Paige Lansing Valle, Author at Emotive Brand

Co-Founders On Brand Strategy Today

Posted on October 28, 2016January 31, 2025 by Paige Lansing Valle

Co-founders, Bella Banbury and Tracy Lloyd, weigh in on what matters in brand strategy today.

It’s important to remember that, in the end, the age-old question is always the same. Client needs all come down to “How do we differentiate our brand?” It’s just the way people ask the question and the way we answer the question that evolves. Here’s what we’ve been seeing more specifically in the market:

1.Heightened attention around data security:

Since 2016 was all about using data, now it’s all about safely storing and accessing that data. Gartner predicts that by 2018, 50% of business ethics violations will be related to data. There are lots of questions and doubts about how brands are collecting information and keeping it safe. People are distrustful and worried about privacy issues. Smart brands are focused on security and smart storage. And those brands that can keep data safe, and their users even safer, are winning.

2. Even greater demand for trust:

Companies with a culture of trust have outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of three, and high-trust companies are more than 2½ times more likely to be high performing revenue organizations than lower-trust companies. Nothing is as important as trust for any brand looking to make an impact moving forward. In 2016, we saw a lot of brands lose people’s trust, both internally and externally, in banking, in technology, in the automobile industry, and in the food industry. So this year a lot of brands are working on building and keeping trust this coming year. And this effort always comes back to brand strategy – helping brands make promises that they can keep to both build and keep the trust earned. That’s what we do.

3. Purpose divides:

The conversation around purpose-led business continues. There is more and better research coming out that supports the ideas of purpose-led business and the research supports our belief. When companies articulate and embrace a meaningful purpose or vision, their people naturally pay more attention to all the elements that drive sustainable growth. Brands that want genuine purpose to fuel innovation, culture, and business need to make sure they live authentically by it and communicate it clearly.

4. It’s all about disruption:

It’s clear that people are drawn to brands that are challenging the status quo, saying something new, and making a splash today. Whatever is it –disrupting a category, challenging the way we pay for things, changing the way we get healthcare, the retail experience – it’s all about disruption. Industries we’ve been most excited about are insurance, healthcare, wellness, and education because of this same reason. Brands that reimagine what is possible and deliver new ways of behaving will gain momentum over their competitors who remain stuck in the same thinking.

5. Digital health, on the rise:

There are many changes afoot in wellness and digital health. Last year, we saw more investing in this space and we imagine brands will need to start working harder to differentiate themselves in the next year. Right now, the future seems exciting and yet somewhat vague. This space will require digital health brands to clarify, differentiate, categorize, and tackle shifts head on. The digital health market is huge, and those brands that can figure out how clearly articulate why they matter and deliver on that promise could very well become Wall Street darlings.

6. Role of the CMO changed for good:

The role of the CMO is almost unrecognizable to five years ago. CMOs are now expected to deliver against P&L metrics, grow the top line, and drive the brand forward. Steering the brand in the driver’s seat means delivering on the brand promise. It also means ensuring all customer experiences are aligned to the brand purpose. It’s about understanding the customer journey and embracing customer experiences across all channels. So in order to compete, the CMOs of 2017 need to be brand focused, technically savvy, and data driven. They need to deliver better customer experiences and use insights to strategically deliver business growth.

7. All about brand experience:

Because expectations of brands are continually rising, smart brands are uber-focused on creating meaningful experiences. The real challenge is creating cohesive, connected experiences that resonate across platforms and at every touchpoint. These experiences drive engagement, build loyalty, and drive ROI. And brands need a clear strategy for succeeding in creating the right kind of experiences for the people they are trying to reach. Developing strategies to outline brand behavior has become more relevant for brands looking to deliver something people can count on – whether it’s B2B, B2C, or B2B2C.

As a San Francisco branding agency, we are excited to continue to help our clients develop the right brand strategies to transform brands in order to transform business.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Why Lack of Internal Alignment May Be Holding Back Your Business

Posted on October 25, 2016 by Paige Lansing Valle

When Internal Alignment Is Holding Back Your Business

The sky’s the limit. The future is full of opportunities. Until internal alignment becomes a dark cloud that prevents your business aspirations from being realized.

What happens when the brand is ready to grow and thrive, but there is no internal alignment from leadership about where the business is going? Nothing. The brand is paralyzed by competing visions and nothing happens. And a lack of decision making due to misaligned leadership is a problem that will hold up your business.

