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Author: Saja Chodosh

Looking to Design Better Brand Experiences? Consider the Potential of Experience Design

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Big Challenges in Branding

As a brand strategy and design agency, we’re deeply immersed with what’s happening in the brand world. Sometimes, we are so focused on building the best solutions for our clients that we have to remind ourselves to take a step back and assess the big-picture challenges facing brands today.

Emotive Brand, did just this and attended the Design Gurus Summit and the Digital Design & Web Innovation Summit in San Francisco. Four days, many talks, panels, and iPad notes later, here’s what David learned:

Nailing experience design is what may make or break a brand moving forward. Read what it is, why it matters, and how to get it right today.

Experience Design Defined for Today

It’s clear that experience design has evolved. Historically, experience design was all about building a single, compelling experience. It was focused and neat. 

Now, experience design is evolving into a way of thinking. Using brand as a compass, experience design can identify and build experiences around differentiated value. This way of thinking considers how all products, services, solutions, and people play a role in delivering that value over time.

Every stage of the customer journey becomes an opportunity to provide further meaning to customers. Complementing innovation, this framework can help brands explore where to push beyond the traditional guardrails. Bringing in the challenge of time, it considers the implications and interdependencies of all touchpoints at all moments.

Why Experience Design Matters: Customers Taking the Driver’s Seat

Brands today are complex eco-systems. What we think of as the original customer journey (something linear, trackable, and controllable) is harder and harder to pin down. Customers are taking greater control of the brand experiences they want to drive and how and when they want to drive them. This means that brands that fail to deliver the ultimate experience at every point will be left by the wayside.

“From social ads to clothing labels to the welcome screen in your car, we are engaging with more brands than we can even keep track of,” notes David.

“But no matter where we choose to engage, we all want the same thing – a good experience. This changes the game for companies who must design for every moment, every scenario, every interaction, possibility, and new relevant channel to compete.”

So How Do You Nail Experience Design Today?

As that ultimate brand experience becomes more important to customers, so does nailing experience design for businesses looking to compete.

1. Join Forces with Brand Strategy

It’s critical that experience design be informed by brand. Having a clear, differentiated, relevant brand is what is going to bring every brand touchpoint together into one cohesive, emotive, and meaningful brand experience.

Without a clear idea of your positioning, how you want to make people feel, and what differentiated value you offer, you can’t begin to design the right overall experience for your customers. Leveraging your brand strategy to keep you on course can help your whole experience flex to customer’s needs while still staying true to the heart of what makes you different.

2. Organize Your Brand for the Experience You Want to Build

Often, companies aren’t structured to consider the whole experience and this is a problem. Design isn’t talking to marketing and marketing isn’t talking to HR and HR isn’t talking to customer service and sales isn’t brought to the strategy table…Everyone’s living within their silos, on their floors, and no one’s talking.

Businesses are structured like disparate pyramids while customers are operating like villages. It’s not neat or siloed. It’s messy, chaotic, and people are entering and exiting all over the place. Everything is in flux and organizations must be able to ebb and flow accordingly.

As new digital channels pop up and old channels shift, businesses will have to become more agile, more flexible, and more able to see the big picture at play – breaking down walls and bringing everyone around one table to assert the question: what experience do we want to design? And how can we design it together?

Designed for Benefits

Reconsidering the importance of experience design today means reaping the benefits for your business. Higher loyalty, more meaningful engagement, greater relevance – that’s what positive experiences build.

“I think smart organizations might reconsider its power. I am,” says David.

“Businesses that nail experience design will be the ones that learn to navigate the most efficient course, keep their passengers the happiest, build engines faster, all while keeping the plane in the air. That’s the potential, and it’s big.”

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency.

Ensuring Our Clients’ Success: Change Management and How We Help

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Helping Our Clients Be Successful

As a brand strategy agency, it’s our job to ensure that our clients are successful. The strategy and strategically-informed design we create is meant to position our clients’ business and brand to thrive.

But at the end of the day, it’s not just about how smart or groundbreaking the strategy or design is. There’s a lot of planning and change management that goes into making sure the project is successful and followed through from start to finish in the most impactful way possible. Operations and project management are key to any brand strategy project. Helping a client manage their project, aligning our teams together, and pushing a project forward on schedule is no easy task.

In our experience, change management and ensuring our clients’ success hinges on:

1. Developing a relationship

The first step is all about building a relationship. We’re all human after all. As an agency, we put people first. That’s at the heart of Emotive Brand and what we believe business should be—human. You have to get to know the client and the client has to get to know you. It’s all about trust and respect. Any project will have ups and downs that require give and take, so it’s important to establish common ground. What makes shifts and obstacles down the road easier is when both the client and agency feel like they’re on the same team.

The benefits of building trust are unending. We want people to come to us and say: “We have this doubt. We need help with this. How would you approach this?” And it’s easier to get people to let you guide them and be open to your advice and strategy if they trust you.

It all starts with focusing on the relationship. Creating an environment where you can—if need be—deliver bad news, or say no. Creating an environment where you can celebrate successes and also power through obstacles, together. Face time is important here. Whether its virtual conferences, workshops, meetings, these are often appropriate and convenient tools for communication—especially given our current circumstances. It’s key to understanding people and the cultures they work in. It gives context to people and how they think and work. It changes the relationship for the better and helps collaboration flourish more naturally.

