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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 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.

Is What You Offer In Evolution? Adopt A Progressive Brand Positioning Strategy

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Brand Positioning, While In Evolution

Our studio works with a diversity of clients, but most come to us in evolution: at pivotal points in their growth, maturation, and offering. For instance, we’ve worked with Series A companies that want to go to market with a compelling brand but don’t yet have a fully realized product, companies looking to emerge out of stealth who have a big vision for tomorrow but want to focus on their current product to prove results today, and maturing organizations at pivotal points in their trajectory who are facing existential decisions about how to evolve their products or build new ones. We also work with organizations who have built credibility around a certain product and/or product suite that now need to shift due to market changes and outside forces, or corporations who’ve grown via merger and acquisition and now find themselves with a complex product architecture and a diluted position in the market.

Whenever they are in their maturation—from startup to legacy—the tension between today and tomorrow can be a challenge when it comes to brand positioning, especially when what a company offers is changing or plans to change. Some worry that if they stand for something too big and too far away, the brand might overpromise on what it can actually deliver to people today. On the flip side, for many in growth mode, positioning solely around what you can credibly deliver on right now means outgrowing that position—and quickly.

Brand Positioning Should Be A North Star

It’s important to remember that product positioning and brand positioning are not one and the same. Your Brand Positioning sits on top of your product or offering, elevating the features and benefits, and value of what you offer to new heights of meaning, differentiation, and relevance in people’s minds and hearts. Ideally, a Brand Positioning should last more than several years (investing the time and resources in a brand positioning is not something you want to undertake every time what you offer evolves slightly), acting as the North Star not only for brand marketing decisions, but for product decisions, sales decisions, recruiting strategies, brand experiences, and beyond.

 

emotive: brand positioning model

A Question of Balance

So, the question becomes: how do we position a brand in evolution for success today? And tomorrow? Do we own a position that speaks exclusively to what our product can offer our customers right now, or do we go big and position for the future? Or, somewhere in between? What’s the right balance?

Enter A Progressive Positioning Strategy

Enter what we call a Progressive Positioning Strategy. A brand positioning strategy that can move and evolve as your business, product, and culture does…which, for those in growth mode, it’s bound to.

Take a look:

progressive brand positioning

1. Look outside-in

No compelling positioning is built in a vacuum. Our process always begins with examining trends and forces, both within your industry and in the world at large. For many clients, it’s easy to get stuck in your own thinking, rules, and expectations. Opening the aperture to what’s happening around you can change the game in terms of what’s possible.

2. Build around what’s true and unchanging

We work collaboratively with our clients to uncover what we call evergreen truths: foundational tenets that are baked into the DNA of what you do, how you do it better and uniquely, and why it matters—focusing on uncovering the truths that are true today…and will be true tomorrow. Starting here can enable relevance right now and in the future.

3. Scale the product to meet your ambition

Brands in growth mode have a vision or aspiration they are growing towards. They can envision what they want their brand to be five or even ten years from now. Aligning around this ultimate aspiration can ensure that the product decisions you’re making today are getting you step by step towards that ultimate ambition.

4. Find the right mix of today and tomorrow

Ultimately, any powerful brand has a blend. We work with our clients to find that perfect mix of today and tomorrow to create a brand that is both future-forward and visionary, while delivering and proving results and building credibility today. No brand requires the same balance. That’s why we dive deep to understand the nuance of the perfect blend for your brand, business, and culture.

5. Invite others into your shared vision of tomorrow

Building a community of “believers” who not only believe in what you do today, but what you have the potential to mean to them and the world in the future is critical. We help identify who those people are and what they care about, rationally and emotionally. We brand build to evoke immediate trust and credibility, while letting customers into your vision and helping them feel like they are a part of it is something bigger: your future.

If you want to chat more about our approach to Progressive Positioning Strategy or how to build a brand for today and tomorrow, please reach out. Emotive is an Oakland-based brand strategy and design studio.

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 it’s 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 with 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 than 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.

Talking Purposeful, Global Leadership in a COVID-19 World: Interview with Emily Chang, Senior Executive

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

An Interview with Senior Executive, Emily Chang: Purpose and Profit, Meaningful Global Leadership, Commercialization, Innovation, and Mentorship in a COVID-19 World

We sat down with Emily Chang, a Senior Executive with 20 years of global experience in Customer Experience, Business Strategy, Cross-Cultural Team Leadership, Change Management & Organizational Renewal, and Brand Building at enterprise organizations such as P&G, Apple, IHG, and Starbucks. Emily is in the midst of writing a book that focuses on ideas of purposeful leadership, community, and culture. In this interview, she shares insights and thoughts on her career and life path, the implications of this time on brand, commercialization strategies, marketing, and culture, as well as the kind of mindset leaders—young and established—should be adopting as this crisis continues to unfold.