Strategy Without Alignment

A brand strategy is hard work and involves a tremendous amount of collaboration. When it’s clear that your brand needs to make a change in order to stay competitive and relevant, a brand strategy will articulate the shifts needed to grow and thrive. A brand narrative will clearly explain where the brand is going – what makes it different and special now and in the future – and gives your brand the launching pad to get there.

But if your leadership team doesn’t share the same vision for the business trajectory, it’s impossible for the brand to embark on the journey of transformation. Oftentimes, it’s not until businesses engage in developing a brand strategy that they uncover the depth of the misalignment. Before any progress can be made for the brand, the business needs internal alignment.

Focusing On Alignment

When you need to create momentum around your brand, internal alignment is the clear answer. The challenge arises, however, when leaders in your organization aren’t willing to share their honest vision for the brand. Sometimes leaders hold on to their vision as a form of intellectual capital – if the vision furthers their personal agenda for success it might be strategic to pursue it in a silo. Or other times, the vision is only shared with a select few as a power play to keep others at bay. Or general poor communication creates lack of trust and therefore reticence towards an open and honest dialogue about the future of the brand. Regardless of why leaders aren’t sharing a common aspiration for the business, overcoming the misalignment for the betterment of the brand’s future is critical.

Leaders Unite

Leaders must have clarity around the brand’s purpose in order to focus on making any strategic shifts. There must be agreement from all the key stakeholders in an organization about what the brand stands for and how that maps to the business. Since getting alignment involves teamwork and breaking down silos, a third party can be extremely useful.

Path to Purpose

At Emotive Brand, we’ve been on the front lines working with disconnected leadership and know all too well the challenge of articulating a clear brand strategy if there are competing views about the business plan. We developed Path to Purpose as way to bring executives together in a collaborative workshop series that aims to identify, articulate, and align leadership around the purpose of the company. By doing so, we help create internal alignment around the business strategy and map the brand strategy to it.

Our workshop paves the way for a corporate purpose statement and identifies the shifts your business should consider making in order to live its purpose more authentically. When you’re ready to push your brand beyond its stagnant state and truly reach its potential, you need a brand strategy with a strong purpose statement. If developing a brand purpose seems like an insurmountable obstacle due to a misaligned leadership group, consider Path to Purpose as the key to unlock your brand’s potential.

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

How Creative Design Brings Strategy to Life for Businesses

Posted on October 24, 2016 by Paige Lansing Valle

Embarking on a brand strategy project is an investment. We know it takes dedication, time, resources, planning, and a collaborative, open mindset. And in order to get true value from a strategy project, businesses have to be able to clearly explain the strategy, its meaning, and its value to people across their organization. This is where the power of creative design comes into play.

Powerful Strategy Isn’t Just a Deck

A strategy that simply sits in a presentation deck with a small group of people holds no real value for your business – no matter how smart the strategy is. It needs to come alive. It needs to live in people’s minds and hearts. Everyone across your entire business needs to understand the strategy in order to bring your organization closer to its vision for what’s to come.

Use Creative Design to Bring Strategy to Life

Tying creative design and strategy together is key. And bringing design thinking to how you approach and share your strategy with the people who matter to your business will help get everyone on board and rallied behind it.

Adding a creative design dimension will:

1. Build a solid strategy through an evaluative process:

Creating an impactful strategy requires noticing and deciphering patterns that yield impactful, insightful ideas and present innovative solutions. And creative design is a powerful tool for this.

When businesses bring design thinking into the process early on, strategic insights are more easily made, gaps are more easily filled, and patterns are more easily seen. The strategy evolves faster and becomes stronger throughout the process.

2. Help tell a complicated story:

Developing strategy is not only hard, but the output can be complex. Distilling it into an impactful, digestible, and simple story is important. Creative design is a way of visually and emotionally bringing that strategic story to life.

It helps people see a clear narrative, takes people along on the journey, and even makes the solution seem expected by the end. It’s a way of of simplifying and making the strategy more human and grounded.

3. Make the strategy digestible across your business:

It’s easy for strategy to go over people’s heads. Especially if they haven’t been along on the journey. And organizations often run into road blocks because key audiences can’t grasp what the strategy really means for them.

This is a significant problem. In order for a strategy to truly come to life, all audiences need to be directed in the same direction, singing from the same hymn sheet. Design is one of the most powerful ways of making strategy digestible so that everyone can follow along and do their part.