When former clients still call us to check in, to ask how we are, and seek our advice long after a project is over—that’s a success to us.

2. Establishing the expectation of accountability and ownership

Planning, creating calendars, establishing deadlines, setting up check-ins, all of these planning tools are key. But they only really work if people actually show up and deliver what’s expected of them, and this all hinges on accountability. Setting expectations about availability and respecting each other’s timing from the onset is just as important as doing what you say you’re going to do.

As the agency, we create standing project management meetings with our clients to make sure that everyone knows what’s expected of them and to help everyone stay accountable. These meetings are a platform for discussing key milestones, workshops, deadlines, etc. We’ve found that projects get stalled when people feel they are too busy to meet with you. This is why having these meetings is so important. Everyone’s busy. Everyone’s time matters. But by being clear about expectations and deadlines, we get the project done with the least amount of time wasted.

When we figure out how to manage the project together and are aligned around key dates (board meetings, all-hands meetings, etc.) we can more easily build a schedule around an already existing workflow—capitalizing on opportunities when people are already going to be together, which is especially important for global clients.

It’s also important to establish who the key decision-makers are at the outset: who owns the project and who ultimately has the ability to move the project forward. We have to get to the heart of who these people are so we make sure they are there for key moments of the process.

When a project gets stalled because the schedule isn’t followed, the impact gets diluted. There are large stakes. That’s why planning out the resource requirements and establishing accountability from the beginning is so integral to the overall project success—setting up what you need, when you need it, and from whom you’re getting it.

3. Working proactively, always anticipating

Change is hard for anyone, but anticipating the challenges of change is what’s going to make it possible. It’s all about bringing the right people into the process at the right time. There are times when we have to add in minor steps within the process because we anticipate a roadblock ahead. For example, doing a pre-presentation to an executive in order to get them on board and comfortable ahead of a bigger meeting.

It’s also helpful to draw from past experiences in order to anticipate and read the signs of what’s ahead. Every client is different, but we learn different things from each experience. We’re always thinking about the questions: “What would help this process? What would help to get this person on board? What do we need to do to move this forward? What needs to happen next?”

It’s all about being proactive and being a step ahead. That’s what helps make hard transitions smoother. That’s what makes preparing for change feasible.

4. Rigor and flexibility

For a process to create an innovative, change-making strategy it needs to be coupled with rigor and order that ensures trust and confidence.

There’s got to be a process, but you also have to be able to flex within that process. No two projects are the same. Different forks always appear in the road, and often, you have to pause or stop and reflect. Sometimes, you just need more time. Other times, you need more people or even a different direction. We see deliverables shift based on needs. The solution might change but, whatever the change, being flexible within the rigor of the process is key.

Along the journey, you always uncover new things. Listening—really listening—to the client’s needs is key. And needs are ever-evolving. Flexibility comes from learning and adapting to these evolving needs.

Ensure the success of the project and position your client to thrive. That’s the goal, and we are always striving towards better ways of helping our clients reach their goals.

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

Embrace Constraints to Unleash Creativity

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Breaking the Conventional Wisdom of Creativity

Creativity is often idealized as something that flourishes within a boundless environment and thrives under a lack of regulation. As creative thinkers ourselves, we’ve often fallen into the trap of dreaming of empty days with nothing to do but create, no person or particular task or restriction to attend to, no strict directions to follow…Without rules and impediments, the world of creativity and innovation would be our oyster…right?

But, contrary to popular belief, constraint can actually power creativity. HBR, based on 145 empirical studies, found that people, teams, and companies benefit from the right dose of constraints. Similarly, psychologists have found that limitations force new perspectives. And Tess Callahan, in her TED Talk, calls the relationship between constraints and creativity ‘an unexpected love affair.’

This data and research have huge implications for teams, companies, and brands leaning on creativity and innovation during this year where change has established itself as the new normal. Constraints, when embraced and leveraged, can be productive, enlightening, and even exciting.

Creativity Within Our Studio

When we moved our studio to remote work in March, we were unsure of how we would continue to create with the agility, passion, and creativity that’s always lived within our studio walls. At first, it was easy to think only in terms of new limitations and unwelcome rules. Lack of in-person collaboration. The inability to meet clients in person. The pressures and constraints from forces of disruption all around us: economic and beyond.

Now, months later, creativity within our studio is thriving. We can see that the constraints of ‘stay-at-home’ have forced us to rethink how we work and why we work that way. We’re thinking outside the norms to figure out challenges like collaboration, building client trust, and workshopping strategy, and creative work through emotive, digital experiences.

Our Clients’ Creativity is Soaring Too

We’ve seen in real-time that our clients have been pushed to think differently as well. The value of creativity is skyrocketing and teams are relying on creative, strategic problem-solving, and solvers more than ever before. HR teams that have relied on in-person college fairs to recruit are building immersive, digital experiences that compel candidates further, with less budget. Product teams are using their data technology and applying it to solve new problems like health, wellness, and virus tracking. C-suite executives are embracing this time of transformation, using it to reassess their position and establish relevance in a market that values trust, purpose, and empathy more than ever before. 