It’s apparent that you’ve followed a rich and diverse career and life path. Can you tell us a bit about your journey?

I’ve tried to follow a path that offers opportunities for learning and joy. I started out pre-med and then found my way to business school, which opened the door to an internship at Procter & Gamble. My career really unfolded at P&G, where I had the opportunity to move across a range of business units over the course of 11 years: retail sales, international, upstream design, brand management, and marketing…These experiences were like the ultimate sampler platter of general management! I was then recruited by Apple for a dream job, helping establish the face of the brand in China, just when we were first opening stores. Then an incredible few years working for and with world-class leaders at InterContinental Hotels group, and then Starbucks…which eventually enabled our family to move from China to Seattle. Most recently, I’m considering family alongside career and providing my daughter the chance to experience living in America.

I feel incredibly lucky to have had such rich and joyful learning experiences so far. And importantly, I’ve discovered what I love to do. The opportunity to connect dots that haven’t been previously connected, unlocking new potential. What motivates me is adding value to people and to business. Regardless of industry or geography, realizing that potential gives me deep satisfaction.

While COVID-19 continues to affect the health and economies of countries across the globe, what do you think must be top of mind for executives at global enterprise companies?

I’ve been advising a number of leaders as they write their strategic plans, and three common themes have emerged.

  1. Exercise a new level of agile strategic thinking: We need to stop thinking of “post-COVID” as a solid milestone. It’s quite likely we’re not done with the after-effects of the virus and there’s not going to be a “new normal” as much as a series of “next normals”. COVID-19 has triggered a series of consumer and market shifts that will only give rise to further behavioral transformation. We will need to plan, engage, and lead with unprecedented agility.
  2. Allow shared purpose to unearth new capability: Living life with intention and purpose has been a huge passion of mine. It’s what I’m focused on in the book I’m writing. In the workplace, I’ve been so inspired by those who have pivoted their operations to serve a broader purpose. Sports and auto manufacturers are producing ventilators, while distilleries are pivoting to producing sanitizers. These companies seem to be identifying new capabilities, even as they challenge old sacred cows. They’re serving new needs and streamlining processes—and making money! They’ve discovered the beautiful, value-added intersection of purpose and profit.
  3. Interrogate the data: We must recognize that the world has changed. Consumer habits, media consumption, online behavior, and digital engagement have all taken a quantum leap. As we seek insights from our databases, we must exercise discernment and not allow old data to inform new decisions. Obsolete data isn’t that which was collected and shared in 2018… it’s as recent as January 2020.

What kind of leaders do we need to lead amidst a COVID and post-COVID world?

Leaders who balance head, heart, and soul will draw followership. Those who don’t just deliver business performance, but also nurture and advocate for their people (heart) and identify ways to do good while doing well (soul). I agree with the Business Roundtable; social leadership is a business imperative. That’s really the intent of my book. I wanted to share an example of someone in the business world embracing personal contribution because I truly value it and believe the social legacy we create resonates as much as our professional legacy. It’s going to be tough to drive a purpose-driven brand if you’re not a purpose-driven leader.

Selling in a time where uncertainty is the norm is a challenge. What’s your approach to shifting commercialization strategies right now? Does Marketing continue to market? Does Sales continue to sell?

It really comes back to purpose. Some brands are investing in heartfelt messages like “We’re all in this together” and, although those messages might be completely genuine, they can come across as generic because the purpose of the brand doesn’t necessarily align. First, you have to get clear about who you are and what you stand for. Then, you can communicate in a way that feels authentic and cohesive. I think McDonald’s hit the right chord here. They did a spot highlighting the workers who work all night, thanking them. It paid authentic tribute to the workers, but also communicated the message, “hey, we’re open”. Another recent spot I loved required a celebrity spokesperson to be a little vulnerable. Eva Longoria uses at-home hair color, providing an incredible product demo, a peek into her own home, and loads of credibility (e.g. she really uses the product herself!).

Many think of constraints as obstacles to innovation. But, creativity and innovation often thrive under constraint. Do you have a perspective on how global enterprises should be defining innovation today?