Once people are aligned and prepared for what’s to come, getting them rallied behind shifts with an understanding of what they mean and where they will take the business becomes a lot easier.

4. Create an emotional impact for stakeholders:

In order to get stakeholders excited about a strategy, you have to make them feel something.

Design is inherently emotive. Visuals and imagery – when approached strategically – can help evoke the emotions needed for key people to get on board.

A stagnant, monochrome, unimaginative presentation of a strategy – no matter how smart or inspired – can’t speak alone. Design helps elevate strategy to the next level – adding emotional value – and boosting meaning and value to key audiences.

Why Design Produces Real Outcomes

Design has the power to bring strategy to life – telling a clear story and adding emotional impact.

At Emotive Brand, we believe that applying design thinking to strategy adds significant value. No matter how inspired, smart, or informed a strategy is, design helps make it truly impactful.

This means bringing designers into the process early, allocating resources, dedicating time, and working together to make more powerful outcomes. Use design to help bring your strategy to life, gain meaning in the hearts and minds of people, and position your business for impact and growth.

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

Why These Brands Are On Their Best Digital Brand Behavior

Posted on October 13, 2016 by Paige Lansing Valle

All Brands Need Digital

Brand behavior is what brings brand strategy to life. And today, brands that aren’t focusing on digital brand behavior can’t compete. Digitization is becoming the main pathway for consumer journeys across all industries. And the number of digital touch-points for brands is increasing by 20% annually. So digital is an integral part of the overall brand experience. And the brands with the best digital brand behavior are thriving for a reason.

Digital Brand Behavior That We Love

1. Tell a powerful digital brand story: GE

Through story telling, GE invites consumers and businesses into their world. Their photos and visual content on Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube, and their website showcase their technology leveraging digital to make their brand more human.

For GE, it’s all about capturing people’s imagination and fostering innovation. Because part of GE’s brand promise is their commitment to innovation, GE tries to be a first-mover on new digital and social platforms. So they experiment to see how a new platform works for them and if it helps tell the story of why they matter.

And this commitment to digital brand behavior has increased GE brand awareness and engagement, especially among younger audiences and technology lovers.

2. Act with transparency through and through: Everlane

Today, digital is the most efficient way for consumers to find the information they are looking for. Everlane built a customer base by being radically transparent about this information – revealing their manufacturing process across digital platforms – something that many clothing companies often choose to withhold.

On the retailer’s website, consumers can easily find the itemized cost right down to the $.11 for transport to stores. Everlane has featured factories that manufacture its products and prides itself on the behavior of disclosing costs for material, labor, transportation, and even markup.

This kind of transparency within a competitive market like retail makes a brand like Everlane stand out as honest, authentic, and worthy of their consumer’s trust and loyalty – what thriving in the digital world demands.

3. Speak with a clear voice across digital touch-points: Southwest

With endless digital platforms comes the possibility of a disjointed brand voice. And when a brand’s voice isn’t clear across platforms, a brand can easily become less trusted, less recognizable, and less emotionally impactful for the people who matter to its success.

Southwest is finding digital success because it has created a personable, honest, and trustworthy brand voice that rings true across all touch-points. Not just in person or on the pretzels that flight attendants pass out on planes (that say “just because we like you”). But on the website. On social media. And even in their hashtags.

Consistency and clarity with their brand voice is essential for Southwest as a brand. It helps the airline differentiate themselves from competitors as being the most human and trusted choice – never hiding fees or deceiving consumers.

4. Behave responsively: Nike

The more responsive a brand is on their digital platforms, the more people feel connected, engaged, and loyal to that brand. Responsive brands are able to personalize their digital experience to each consumer, and adapt dynamically to how and when people engage with their content.

Take Nike. Nike’s digital responsiveness is two-fold – their digital communication with consumers is direct and fast and their digital design is highly responsive.

On Twitter, Nike’s customer service is gold standard. They reply quickly and directly – engaging with consumers, addressing concerns, celebrating positive engagements, and helping people find what they need.

In terms of responsive design, Nike is constantly innovating new ways to be more responsive. The new Nike+ app provides users with a feed of stories directly based on their inputs of interests. Digital data insights are directly produced from user’s behavior, needs, and wants. The app works to fulfill their brand promise of making athletes better – personalizing its content and bringing people closer to their goals thru smart and dynamic responsiveness.

5. Have a strategy: HipCamp

At then end of the day, the most important thing about digital behavior is having a strategy for it. It’s easy to get lost in a sea of platforms and options. Brands that are succeeding are using their brand promise and strategy to guide their digital behavior.