Creativity in the Brand and Business World at Large

The world is watching as today’s brands prove their creativity under dynamic constraints. Dyson saw a need, identified a capability outside their usual application, and brought 15,000 ventilators to the world. Small, local restaurants are reinventing the dining experience with QR codes and other technology. Technology companies like Whoop are working with researchers from leading health organizations and universities to help populations with earlier detection of the virus, repurposing their fitness tool as a detection tool.

Although we might not hope for the continuation of many of these limitations or challenges, embracing them as mechanisms for change, seeing things anew, and pushing what’s possible forward is proving to be one of the silver linings of these challenging times.

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

Photo Credit: https://icons8.com/

Innovation: You’re Thinking About It Wrong, Part II

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Let’s Reimagine How to Innovate: A Thought Piece by Robin Goldstein, Part 2

Robin Goldstein has been a part of some great teams learning and thinking about innovation and disruption at companies like Apple, Zoox, multiple startups, and now, the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign. In this continuing series, she offers her accumulated wisdom around how to reimagine innovation, shift your mindset from ‘what and how’ to ‘why and who’, build the right team, and create a future that isn’t simply the past with fewer bugs. This week is the second installment in her feature. Please keep posted each week for new sagacity from Robin. If you missed last week’s, you can read it here.

Be Wrong and Be Ok

I believe that founders in particular, and great leaders in general, need to develop a clear and precise vision of how they believe the world can and should look and behave, and then be able to articulate that vision to their organization. In other words, like it or not, if you want to be a founder, some part of you has to be a futurist, or at least play one on TV, with a well-defined POV. (And no, ‘wouldn’t it be cool?’ doesn’t qualify as a point of view. The only truly cool things are flying cars, talking dogs, and chocolate donuts that cure disease and make you better looking!)

You also have to be comfortable being completely wrong. Many of the greatest were: Edison… Einstein… Steve Jobs was famously wrong about a bunch of things (not having more than one button on a mouse and not allowing third-party apps on the original iPhone). But being wrong isn’t a problem if you’re paying attention, testing your plotted course against the prevailing winds, and taking decisive action when the need to pivot arises.

I often ask teams, “If we went bankrupt today and a new party was able to purchase all our assets and talent for pennies on the dollar, would they simply pick up where we left off, doing exactly what we’re doing or, knowing what we know now, take a different approach or head in a different direction?” Because if the answer is “different”, then my second question is, “Do we have to fail for someone else to be successful, or can we pivot and be the beneficiary of our own experience?”

The cautionary tales of Silicon Valley frequently involve bright people with the best intentions plowing forward, heads down, not recognizing or acknowledging that change is happening all around them. The nimble pay attention, embrace truth, and find the ability not to be attached to a specific outcome. I believe it was Tennyson who said, “Tis’ better to have a vision for how the world will change, be wrong, and incorporate that knowledge into a new vision, than to simply ‘try stuff and see what happens.’ ”

Think Full Stack

This is another element of the ‘but I only want to work on the cool things’ challenge many teams face. Real change, the kind that doesn’t simply make existing systems better, but makes them obsolete (Buckminster Fuller’s definition of disruption) often requires reimagining large parts of an ecosystem. But only considering the part that’s interesting to you, and relying on someone else to ‘magically’ take care of everything else and lay the foundation for your success, rarely works. I’ve seen this at play in a wide range of spaces, including healthcare, transportation, and education.

I liken it to developing an amazing new seed, one where a single plant could feed 100 people for a month. But that seed has very specific and unique soil requirements, different from any soil that exists today. And you, as the seed developer say, “Seeds are cool…Soil is boring…I’ll show the world my cool seed and someone else will figure out how to make sure there’s suitable soil for it to grow.” Why would you ever put your success into someone else’s hands? You have to think full stack, even if you’re only going to be working on a small part. Expand your view to understand as much of the landscape necessary for your success as possible, even if you’re only interested or able to focus on a very small piece.

To be clear, you don’t have to take responsibility for all the elements, but you do have to consider all the components necessary for your success and find ways to tell the whole story of the experience you want to enable. That moves the conversation from ‘what’ to ‘so what’, and in turn gets others excited, too. This results in sparking interest and innovation from those who want to work on a different section of the puzzle (the soil geeks), in turn providing incentives for the creation of a more robust ecosystem and the development of community, multiple stakeholders, and ultimately larger, more transformational wins.

Keep posted for more insight on innovation from Robin next week in Part 3.

Emotive Brand is an Oakland based brand strategy and design agency.

Innovation: You’re Thinking About It Wrong

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Let’s Reimagine How to Innovate: A Thought Piece by Robin Goldstein, Part 1

Robin Goldstein has been a part of some great teams learning and thinking about innovation and disruption at companies like Apple, Zoox, multiple startups, and now, the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign. In this series, she offers her accumulated wisdom around how to reimagine innovation, shift your mindset from ‘what and how’ to ‘why and who’, build the right team, and create a future that isn’t simply the past with fewer bugs. This week is the first installment in her feature. Please keep posted each week for new sagacity from Robin.

You’re Thinking About It All Wrong

I come back to this concept a lot. I’ve encountered it everywhere: Apple, Zoox, startups, Stanford…amazing, bright, well-meaning people who want to disrupt and change the world for the better. But, they all begin the design process by imposing limitations, overly constraining the problem, encumbering themselves with needing to know “all” the facts, and subsequently restricting the space and freedom they allow in formulating their approach, ultimately curbing the promise of developing a truly impactful solution.