I think innovation requires the constant reinvention of the value we contribute to the world. Grounded in a deep commitment to who they are (their purpose), innovative companies unceasingly ask how they might improve their offering and disrupt their industry. Innovation tests the limits of and then transcends those perceived boundaries. This is a time to see, think, imagine, and do differently.

How do you see the ripple effect of this on culture and how we connect as global entities and communities? What are the long-term implications? How does this ripple out on the internal cultures of companies?

When we view trends over time, we often observe a pendulum effect. For instance, the deeper we move into the future of AI and ML, the more we discover a craving for hands-on learning and manual creation. We see close-knit communities struggling while physically apart, and leveraging technology to maintain togetherness. At the same time, communities that haven’t been close in the past are more connected than ever before. In our neighborhood, strangers are hiding painted rocks on the hill for others to find, infusing delight into each other’s lives even from afar. Pre-COVID, people would have been like, “Who are these people?” Now, we’re craving that sense of togetherness.

In terms of culture in the workplace, teams always learn faster than individuals. Progress unfolds when egos are set aside. When a company’s culture allows the best idea to win, the business serves customers better than ever. IKEA did some incredible, insightful work, leveraging ideas from their open source platform to make novel accessibility add-ons available via free download and 3D printing. This was a good idea for an underserved population that was also good for business.

What advice would you give to younger talent looking for work or early in their careers? How can they use this time to their advantage?

I think it’s about adopting a growth mindset vs. a scarcity mindset. Recently, my family took an RV trip across the western states. Instead of focusing on what we had lost, we asked ourselves, “What new opportunities have presented themselves?” I would ask young people today, “What’s your COVID story?” You’re living through something unique, something that hopefully people won’t live through again. And in the future, you will be asked, “What did you do during that time?”

So, what’s your answer going to be? With this in mind, you can more intentionally adopt a growth mindset. Are you going to say, “I sat at home in my PJs and got Zoom fatigue?” Whether it’s learning to make bread, sewing masks, or getting in an RV, this is your opportunity to write your story.

We will continue to look outside of our own agency for inspiration, advice, insights, and perspective on COVID-19 and the implications on business, brand, and culture.

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

Talking Marketing Strategies in a COVID-19 World: Interview with Joshua Schnoll, Marketing VP

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

An Interview with a VP of Marketing: Marketing Strategies, Growth, Innovation, & Teamwork in a COVID-19 World

We sat down with Joshua Schnoll, VP of Marketing at AppDirect, a subscription commerce platform that gives businesses the freedom to grow, to talk about marketing strategies in a COVID-19 world and beyond. Joshua shares insights and thoughts on how strategy has shifted, the implications of this time on growth, brand, innovation, and teamwork, as well as what kind of mindset leaders should be adopting as this crisis continues to unfold.

Obviously, our world has been greatly altered in the past months. How have your marketing strategies changed with it?

Most importantly, we’re hyper-focused on empathy. Empathy for everyone: teams, customers, future customers…even vendors. When we renegotiated with the hotel where we consistently do AppDirect’s Engage event, we approached it as a mutual decision. How can we do the right thing, for each other?

Just because COVID-19 has changed everything doesn’t mean we’ve stopped marketing at AppDirect. We’re just thinking about marketing strategy within the context of the moment. Our subscription commerce platform helps large telcos offer SaaS and IaaS solutions to SMBs. So, we immediately pivoted to create solutions and content for remote work. Zoom might be the application that most associate with remote work, but the reality is much broader. Security, document management…we’re helping firms understand what they needed to make the full transition and providing those solutions to them.

Clearly, our events strategy has also changed. We’re taking a conservative approach. Larger events (around 50 people or more) won’t be back until a vaccine is found, shifting us to a full digital strategy. That means weekly webinars, small virtual executive discussions where non-competing customers can discuss strategies, and virtual customer round tables that host a broader audience.

Do you think these shifts will last long-term? Or prove to be more ephemeral changes?

I was having this debate with some of my friends, asking the question: will the conference world rebound after this threat has passed? I believe that as social creatures our nature is to want to be around other people. When you get out of the office and travel to a different place, even if it’s a few blocks away, it’s enriching in a way that virtual events simply are not. The serendipitous meeting that occurs in the hallway, the session you mistakenly walk into that proves to be amazing, the great food you eat while meeting customers…those are simply impossible to replicate digitally today. As many collaboration tools are out there, collaboration is never more productive than when in person.

