principles and practices.

Step 1: Alignment

Align the entire leadership team on the key initiatives that’ll be required to execute on the strategy. The initiatives should be cross-functional and specific—not siloed within a single part of the organization. Good examples would be “develop vertical solutions and go-to-market expertise” or “create a culture of collaboration.”

Step 2: Plan for Change

As a leadership team, identify what’s going to change from three levels:

  • Functionally/operationally: What new things are going to need to happen? For example, do you need to develop new competencies, expand into a new geography, or acquire different types of talent?
  • Org structure: Are changes to the organization’s structure required to achieve the new strategy?
  • What internal cultural shifts will be required?: Starting with a baseline assessment of the status quo, what new types of behaviors will be needed to help the company adapt and execute on the new strategy?

Step 3: Socializing Strategy

Sharing and socializing the strategy and execution plan with your workforce is the next step. This is where it’s important to be thoughtful and thorough in planning and execution. Rushing the process will end up costing more in the long run, so take the time to do it right.

Don’t: Put together a deck, email it out, and consider the job done.

Do: Create an engaging way for employees to learn about the strategy directly from the executive leadership team, ideally with different leaders taking responsibility for explaining each track of work. If possible, do this at a live event that allows cross-functional teams to work together to discuss implications, as well as report outs from employees with questions, comments, and suggestions.

It’s important that the leadership team strike the balance of presenting a coherent, well thought out strategy while providing the rest of the company with an opportunity to provide input. This helps create ownership and buy-in across the company—but also may reveal things the leadership team may have overlooked or missed.

Step 4: Reinforce Awareness

Socializing strategy requires more than a one-time event. Best practices include:

  • Developing internal campaigns to keep it top of mind. Create a 12-month calendar to coordinate internal communications that reinforce the goals, but also celebrate progress and wins.
  • Ensuring cultural alignment. It is imperative that a company’s culture is set up to reinforce the change. This means taking a hard look at behaviors, metrics, and rewards. Do they align with the changes you’re asking employees to make? Are senior leaders practicing what they preach?

Step 5: Follow Up and Get Feedback

A good strategic plan will have ways to measure effectiveness by way of metrics, KPIs, etc. This is good, but not enough. It’s important to follow up and get feedback from the people who you’re ultimately relying on to see the strategy through: your employees. Find a way to check in on them and get a pulse on how it’s going, ask them what is working, and more importantly, what’s not. Nine times out of ten, you’ll get some valuable insights that will help to accelerate progress and keep things on track. At the very least, you’ll let your people know that you’re listening.

Strategic plans are imperative. Your company needs them to succeed in an ever-evolving and competitive world. But without a thoughtfully executed rollout plan to your employees—arguably the most important part of your business—even the most brilliant strategy will fall flat.

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

Remembering to Listen: Why Employee Input Is Key to Moving Your Brand Forward

Posted on by Joanna Schull

Employee Input: A Valuable Resource You Might Be Overlooking

At Emotive Brand, one of the things we strongly believe in is the importance of understanding how a company’s business strategy connects to its brand strategy. As a result, one of the first things we do is review a client’s research: external brand perception studies, competitive analysis documents, analyst reports, and so forth. This external audit is key – but in our experience, it doesn’t provide the complete picture. What’s missing? Potentially, your most informed and passionate stakeholders: your employees.

It’s something even the most well-run companies overlook. In an effort to accelerate processes and get to results, employee input is often the first thing on the chopping block. This isn’t limited to brand and positioning projects. It happens to multiple types of business strategy initiatives. The solution? Have a disciplined game plan and be mindful of the importance of getting input. Fortunately, it’s not rocket science and doesn’t need to be a cumbersome process.

Here’s What We’ve Learned About Getting Employee Input the Right Way:

1. Get input early in the process

Whenever possible, take the time to get employee input early in the process. This does not need to be a complex process. Online surveying tools make it possible to poll your organization quickly, and with minimal expense. To do this effectively, it’s important to be laser-focused in what you want to learn. It’s more instructive to ask 5 well-thought through questions that allow for optional free-response than 25+ multiple choice questions that confirm existing biases.

2. Mix it up

Some of the best insights can arise when you put people from different departments in the same room for an informal focus group. Again, this doesn’t need to be complicated or expensive. Order pizza or your company’s food of choice, find a trusted moderator who can facilitate the conversation, and ask them to weigh in on a topic, problem, or situation.

In our experience, this can be the quickest path to finding the root cause of complex problems that impact multiple parts of an organization. It’s important to do this in a way that makes the contributors feel that they can be completely candid, so often we recommend holding these meetings without senior leaders. They can get the detailed findings later, but individual responses remain anonymous.

3. Engage your sales force

When you want to really understand what’s working – and what’s not – get the sales team’s input. They are the direct line to hearing what’s top of mind for your customers – especially in B2B companies. Chances are, your sales team’s one-on-one conversations with customers in the field will be able to provide nuanced insights that a customer survey might miss. Additionally, getting your sales team’s input upfront results in better adoption and ownership when the final sales materials and messaging is rolled out.

4. Go to the front lines

In addition to involving your sales force, don’t forget to talk to your customer support team or the people at the register. Time after time, we’ve discovered that getting feedback and input from the people on the front lines yields insights that would otherwise go unnoticed.

For example, a major insurance provider didn’t understand why customer satisfaction ratings were terrible — until they sat with their customer service reps for a day and learned why customer service reps weren’t able to provide great customer service. They wanted to, but the underlying infrastructure simply wasn’t designed to allow them to. In other examples, baristas have provided direct insights as to why certain items weren’t selling well.

5. Don’t overcomplicate it

Getting this feedback doesn’t need to be complicated. Go sit with a customer service group, hold a focus group, or create an easy way to collect suggestions and feedback electronically. By going right to the source, you’re not only going to get valuable input and data, you’re involving your people in solving the problem.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy and design agency.