I remember one meeting at Apple where I got to be a fly on the wall. The presenter, someone Steve really respected, began talking and Steve looked at their first slide, walked over, turned off the projector, and said, “No, no, no…you’re thinking about it all wrong.” I reflect on this a lot; the power of simply shifting your perspective.

One day, pre-COVID, I was hanging out with some Biodesign students in a Stanford innovation class where they’ve been kind enough to allow me to be a mentor. The prescient topic was ideating a solution to increase the flu vaccination rate among at-risk populations. Everyone’s answer? “We have to make people smarter. More education from the employer, the insurance company, the doctor…” As I listened, my comedian’s mind conjured up a fantastical image and I said, “I don’t know anything about this, but if I wanted to inoculate more people, I might try sneaking up behind them at the McDonald’s drive-through. They’ve already got their arm out the window, and as they’re grabbing their fries, BAM!” Everyone stared. One of the folks said, “That’s a terrific idea!” and I said, “It may be a horrible idea, but it suggests perhaps we’re thinking about this all wrong.”

A different way of framing the same problem can unlock a ton of creativity and inventiveness. Where can we reach people when their arms are already extended? (Which is really a way of saying how can we reduce friction to adoption?) And yes, at first it may lead to terrible (though amusing) solutions. But, when I’m working on a problem with, as I like to say, “the confidence of an idiot unencumbered by facts!” and offer an idea, the words I most love to hear from a colleague are, “yes, maybe not that, but…” In other words, that’s silly, but what about…? This mode of thinking opens up a whole series of questions leading to truly innovative solutions that would never be found by simply trotting the traditional track.

Start by Standing in The Future and Imagining the World You Want to Exist

On my last day at Apple, after 22 years, a young engineer introduced herself and asked me what was the most important lesson I had learned. That was a big question that I wasn’t sure I could answer. I thought for a bit and then walked over to a whiteboard and wrote,

“The future should not simply be the past with fewer bugs.”

When most people think about innovation, they stand in the present and try to peer into the future. And what do they see? They see problems: technical, economic, social, regulatory—problems that lead to a model of innovation that works best at creating a better/cheaper/faster version of what already exists. But I noticed something while working with true innovators…disruptors…the crazy ones. They stand in the future and look around and imagine the world they want to exist. The experiences they want to enable. The kinds of products that lead users to say, “I didn’t know I needed this, and now I can’t imagine living without it.” They don’t start with cool technology and try to figure out product/market fit. They imagine the world they want to live in, the way things would work if a magic genie granted them wishes, and then they look ‘back’ to today and start figuring out what problems they need to start solving now in order to make that future a reality.

If you listen to people talk about a driverless future, you’ll invariably hear them say something like, “and then when you want to go somewhere, you’ll pull out your phone and launch an app and…” No, no, you’re thinking about it all wrong. What if we imagined a future where transportation was as frictionless and ubiquitous as water or electricity? What would a daily commute look like in this world? I leave from the same place and go to the same place at about the same time most every day. I’ve allowed my life to be instrumented with a smart thermostat and a smart speaker with access to my calendar and a connection to my smartphone and toothbrush and toaster. So, in the future I want to live in, my transportation ecosystem will confidently predict where I’m going, when I need to arrive, and the best way to take me there.

In this future, I really only need to launch an app when there’s an exception to my routine that isn’t obvious from all the signals in my life. Take a moment and think about how much time and energy (mental, physical, and emotional) you spend on your daily commute. Worrying about when to leave, where to park, which route, Waze, or Apple Maps? The stress. Now, think about mobility in 10 years as being a ubiquitous and frictionless experience, there when you need it, no worrying required. Do you want to live in that world? Can you imagine someone saying, “I didn’t know I needed this and now I can’t live without it?” Great, now what problems (technical, economic, social, regulatory) do we need to start working on solving today so when the future arrives we’ll be ready for it?

Keep posted for more insight on innovation from Robin next week in Part 2.

Emotive Brand is an Oakland based brand strategy and design agency.

Global Growth, Local Success: Your Employer Brand Can Do Both

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Level Setting: Employer Branding Is a Must-Have

As a brand agency whose work revolves around transforming business by changing how people feel about brands, we’re naturally true believers in the impact of employer branding. We think of employer brand as the practice of ensuring a company’s external branding efforts are supported by a corresponding and complementary internal brand that speaks to current and prospective employees. When companies do succeed at successfully articulating an emotionally meaningful proposition of what it means to work for their company, recruitment, retention, and engagement aren’t the only metrics that soar.

Numerous studies show that employer branding has an impact way beyond a company’s ability to keep employees happy and attract talent. It has a significant and measurable impact on the bottom line. Here are just some facts:

  • Negative reputation costs companies at least 10% more per hire. (HBR)
  • 64% of consumers have stopped purchasing a brand after hearing news of that company’s poor employee treatment. (Career Arc)
  • Employer branding can increase stock prices by 36%. (Lippincott)
  • 96% of companies believe employer brand and reputation can positively or negatively impact revenue, yet less than half (44%) monitor that impact. (Career Arc)
  • A strong employer brand can lead to a 50% decrease in cost per hire and a 28% increase in retention. (LinkedIn)
  • Strong employer branding discourages early departures; new hires are 40% less likely to leave after the first 6 months. (LinkedIn)
  • Companies are overpaying on salaries by 10% if they don’t have a strong brand. (HBR)
  • Employee turnover can be reduced by 28% by investing in employer brand. (Office Vibe)

Global Growth? No Better Time for an Employer Branding Initiative

Many of our clients come to us in times of change or in search of growth. Whether it’s organic or M&A, they need an employer brand to drive global recruitment, retention, and engagement at a time when human capital is critical to keeping pace with growth demands.