And HipCamp, for instance, has built its brand around adventure, exploration, and community. Because of this, Instagram is an important community-building and sharing platform. On Instagram, HipCamp focuses on sharing the places that their consumers have explored with their Instagram community. This opens up the world to their users, and brings them in.

It’s All About Trust

The way a brand behaves digitally is key to driving trust, engagement, and loyalty.

So focus on delivering a consistent brand behavior. Adapt the practices above. And build digital trust that positions your brand to thrive no matter what challenges are ahead.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency.

The Art of Swift, Smart Decision Making in Business

Posted on October 4, 2016 by Paige Lansing Valle

Too Many Choices

Business leaders can be gun-shy about making decisions – big and small, important and minute –when it comes to both their business and their brand.

The abundance of scenarios about the unknown can easily feel overwhelming. But effective leadership hinges on effective decision making. And it’s impossible to choose a direction when you’re trying to please everyone and do everything.

To Compete, You Have to Decide

At the end of the day, there’s no room or time for slow decision making in today’s competitive, fast-paced landscape. In fact, businesses and brands in every industry are struggling to become more agile and move fast enough to gain and maintain competitive edge.

And this kind of agility requires quick, streamlined, confident, decision making. Trying to make a decision with too many stakeholders involved will only stall your business from moving forward. This ‘hurry up and wait’ mentality can be crippling to how your business progresses.

So how do you create an environment that fosters quick, informed decision making?

Because of the accelerated pace of business today, businesses need a strategy for decision making. The most important thing is to make a decision and stick to it.

Being afraid to put a stake in the ground is only going to hold back your brand and create frustrated, confused costumers, employers, and investors. Bottle-necks are antithetical to brand growth. In the end, following through and rallying everyone around the direction you select is what matters most.

Don’t let perfection stand in the way. It doesn’t exist. There are always going to be alternatives to the biggest and smallest decisions you are tasked with making. But the most meaningful, and powerful choice is a direction you actually follow. And if you have a good team and a good product to back you up, you can build your brand and business in whatever direction you choose.

The best leaders are comfortable making decisions using established, agreed-upon practices and then align the subsequent brand and business paths accordingly.

That’s why a solid brand promise is key. With it as your North Star, everything from your brand’s position to its look and feel will have a clear path to guide your decision making. With your promise well articulated and shared, you are better positioned to empower employees to make their own decisions in line with the direction of the business. Giving employees this power gets rid of the bottleneck that often accompanies the decision making process (or lack thereof!).

Flexibility and Focus

Effective decision making requires a balance of flexibility and focus – honing the prize, and leaving room to shift along the way, within degrees of reason. It is not possible to please everyone or predict exactly what the future will bring. So choose a direction and go with it. You can always readjust the brand. Being a smart, swift decision maker and empowering others within your organization to do the same can ready your business and brand for whatever lays ahead.

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

A Learning Culture Can Bring New Value to your Business

Posted on September 22, 2016 by Paige Lansing Valle

Expertise in Learning?

Starting a new job or entering a new industry always entails a learning curve. People understand they have to learn quickly in order to survive. It’s the key to their success.

When people work closely in a business or specific industry, as experience builds and time accumulates they often forget this sense of voracious learning. It becomes more and more difficult to see things in a new light. And some top leaders are stuck thinking in a silo.

Some call this ‘the paradox of expertise.’ As expertise increases, people struggle to notice possibilities, discern novel patterns, or see new prospects, ideas, or insights.

Out-Learning the Competition

Learning – studying and absorbing trends, market forces, new technology, research, and happenings within your industry and outside it – is key to success today. It will drive your business towards the future, keep your brand agile and able to shift as fast as the world you work within. Building a culture of voracious learners is one of the best things you can do for your business.

Here’s how to build a learning culture:

1. Look wide and far:

If you gather information from the same, ingrained sources as your competition, the findings and the decisions you make from those findings won’t stand out. Shifting perceptions requires widening the lens of where you’re looking. And innovation and creativity thrive on perception shifting.

Expanding your point of view and discovering a different angle requires bringing people with a diverse array of mindsets into the conversation. Experiment and adopt new ways of thinking, seeing, and working. What you do and how you think should never be contained. So examine what’s happening in other industries and draw parallels and note constrasts. In fact, the most established practices in one industry could be revolutionary when translated into another.