That being said, I do think that the number of in-person visits will reduce and 25-30% of what we used to do in-person will be remote. There will be more virtual events, as everyone builds that muscle in a way they hadn’t before.

As a marketer, you’re inherently interested in how your consumers, your people, are connecting with your brand…engaging, buying…how do you think today’s marketers should be thinking about connecting with people/users in relevant, compelling, meaningful ways?

I think it’s important to keep your long-term strategy in mind and not lose that. The context customers engage in has changed radically, and we need to react to that – but with an eye still kept on the strategy. Think holistically about the customer experience. Your company strengths are the same, but customer needs may have shifted and the world in which people live is altered. How can you meet them where they are today? I think patience is big here. This is a scary, uncertain time for people. Be relevant, be empathetic, and be patient. That’s where I’m focused.

Let’s talk digital. As you know well, the business world was already moving there. Will COVID-19 accelerate or transform the shift to digital? In what ways?

It’s funny – we help firms transform their digital commerce and our greatest competition has always been the status quo, not some competitor. In fundamentally changing your business, shifting to subscriptions, and enabling digital solutions, fear and risk are often what hold businesses back. And COVID is like a wrecking ball to the status quo. Things we once considered unimaginable are the current reality. We’re seeing a number of clients that had slow-rolled digital transformation efforts now fast-tracking them, if they have the resources. I’d say it helps to be partly down the road. Take K-12 education. If a school district hasn’t even thought about what learning platform they’d invest in and now they have to transition to fully digital, that’s going to be difficult. The more work you’ve done, the easier this is.

A lot of businesses who were previously thinking in terms of growth are now thinking about security, stability, staying afloat…do you think it’s possible to drive growth during this time? How?

It really gets back to the hierarchy of needs. For firms that are suffering devastation from an immediate shutdown of their sector, I’m not sure they can think much about growth. Other sectors are different. I think we all need to have patience for growth. Don’t lose those growth ambitions, but be patient.

How does brand play a role? Do you see the role or importance of brand shifting as well?

Like we’ve discussed, this is bringing long-term implications for marketing, messaging, sales…. And brand must lead and play a role. Ask: how does the brand want to show up in the world? And use this strategy to guide how to move forward. Letting brand lead right now is really important. It’s not necessarily about optimizing for revenue, it’s about optimizing for a long-term relationship… and if you focus on making the brand relevant in a new context, and act appropriately, you’ll reap the benefits.

Interestingly, with constraints often comes newfound innovation… Do you see your business, and others around you, adopting more creative, resourceful, or innovative strategies?

AppDirect was founded in 2009, at the height of the Great Recession. Sticking with the status quo never works. This is a time to be more creative and resourceful. Think of ideas like “Goat-to-Meeting” – the animal sanctuary that started offering virtual tours and goat or llama cameos for company or school virtual meetings – that would have never been invented in a pre-COVID world. They’re finding new ways to connect with people and keep their not-for-profit farm going. Just the other day, our team was planning on how we can meaningfully connect with customers over a nice dinner. We’re looking at how to get meals and wine delivered to make a virtual dinner session feel real and special.

What mindset should a VP of Marketing be taking on during this time? What kind of thinking is working for you? What kind of thinking is working against you?

The productive mindset right now is a creative, strategic mindset. And I think, importantly, an optimistic and hopeful mindset. I don’t think this is the time for pessimism. It’s about the art of the possible. When you adopt a mindset of possibility, things get interesting and innovative. COVID has erased the separation between work and home, work selves and personal selves. And there’s something in embracing that informalness, that connection, that authenticity. And lastly, I think gratefulness for what we do have. For me, a great team of people. A company that is able to weather things. Health. Family.

How are you keeping morale up amongst your team and employee base?

We’ve gone through phases at AppDirect. When we first shifted to remote, we were really focused on making sure everyone had what they needed and were safe. We ran daily team stand-ups, we checked in regularly, we over-communicated on purpose. Once people started to realize that we were in this for the long haul, our approach shifted. It was clear that the most valuable commodity to our employees was their time. So to keep morale high, we enabled people to control their own time. We reduced the number of check-ins and increased flexibility so that people could have more time with kids and significant others. At the same time, we’ve been prioritizing team recognition. Acknowledging and celebrating the great effort everyone is making with small rewards like care packages for home.

If you need help adapting your marketing strategies, your brand, business, or culture during this time please reach out.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency based in San Fransisco, California.

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.