With accelerated growth at the global level comes a challenge a bit more complicated than filling the funnel with talent or filling the office with snacks to fill the talent. With growth, comes change, and with change, comes uncertainty. It’s only human. Organic global growth means learning to navigate everything from regional work style differences and communication nuances to basic time zone management. While global expansion by way of M&A brings the additional challenge of merging established workplace cultures and power dynamics.

For executives, this means acknowledging that practices that have served the company in the past might not serve it into the future. For HR and recruitment leads at each location, it’s often fear that expansion at the global level might dilute attention on their own location’s unique assets or needs. With clients who’ve grown through M&A, each location may be in a different stage of maturity. And for employees themselves, growth brings a murkiness of its own: “What does adding a new office or a whole new staff mean to me, my role, and my work?”, or even “Do I still belong here?”

Finding Your Connective Tissue, Globally

The first step in creating a globally-resonant employer brand is identifying, or in many cases unearthing, a company’s connective tissue—the underlying truths at the heart what you do, how you do it, and why it matters.

Discovering these across global locations isn’t always obvious at first. Differing cultures, a diverse workforce, or a broad spectrum of capabilities often make it appear like difference outweighs similarity—especially to those on the inside.

This is where a strong outside perspective brings value—and can help a company identify its universal truths. As an agency partner, we begin by diving deep into all facets of your brand, business, and culture and have numerous conversations with employees and executives working in different roles across the world. It’s our job to look for patterns, discover shared beliefs and values, and uncover common ways of thinking, working, or perceiving.

Ultimately, the common truths we identify bubble up to your EVP, or your Employer Value Proposition, the most differentiated and relevant way to communicate your workplace’s value to candidates and employees, which we pressure test through the following filters:

  • Does it have the power to unite and rally your existing employee base?
  • Will it attract the people your business needs to thrive and invite them into the fold?
  • Can it expand with you as your business grows?
  • Can it flex to each unique location’s distinct needs or challenges?
  • Does it feel authentic, meaningful, true, and unique?
  • Is it differentiated from the competition?

Getting Local With It

At a global level, your EVP may drive brand touchpoints such as a global recruitment campaign, a new career website, or a global employee communications strategy. But what does it mean at a local level? What if one office needs help recruiting experienced talent in a remote city where brand awareness is low? And another office site requires a way to stand out in a location abundant with industry competition? This is where the exercise of localization becomes key.

In every global engagement, we work one-on-one with each location to closely understand their individual challenges, needs, and goals—and how the Employer Branding initiative can support them. We create a roadmap that targets key dates, identifies key stakeholders, and acts as a guide as we develop customized brand assets and strategies for ensuring success. Our work is about meeting each team where they are, flexing the EVP to work to what you have, what you need, and what you want, all while underlying the overall global message that sits above it all.

Global growth? Local success? Yes, we’re here to tell you both are possible. Get in touch to learn more about our future-proofing your Employer Brand for growth.

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

Talking Transformation: Brand, Business, and Culture

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

An Interview with Katie Tamony

We sat down with Katie Tamony, Chief Communications and Culture Officer at Alluma, a technology non-profit dedicated to making sure those eligible for benefits and services don’t fall through the cracks. Katie talks to us about leading transformation projects: her role, why these kinds of projects excite her, and what’s critical in executing a transformation successfully.

This isn’t the first transformation project you’ve been a part of. Why does this kind of work appeal to you?

Building something new out of what has been has always excited me. That’s why I’m particularly interested in organizations that have an established track record, but, because of market forces or business demands, haven’t been able to sustain their success. They stop growing. Transformational work is a unique opportunity to think differently, question the sacred cows, and re-see the insights you took for granted. I just love discovering the hidden potential in people and in organizations.

You’ve led many rebrands. What role does brand play when a company is making a significant shift?

I see brand as the decision-making filter for the organization. It guides who you want to hire, what you offer customers, how you express yourself, how you make business decisions about what to invest in…it touches everything. It’s a roadmap; it’s guardrails. Brand ensures the organization is moving in the right direction. And I’ve found that when done right, brand can create a wonderful shared understanding within an organization of who you are and why you matter.

How did you work with leadership to create and maintain alignment throughout the transformation?

Any transformation is a journey, it’s a process. Setting goals and objectives at the beginning ensures that the leadership team is aligned around what success looks like from the start. But in my experience at Alluma and in leading past transformation at SFMOMA, Sunset Magazine, and Monrovia Plants, it’s beneficial to not just keep the brand journey within the executive team. For instance, at Alluma, we invited mid-level managers and other subject-matter experts to weigh in and help evaluate market insights when we were at a pivotal point in the process with Emotive Brand. Inviting other people outside of the executive leadership to sit around the table gave us true perspective on how ideas and insights were landing and what felt true to the people closest to the day-to-day work. Having them ideate the opportunities that would emerge if we went a certain direction was exciting and a real pressure test.