Interconnectivity is key to successful business today. And understanding a business and where it can go requires learning about the world at large and where you are situated within it. A learning culture can help bring new thinking, ideas, and opportunities to your business.

2. Learn collaboratively:

Collaboration hinges on humility. It’s important to listen as if you can learn something – asking questions, engaging fully, and being open to other angles. Everyone within your organization should have the mindset “I’m still learning” – no matter your role.

Admit when you don’t know something. Ask for help from different people. Gather an opinion from someone you don’t usually talk with. These kind of collaborative practices can be quite valuable.

A designer can learn a lot from a strategist, an accountant from a writer, a C-Suite leader from a new recruit, and vice versa. And always share your findings. Engaging in collaborative learning can take an organization to the next level.

3. Be open to what’s possible:

Don’t settle for the status quo. Ask: What can I learn now? What’s possible for my knowledge? My organization? Its products and/or services? Its people? The brand? The best brands of today are built for the future. By being open to what’s possible, you can position yourself to be at the cutting edge of that future.

So take interest in what you don’t know. Strive to gain new perspectives and new information. Expand your knowledge and the scope of your learning in order to fuel creativity, innovation, and agile decision making.

Learn to Thrive

Consider some learning-focused companies today that are thriving. The CEO of WD-40 Company, Garry Ridge, prides himself on building a learning-obsessed company culture. And rightly so. The focus Ridge placed on a voracious learning culture explains how how the company nearly tripled its share price since 2009.

Google has formalized informal and continuous learning, giving employees allocated time to explore their own interests within the workplace. GE has created programs such as Change Acceleration Process, meant to foster experiential and continuous learning and fuel innovation.

The examples are many. No innovative, cutting edge, top company today is at the top because they stopped asking questions. These companies are always curious and always learning.

Creating a learning culture can foster the business agility and open mindedness that businesses and brands require today. And leaders who put a premium on learning can help fuel a culture of learners that will shine from the inside out. So focus on learning as an asset and position your business for greatness.

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

Why Good Listening Matters in Business

Posted on September 2, 2016 by Paige Lansing Valle

Listen Up

There are a lot of differing opinions about what good listening really means, let alone what it can do for your business. In one camp, good listening simply means not speaking over others when they are talking. While others think listening is about verbal acknowledgement. And there are those who wait until the speaker is done, then promptly repeat everything back to them. But are any of these really impactful, productive ways of listening?

Falling Short

This kind of one-dimensional listening falls short for many reasons. It isn’t what great listeners are actually doing – good listening is more than a one-way exchange. Saying “I understand” sometimes just isn’t enough. Especially in a world ripe with distractions. In fact, many argue that technological advances have made impactful listening increasingly rare.

Face-to-face conversations aren’t as common, and people’s levels of attention, engagement, and interaction have decreased because of constant emails, texts, and other device-produced distractions. Even when two people find themselves face-to-face, they are often not fully engaged.

But good listening – dynamic, thought-provoking, empathetic, free of distraction – is powerful. Giving energy to people, encouraging creativity, learning, innovation, problem solving, strengthening relationships, and helping people see things through a different lens is key to business today. Here’s why.

How We Listen

At Emotive Brand, our work requires effective listening. In order to get to the heart of our client’s business problems and help get leadership teams aligned around an impactful strategy, we need to be great listeners. It’s how we understand a business, its current situation, where it needs to go, and why. It’s also how we work effectively as a team to collaborate and create the most impactful strategy that will move our client’s businesses forward.

Here are some practices we’ve adapted that help foster good listening:

1. Asking questions:

Productive listening is about creating a two-way dialog. And this requires asking questions. Asking questions can generate new ways of thinking, foster creativity, challenge long-held assumptions, and fuel real, transformative change for businesses.

A lot of our work at EB is about asking questions – especially at the beginning stages. By listening, absorbing, and posing questions that move the conversation further, we move closer and closer to getting to the depth of business problems and creating solutions tailored for success.

2. Creating a supportive environment:

Productive listening hinges on creating an environment where both parties feel safe, especially when conversations are more complex. Making everyone involved feel safe and confident in voicing their individual opinions requires building trust and openness.

Listening becomes more productive the more you do it well. And often, the more someone feels listened to, the more they open up.

3. Making it collaborative, not competitive:

Listening should be part of a feedback flow not a competition about who’s right. It’s important to be willing to disagree as a listener, but it’s not about winning. It’s about coming to the best conclusion together through productive listening.

4. Putting away distractions:

Eye contact can go a long way. Sometimes, it’s necessary to put away cellphones and laptops in order to really be engaged during listening. The gesture itself makes a cue to people that you are fully present and really care about what they are saying.

5. Using nonverbal cues:

That being said, body language is key to successful listening. An open posture can indicate that you are open to listen and engage. On the flip side, cues like crossed arms or wandering eyes do not foster good listening.

6. Showing empathy:

Showing empathy is arguably the most important element of successful listening. It’s natural to disagree, but showing that you are trying to understand something from another person’s perspective can go a long way. You may even expand your own way of thinking. Seeing alternative paths and considering other opinions can foster innovation and creativity as well.

In our work at EB, we strive to get inside the minds and hearts of our clients and all of their integral audiences to really understand what’s going on. And showing empathy while we listen to these different perspectives is key to our success as brand strategists.

The Power of Listening in Business

Depending on the depth of the conversation at hand, different levels of listening engagement are needed in order to be productive. Good listeners know when to pull closer and also when to pull away. Sometimes, an affirmative nod is all that is needed. Other times, it’s more complicated. And knowing when to use these practices takes just that, practice.

Listening is a key part of how we do business, but it applies to every business – internally and externally. Good listening can lead to a more collaborative, productive, and inspired workplace. Businesses who listen to their outside audiences prove to be more successful because they understand their audiences, can adapt according to their shifting needs, and are constantly engaging to make the brand relationship stronger. Foster good listening skills to build a successful business and brand positioned to thrive.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy agency.

Use Your Brand to Cultivate Customer Engagement and Reap the ROI

Posted on August 24, 2016January 10, 2025 by Paige Lansing Valle

Customer Engagement, More Complicated Than That

When it comes to customer engagement, not all engagement is created equal. And despite some misconceptions, engagement is never a simple question of engaged vs. unengaged. In fact, customer engagement can’t be dictated by a single engaged or unengaged behavior. Understanding the value of a customer’s engagement can’t be boiled down to a ‘like’ or a single purchase.

We define customer engagement as a set of behaviors. This means customer engagement is about the relationship between a customer. So when fostered, the relationship can progress, develop, deepen, become more complex, and in turn, more valuable.

There’s a reason why businesses that are focusing on the most valuable engagement behaviors are reaping the benefits. These valuable behaviors include validation, sharing, asking, answering, and exploring. And strong efforts to deepen these types of engagement will lead to an increased ROI. But only for brands who do it right.

Why Feeling Connected is a Requirement

In order for people to engage in valuable ways, they need to feel comfortable and connected.

Many brands and their community managers place their strategic attention on making dissatisfied customers satisfied. As well as bringing new, unconnected people into their community. As a result, they neglect to focus on already connected but not yet fully engaged customers – a key group with big pay-off.

Research has found that businesses who are reaping the greatest ROI are focusing on already connected customers. This is because already connected customers are more likely to engage in the most meaningful ways – asking questions, adding to the conversation, and helping to build a strong culture aligned with the brand’s purpose and promise.

Brand as a Driver of Engagement

So use your brand to cultivate meaningful, valuable customer engagement that pays off for your business. See your ROI benefit by focusing on:

1. Messaging:

Clear, consistent, and emotive messaging sets the expectations of community engagement. This means customers will recognize you more easily. And since they get to know you, they will start to engage in more trusting, open, and relationship-building ways.

2. A connected target audience:

Knowing your audience helps direct efforts at those who will be the most meaningful and productive to engage with. So segmenting people into groups not only based on their levels of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, but on a spectrum of connectivity, can help a business recognize those who feel most connected to your brand. A strong brand will foster this group of people. These are the people who you want to focus engagement efforts on. They will be your greatest brand champions – delivering the most valuable insights, feeling connected enough to ask questions, and always helping to progress your business forward.

3. Putting emotional connectors to work:

In our increasingly digital world, it’s easy for customer engagement to easily steer towards the ‘non-human’ and often consequently, the non-emotional. But emotional motivators drive consumer engagement. And a brand’s emotional impact has to ring true at all touchpoints in order for customers to reach peak engagement levels.

So a powerful emotional impact that is clearly articulated is key here. Create a strategy that clearly articulates this emotional impact and makes people feel ready and willing to participate in ROI-reaping engagement behaviors like asking questions. The level of engagement needed Q&A behaviors requires that customers feel emotionally engaged. Through validation and building culture of asking and answering, innovation thrives, customer expectations drive business, and the brand never lets the business fall behind.