What about the board? Is there a role for them in projects like this?

As a non-profit, the role of the board is critical. They’re like a senior executive group, but at the same time they bring a lot of external perspective and deep knowledge for our sector that is indispensable. We got their buy-in on the goals and the process early on and involved them at key decision points. Choosing the final name for Alluma actually came down to decisions from the CEO and the Board.

These projects are long. How do you communicate to employees to keep them connected after the pivotal brand launch moment?

Yes, the launch is exciting. A new name. A new website. A new T-shirt. But then it’s kind of like after a wedding or any climatic event, people are thinking, “okay well, how does this change my day-to-day?” Then begins the most critical phase of the transformation; helping people figure out how they internalize the brand and start to use it to inform their own decision making, their everyday work. From how they show up to a meeting, how they sell, how they talk to our clients—all of these activities are influenced by the brand. It takes education, but I mostly think about using brand as an invitation to talk about things in a new way.

Did you see the culture ultimately change? 

Behavior change drives culture change, and behavior change is challenging. It takes time. And it starts small. So it’s critical that even small behavior changes are recognized and reinforced. You want to encourage people to look for opportunities to reinforce the brand until it just feels natural. I see culture change as the final and most lasting element of transformation. It requires brand education, business focus, and even organizational change management.

What challenges might others find along the way they should be mindful of?

Every organization is unique. Alluma was my first time leading a brand transformation at a technology company. I learned that I had to invest time in using more data and visible, specific examples to back up emotional insights to get our engineers and developers (rational thinkers) to see that this was a serious approach to branding. That was a challenge I underestimated. Figuring out a way to define brand and translate it into both rational and emotional terms is key to get diverse stakeholders on board.

How do you measure success from a brand perspective? Business? Culture?

We measured success by the objectives we set at the beginning of the project. We conducted a baseline survey with our employees measuring current brand attributes, and then we will assess quarterly to measure alignment with the strategy, understanding of the strategy, how much they believe in it. From a business perspective, we looked at awareness and interest from our target audience. To measure, we looked at website traffic, newsletter subscriptions, social media engagements. We also evaluated brand against our revenue goals and, because we have a long business development process, that measurement is still ongoing. As for culture, I see people organically bringing more visible curiosity and a wider approach to problem-solving to all engagements. It’s just evident that the culture of tenacious problem solving is coming to life.

What do you see as the key to a successful transformation?

For one, the process is important. People may discount the process, but the journey is everything. That doesn’t mean it needs to be super long or really expensive. It just has to be thoughtful. And, I’d say again, go beyond your executive team. These kinds of projects can break down silos and barriers within an organization in an incredible way.

Alluma and Emotive Brand partnered to rebrand SIS to Alluma, transforming the brand, business, and culture. Read the case study here.

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

User-Generated Content and Why You Want to Be a Usage Brand Today

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Are Users the New Billboards?

Historically, brands relied heavily on marketing and advertising to drive awareness and engagement with products and services. But in an era of general mistrust of big corporations, ever-heightening consumer expectations, and a no-bullshit view on unsubstantiated claims, even a killer ad might not be enough to drive your brand forward.

That’s why smart and strategic brands realize its customers have the potential to be the biggest trust, credibility, and value builders (or destroyers) out there. And that nailing brand experience today means tapping into the power of users in innovative, creative, and strategically-aligned ways.

User-Generated Content That Works for You, Not Against You

User-generated content is one of the biggest drivers of business success and brand building today. An Olapic survey found that people trust images created by consumers the most and 76 percent of people find content posted by consumers to be more authentic than a brand’s own content.

Although the power of user-generated content is undeniable (think about how many Amazon reviews you’ve read, Instagram influencers you follow, or times you’ve asked your peers for an honest opinion of a brand before you buy in), getting it right is hard.

Here’s what we’ve found makes brands successful.

1. Own It

How do you ensure that users say or show the right thing? User-generated content doesn’t mean you’re giving up control. In fact, you shape the user experience and therefore play an integral role in forming and informing user-content.

Apple is a quick and easy example of a brand that’s figured out how to own user content. If you’ve driven on any major freeway in the U.S., you’ve seen the Shot on iPhone campaign (there are more than 10,000 installations around the world). In short, Apple made the world its gallery. It leveraged users’ experiences shooting on the iPhone and put those individual experiences and expressions on display for the world to see. This campaign is 100 percent owned by Apple and works in line with its brand promise—think different—showing how its products allow its users to see the world differently and inspiring others to do the same.

2. Don’t Just Listen, Do

Asking your users for feedback has no impact unless you actually do something with that feedback. Glossier—a millennial-focused, easy-to-use beauty essentials company—has this down. Glossier built its brand on social media because that’s where its users lived. But the brand does more than fill its Instagram page with aesthetically beautiful visuals or respond to all user comments publicly or by direct message (givens for them). They actually put tools in place to use the data, insights, and information its users provide. In short, Glossier’s Instagram has become its R&D lab and main marketing platform. For example, the brand hears people are frustrated with their face lotion because it makes them break out, so they work to create one that doesn’t. In fact, the company churns out a new product tailored to what they hear from users every six to eight weeks. And because users drive product development, products are perfectly tailored to the people who matter most to the brand.

Glossier allowed 420 of their most active and influential users to sell their products on social and received a cut of the profit, as well as rewards and sneak previews of products to come. By the beginning of the summer, that campaign alone generated 7 percent of the brand’s annual revenue.