4. Building culture and brand community:

Smart brands don’t expect a large ROI from engagement without focusing on readying the culture of their brand community for such valuable engagement. And this means building trust, connection, and openness from the beginning.

So leverage your brand to build a culture of asking and answering. This happens from the inside-out. Internally promoting a culture of asking questions can generate new ways of thinking, challenge long-held assumptions, break out of the box, and fuel real, transformative change for business. Help your internal brand lead by example and watch this kind of culture shine through. Since your internal culture acts engaged, your external community will be more likely to engage opening, and drive your brand forward.

Reap the ROI

The research speaks for itself. Gallup found that brands who are ‘fully engaged’ with their customers gain a “23% premium in terms of share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth over the average customer.” In addition, HBR’s Constellation research determined that customers who are show high levels of engagement are “three times more likely to recommend or advocate a product or service to a friend.”

Increased engagement drives business value and can help your brand stand out. So use your brand to cultivate customer engagement. As a result, your customers will feel more connected, engagement will increase, customer behaviors will shift, and you will see your ROI benefit. By investing in customer engagement, you are investing in the lifetime value of your customers, and the future success of your business.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy agency.

Why the Best Brands Act Like Tech Companies

Posted on August 18, 2016 by Paige Lansing Valle

Everyone’s in Tech

Today, it’s not a question of tech vs. non-tech. At the end of the day, every company is a technology company. This means it’s time to throw away preconceived notions about what tech companies are, what they do, or where they do it. Technology companies don’t only thrive in Silicon Valley. Technology companies aren’t all as big as Google. In fact, you don’t even need to sell technology to be a technology company.

It’s not always about the product. It’s about how you do business, how you compete, and how you offer the most meaningful value to customers. It’s about embracing opportunity and fueling business with disruptive innovation. And today, this all comes down to tech.

There’s a reason why innovation is at an all-time high, disruptive technologies are more disruptive than ever, and new competitors constantly emerge, enter, and shift the ever-expanding landscape of technology. And companies that don’t act like technology companies are lagging behind. And at the end of the day, in today’s increasingly digitized and hybridized world, everyone needs to act like a tech company in order to compete.

Embracing The Best Qualities of Tech Companies

Ignoring what’s happening at the top tech companies of today is only going to hurt your business. Across the board, all businesses have to work to stand out, gain and keep competitive edge, offer new value to competitors, and agilely compete in and against shifting markets. There’s a lot to learn from the way successful tech companies are approaching their business and their brand. So let’s take some plays from their rulebooks.

Following Suit

Brands that follow the rules of the best tech companies are finding success. So embrace it and own it. Here’s how:

1. Constantly test, learn, and adapt:

Businesses are constantly looking for new ways to understand, reach, and connect with the people important to their success. For many top tech companies this means constant research and testing. But it never stops there. Integrating these findings and insights, learning from them, and tailoring the business and brand towards successful solutions is a constant task. Because customer expectations are evolving at rapid pace, being able to keep up with current needs and adapt accordingly is key to staying competitive in any market today.

2. Be agile and flexible:

Many brands need a new, more agile approach to address the changing dynamics of market and businesses and stay ahead of the competitive curve. Agility is the new norm. Flexibility is a requirement, and fast is the new normal pace, especially in times of growth. People want brands that can anticipate their needs: built for them, catered to the ways they want to connect with and experience the world, and able to move fast with (or often times, ahead of) their shifting desires.

3. Innovate, never imitate:

The top technology companies of today aren’t successful because they accepted the status quo or followed along the path of competitors. Asking questions, challenging long-held assumptions, and focusing on innovation can fuel real, transformative change for businesses. Curiosity, a focus on learning, and collaboration are one of the best ways your brand can power innovation. Look for problem solvers, big thinkers, and people unafraid to ask questions to help build a brand that is more innovative. Innovative brands today stand out and constantly move forward with momentum.

4. Identify needs and create meaningful value:

Top tech companies aren’t at the top simply because of their product or service alone. It’s about how they communicate their value proposition. There are endless businesses that are great at creating new products and services. However, most of these businesses struggle because they are unable to craft a value proposition for their offering that stands out from their competitors. These are the business that quickly fall off and lose competitive edge. This is because products don’t have real value unless the value is fully realized by customers themselves. These means winning brands understand customer needs and know how to communicate their value in a meaningful, impactful, and persuasive way.