3. Not Just B2C, B2B, Too

It’s easy to assume that user-generated content is best-suited for consumer brands. However, B2B businesses are also tapping into the power of user-generated content and reaping the benefits.

Salesforce, for example, built an MVP program where high-engagement businesses and users received early product previews and gifts based on the hours they spend engaging with non-MVP users. This program drives loyalty with super-users. It also brings new-users into the mix by leveraging the trust and credibility those super-users bring to the table. Hubspot created real-life success videos for companies that have used its marketing automation software. Adobe has built several platforms dedicated to sharing its users’ content—living up to its brand promise of changing the world through digital experiences. UPS always highlights the cool projects or businesses its users create. The list goes on, and for B2B businesses looking to build trust, credibility, and share an authentic story, users seem like a great place to start.

Users in the Spotlight

Putting users front and center in a digital age might not be much of a shock, but it is a challenge. Especially for those businesses that weren’t born in the digital age and don’t have platforms that encourage user conversation or the strategies to drive them already in place. Shifting the focus on users requires a couple of key shifts. From:

  • Customers as buyers >>> to thinking of customers as users
  • Focus on purchase >>> to focus on the entire user experience
  • Emphasis on promotion >>> to emphasize on advocacy
  • Worrying about what to say to consumers >>> to concentrating on what customers are saying to each other
  • Customers as one-time buyers >>> to building an ongoing relationship
  • Marketing, product development, and brand experience as segmented functions >>> to considering the ways in which they can inform each other and even act as one

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

Why Curiosity Fuels Business Innovation

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Where’s the Curiosity?

Children thrive on curiosity. People grow up asking questions. Many young children ask “Why?” almost excessively, wanting explanations for everything—unafraid to ask, always curious, and fiercely inquisitive. Why? They are in a phase of intense learning, absorbing information, and widening their capacity for new information at a rapid pace.

But studies have found that curiosity peaks at around age four or five and takes a steady decline from there. As people grow up, they become more self-conscious, more fearful about asking questions, and are increasingly inclined to display confidence and expertise over curiosity and inquisitiveness.

It’s no surprise we see this phenomenon at play within many workplaces. People have a tendency to consider their role as fixed and an organization’s way of doing things set in stone. Many employees and even leaders solve problems by asking minimal questions. They accept their task as it is assigned and work simply to finish it—not questioning the process or asking about overall goals.

Employees are often afraid to voice options and raise questions because they don’t want to bother others, or are worried they may be seen as incompetent or difficult. And many of the most intelligent, skilled, and capable employees and leaders are simply not asking enough questions, ignoring the great power in asking “Why?” and “What if?”

Why Is This a Problem?

To compete in today’s dynamic and ever-shifting markets, employees and leaders have to ask questions. Accelerating change and clouding uncertainty demand it. It’s no longer enough to fall back on long-established ways of doing things.

As a result, businesses that are unable to adapt and keep pace with change simply cannot survive today. And many who have relied on mere expertise in the past are now faltering because they don’t have the tools, practices, or mindsets to adapt, be flexible, innovate, or disrupt.

The speed of things requires companies to be constantly learning, adopting new practices and perspectives, asking the right questions, and anticipating how they will be able to compete today and tomorrow. As a result, curiosity and inquiry are gaining increasing value for businesses today.

The most innovative companies today search for people who are willing to admit things they don’t know and show interest in what they can learn. That’s because innovation and business growth rely on people who ask questions, challenge established assumptions and ways of thinking, and strive to always be learning, progressing, and moving forward.

Why Innovative Companies Are Winning

Think about some of the top business breakthroughs of our time, many of which are today’s most innovative companies.

Facebook didn’t come into creation because people accepted the status quo.

Uber wasn’t developed because people were afraid of changing the game.

Amazon isn’t successful today because the business was unwilling to evolve with the times. In fact, innovation throughout time has relied on asking hard questions like “Why?” and “What if?”

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, says: “We run this company on questions, not answers.”

The Director-General of the BBC goes to every meeting with employees and starts with the question, “What is one thing I could do to make things better for you?”

Asking questions can generate new ways of thinking, challenge long-held assumptions, and fuel real, transformative change for businesses.

So, how do you create an environment that asks the disruptive, transformative, and productive questions that fuel innovation?

1. Lead by example

When leaders ask questions, everyone within an organization feels more comfortable doing the same. Leaders who are open to asking and answering questions help foster an environment that is naturally inquisitive, increasingly engaged, and overall, more productive. But these practices have to begin at the top. Leaders that are stuck in their ways and resistant to different perspectives are less likely to lead their business to new heights. And this is often due to halted innovation. Be open to everyone’s perspective. Recognize what you don’t know and what you could do better and ask others to help. Be attentive, observant, and model curious behavior.

2. Ask why and use hypotheticals

Asking “What?” is often necessary. However, “What?” has no value to your business unless people ask and understand “Why?” Sometimes, when brainstorming within the workplace, it’s quite useful to ask the question “What if?” This question can open people’s minds to possibilities and can remove constraints on creative and innovative thinking. “How might we?” is also a good way to phrase a question about a company’s goals or objectives. It introduces the possibility that not every answer has to be entirely rational, plausible, or doable. Creativity often happens within the process. Sometimes, it’s the unrealistic questions that lead to innovative, doable answers. Hypotheticals force people to think big and create a new starting point.