5. Look toward the future:

Brand relevance relies on looking towards the future. Top tech companies understand that success today does not guarantee success tomorrow. They build their business for the future and map their brand towards these goals, objectives, and greater visions. Brands that aren’t designed for the future simply cannot compete in an ever-evolving digital landscape. In order to stay relevant, stay forward-thinking.

Maximum Impact

There’s a reason why the best brands are not only embracing technology but acting like tech companies. See how you can apply some of the top practices of thriving tech companies today to the way you approach your business and your brand, no matter what industry you sell in. By moving faster, with agility, and more dynamically, we believe you will be able to offer more meaningful value to the people who matter to your brand – making your brand more impactful and your business more competitive and positioned for success.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy agency.

Does Brand Strategy Translate Into Advertising?

Posted on August 17, 2016 by Paige Lansing Valle

Brand Strategy is the Foundation for Advertising

One of the misconceptions about brand strategy and advertising is that they are disconnected. As a result, many brands create ads that are off-strategy because they don’t use their brand strategy as a guide. But brand strategy is the foundation for advertising.

At Emotive Brand, the most rewarding part of developing a brand strategy with clients is when we see the strategy come to life. A B2B brand strategy inspires powerful website messaging. An employer brand turns into a rock solid manifesto. A B2C brand strategy translates into a compelling advertisement campaign.

In the end, strategy gives businesses the infrastructure it needs to be successful with internal and external marketing. But successfully turning a strategy into an outward facing campaign isn’t easy. It takes gumption, and not all organizations are agile enough to quickly translate and execute their new brand strategy. In order to succeed, you have to be savvy, confident, and agile as a brand. And, you have to committed to your strategy.

Magoosh: A Case Study

When Magoosh, a longtime client, approached us about helping produce a HULU commercial, we didn’t hesitate. Magoosh is a model client. They not only developed a powerful brand strategy, but have stuck to it with great success. As a result, their business has had tremendous growth this year, solidifying their already strong reputation and foothold with the competition.

The goals of the commercial were straightforward: drive brand awareness forward and test HULU as an advertising platform. However, developing concept and creative for a commercial is not usually a quick process. Filming and editing can be laborious, and Magoosh had a very quick turnaround deadline. They wanted to roll-out the commercial in time to capture their peak sales season: about a month away. The real and apparent challenge was time.

That’s where the importance of a solid brand strategy became paramount. Because Magoosh had a very clear idea of its target audience, its key messages, its look and feel, voice, and story, the impossible deadline wasn’t nearly as daunting as it might normally be. In fact, having these strategic elements in place already was key to their future success.

Staying True to the Brand

Advertisements that have the foundation of a strong strategy help the brand ring true at every touchpoint. To stay true to the brand and develop a story that felt authentic, we didn’t have to look far for talent. Magoosh had a team of spirited, confident, positive (and good looking) people on deck who were more than willing to help.

These people truly believed in the brand, and as a result, pulling together a cast of employees and real Magoosh students who could speak to the product was easy. Online test prep really does change the lives of the people who use it. For some this means making dream schools realities. For others it means exceeding score expectations or overcoming personal challenges. Because of the nature of the brand, positive testimonials were abundant. And featuring people who believe in the brand helped make the commercial that much more compelling. Their energy and passion was tangible.

The Best Advertising Connects People to People

It’s no question that human brands are winning. In an age of increasing digitization and consumers who see hundreds of ads a day, brands have to truly connect with the people who matter to their business. People will always seek brands that help them succeed. Brands that help to enrich or improve lives have the strongest and most powerful stories to tell. For Magoosh, creating a compelling ad meant connecting ‘Magooshers’ (as we nicknamed their staff and customers) to the people they help. The ad’s story used ‘Magooshers’ to speak directly to the needs of customers – flexibility, convenience, and results – in an emotive way, bringing the heart of their brand to life.

Consistency is King

Even amidst the common challenge of time, translating a brand strategy into advertising should be seamless if all the pieces (voice, look and feel, messaging) are in place. And developing an ad that connects people to people is made easier when the product really does impact people’s lives in a powerful way. The trick is to tell an authentic and compelling story that rings true across all points of engagement. Advertising is never a one-off. So develop an advertising campaign that pushes the strategy across multiple touch points. The message will become stronger. Awareness will heighten and your modes of measuring traction will increase. With a solid brand strategy in place, your advertising campaign is ready to roll.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy agency.