3. Don’t fall into groupthink

By bringing different teams and individuals together, different perspectives can create breakthroughs for a business. So, try asking a marketing team a question about product design. Ask designers to weigh in on strategy. Encourage your engineers to review a blog post. Outside perspectives bring fresh eyes and different strengths. And often, a question from someone with a different point of view is just what an individual or team needs to move a project forward or tackle the challenge at hand.

4. Reward curiosity and learning

Curiosity fuels productive business today. So, make sure you foster an environment that looks for, recognizes, and rewards people who strive to ask questions, learn, and grow. These people will be your best innovators. And your business needs innovative people and teams to compete in today’s world. Build an environment where people feel that their role can grow. Help them understand the positive impact of their questions, work, and curiosity.

5. Be empathetic

Put yourself in other people’s shoes. Think about the questions employees, customers, stakeholders, and investors would ask when considering your business, products, brand, and marketing strategies. By looking at things through a different lens, you can better understand how to reach out and connect with the people who matter to your business.

Questions have great power for businesses today. Building a meaningful workplace culture that encourages asking questions can be of great value to your business. Employees and leaders who ask the right questions are more engaged, think more creatively, and in the end, have the ability to power innovation.

Recognizing the power of questions and fostering behavior that encourages curiosity and inquiry can help your business compete in shifting markets, and even help ready your organization for growth. So, use questions to fuel innovation and design your business to thrive in today’s world.

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

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Want to Grow Your Business? Adopt a Founders’ Mentality

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Growth Paradox

We work with CEOs every day, developing strategy and helping leaders position their businesses to meet their growth goals. From small, young start-ups, to well-established, huge enterprise businesses, CEOs have a tough role – and leading business forward amidst high growth is a challenge we see again and again.

Today’s companies are scaling faster than ever before – even in the middle of increased competition, market pressures, and the stress of solving problems faster and faster. It’s no surprise that the average lifecycle of organizations is getting shorter and shorter.

The paradox of growth is a problem that plagues many of our clients. Companies start experiencing growth and greater success in the market, but with this initial high-growth comes complexity. And eventually, this complexity stunts growth. CEOs come to us feeling disconnected from a clear purpose with a slow, fuzzy vision of how to proceed.

Changing Mindsets: A Founders’ Mentality

In high-growth periods, it’s a challenge to continue to establish credibility, build trust, live the brand’s values, rally employees, satisfy customers, and act as the head decision maker and strategic lead.

We’ve found adopting a founders’ mentality – thinking, acting, and leading like you founded the company – can ensure you grow business sustainably and successfully. Here’s what leading like a founder looks like:

1. See Beyond Today

Founders of companies are excited by the future, and driven by it. They aren’t just thinking about today, but years down the road. And for any CEO today, long-term thinking is critical to successful growth. Your vision for the future should define and guide how you grow today, tomorrow, and for years down the line. Re-evaluate and ask yourself where you see the company in one year, 3 years, 5 years, even 10 years. Get clear about your growth goals and how they align to your business and brand goals. Your job is to evaluate the whole picture and lead from there.

2. Obsess Over Customer Satisfaction

Think about a founder’s first customers. That founder works tirelessly to create the best experiences and foster the most meaningful relationships with those customers – because they are key to the businesses’ success moving forward. Every customer should be approached with this kind of intent. As businesses grow their customer bases, it’s easy to lose sight of customer satisfaction. But it still matters – and arguably, even more. Your customers have the chance to be your biggest advocates or your largest hurdles. Obsess over their experiences, and grow a brand that people will continue to love.

3. Foster Loyal and Energized Employees

Now think about a founder’s first employees. They have to be the brand’s biggest advocates. The founder has to inspire and motivate them to rally behind his or her vision for the company and what the brand promises. There’s a reason why a company’s first employees are usually its most loyal employees. They take a risk joining a new business and are motivated to make sure it succeeds. You can make new employees – years and decades down the road – behave like your first. But to do so, you have to bring them along on the journey. Make them feel valued. Focus attention on inspiring and motivating them. Share your vision with them and support them in helping you make it a reality.

4. Say Bye to Bureaucracy

As businesses grow, bureaucracy can be one of the biggest growth hurdles. Red tape stunts innovation, creativity, collaboration, agility, and ultimately, growth. Adopting a founder’s mentality means you act as the key decision maker. Trust your gut, be strategic, ask for help when you need it, but don’t lose sight of your role as head decision maker. Take charge, take ownership, and take accountability for the decisions you make – that is your job.

5. Adopt an Owner’s Mindset: Be Bold

Founding a company takes guts. We know. When Emotive Brand’s founders decided to take the plunge and create Emotive Brand they were stepping out on a limb. They weren’t 100% sure they would succeed. Nor were they 100% sure of what the future held. But they were confident, bold, and not afraid to take a risk. Whether you’re the first CEO of a company or the hundredth, take on that same boldness. Embrace change, think differently, welcome uncertainty – growth won’t be possible without that kind of willingness.

Whether you’re a founder or not, adopting a founders’ mentality might be the difference between performing and outperforming your competitors. If you’re running into challenges with growth, or are just curious about how to approach leading your business during a period of high-growth, please reach out.

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