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Category: AI, Tech & B2B

Brands That Move People Will Own the Market in 2025

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

In 2025, brands that truly move people will dominate. Forget focusing solely on features—lasting impact comes from emotional connections that inspire action and advocacy. You already know that standing out in a competitive market is crucial, but real leaders don’t just stand out—they make a lasting impact that resonates deeply with their audience.

Many brands miss the mark by focusing only on features and rational benefits, forgetting that emotional connection multiplies impact. If you’re aiming to lead with purpose and influence in 2025, the real differentiator is emotion.

Why Emotion is the Key to Driving Meaningful Impact

True market leaders know emotional connection isn’t optional—it’s a competitive edge that drives faster decisions, increases advocacy by 60%, and boosts lifetime value. Brands that stir emotions inspire loyalty, retention, and long-term relevance. These are the brands that don’t just compete—they inspire, influence, and lead.

At Emotive Brand, we know emotion is the strategic lever behind every major business outcome—speeding up decisions, improving retention, and building stronger customer loyalty. Without an emotional connection, your brand is just another option. With it, you become the only option.

A Brand Blueprint for Impact

Emotional connection may be the missing piece, but simply knowing that isn’t enough. The real question is, how do you harness the power of emotion to drive measurable outcomes? That’s where our Brand Blueprint comes in.

The Brand Blueprint isn’t a creative exercise—it’s a fast, actionable path to becoming a high-impact brand. Whether you’re looking to strengthen your position or expand into new markets, Emotive Brand’s Blueprint equips you with the tools to:

  • Create Emotional Connections that build lasting relationships and make your brand the top choice—not just for what you offer, but for how you make customers feel. These emotional bonds turn customers into loyal advocates, driving retention, increasing lifetime value, and fostering organic growth.
  • Amplify Your Brand’s Impact by leveraging emotional engagement as a competitive advantage. Brands that build strong emotional connections don’t just attract customers—they create experiences that deepen loyalty, speed decision-making, and fuel sustained growth, positioning your brand as a true market leader.
  • Align Strategy and Emotion across every touchpoint. From your messaging to customer interactions, our approach ensures your brand consistently delivers both the emotional and rational elements that build trust and credibility, creating a unified experience that resonates deeply and turns customers into lifelong brand advocates.
  • Sustain Your Leadership Position by embedding emotional connection into every phase of the customer journey. This fosters long-term trust and loyalty, transforming your brand into a market leader that customers believe in, follow, and champion.

Ready to Make an Unforgettable Impact in 2025?

Is your brand building emotional connections that inspire action, or stuck relying on outdated rational appeals?

Here’s the real question: Why do so many B2B brands still think emotion is just for B2C? The truth is, B2B buyers—whether at the C-suite or senior leadership level—face higher stakes. Their time, credibility, and even their jobs are on the line. Yet, most brands still focus on features, missing the emotional drivers that lead to real impact. The old rational playbook no longer works. If you’re not building emotional ties, you’re missing out on the most powerful lever for driving loyalty, advocacy, and long-term impact.

Let’s talk. Share your thoughts, and together, let’s reshape the future of B2B branding through the power of emotion.

To AI Builders and Brand Leaders: Vibe Code Is the Real Moat

Posted on by Emotive Brand

AI isn’t about shipping faster. It’s about standing for something no one else can fake. Your competitors can copy your features. They can’t clone your conviction. They can’t duplicate your “why.”

That’s Vibe Code: the emotional source code behind every product, every interaction, every moment your brand earns trust. It’s not soft; it’s the hardest thing to build, and the only thing that lasts.

At Emotive Brand, we don’t write code. We architect the beliefs that make your code matter.

For years, we’ve helped visionary leaders prove a simple truth: Emotion isn’t a tactic. Emotion is the only strategy that works. The brands that lead in AI today (OpenAI, Notion, Anthropic) aren’t just technically better. Users feel what those companies believe. They choose them because of it.

Vibe Code isn’t about programming. It’s about positioning your AI’s purpose so powerfully that every feature reflects it.

  • We decode your conviction into brand principles that guide every product decision.
  • We build positioning that turns your AI’s POV into competitive advantage.
  • We design brand experiences that make your beliefs tangible at every touchpoint.
  • We measure meaning, because what you believe, and how you make people feel, is your value prop.

If you’re serious about building AI that lasts, you need more than models and features. You need a brand built on belief so clear, users never mistake your product for anyone else’s.

Technical parity is coming for everyone. Only belief will set you apart.

If you’re working on an AI brand, whether you’re defining, launching, or evolving, let’s talk.

Because if you don’t own your Vibe Code, your market will forget you. If you want to lead with belief, and make it unmistakable, that’s our work.

Emotion Makes Ambition Real, Even in Cybersecurity

Posted on by Emotive Brand

Every day, Emotive Brand works to amplify and make real the bold ambitions of visionary reinventors. Leaders with the courage and creativity to change businesses and brands, categories and culture—for good. So we were thrilled to partner with Silverfort, and rise to the challenge of transforming an industry on which all other industries now depend.

Thanks to Silverfort, cybersecurity will be safer, more thoroughly secure, and never the same. Lucky for us, their leadership team understood that when you challenge the status quo, you have to bring everyone along. That in revealing new possibilities, you must not only explain how they work but why they matter, especially in crowded B2B and tech spheres.

Innovation meets appreciation

At Emotive Brand, we believe that when you honor the people behind the tech—and build a brand that elevates their role—you can unlock something powerful: belief.

That’s exactly what happened when we teamed up with Silverfort. The team at Emotive felt it right away.

Silverfort isn’t just another cybersecurity company. They’re revolutionizing the space with a true breakthrough, called Runtime Access Protection (RAP), that centers identity as the lynchpin of cybersecurity. It’s an absolute paradigm shift. But like so many transformative technologies, the hardest part isn’t necessarily the innovation. It’s helping people understand and believe in it.

Identity security has long been overlooked as the very backbone of cybersecurity. And the professionals who manage it? Often underappreciated, fighting quiet battles in the shadows of flashier security priorities. Silverfort saw that. And we did too.

Together, we built a brand that said: not anymore.

Expansive technology needs expansive strategy

We set out to do what brand strategy does best—take a complex, technical solution and turn it into a movement. A story. A promise. We shifted the narrative from what identity security has been (an afterthought) to what it can be: comprehensive, continuous, and finally worthy of the spotlight.

To get there, we infused the brand with emotional clarity. The resulting verbal identity reflects Silverfort’s intrepid spirit of discovery—how they found a way to completely reimagine identity security, delivering the technology identity security professionals deserve.

Pivoting away from fear-based category tropes about dark, looming threats, the voice and underlying brand strategy take care to validate and uplift these essential teams.

In tandem, we created a new visual identity that feels alive—ambient gradients, adaptive forms, and a striking aura of protection that surrounds any environment, any user, any system. It signals optimism, not fear. Momentum, not maintenance. Progress, not patchwork.

All told, our work with Silverfort encompassed a wide range of services and deliverables, from a corporate narrative to brand positioning to website design. But make no mistake—we weren’t checking boxes. Every element serves a bigger purpose.

Belief is the foundation

The heart of the Silverfort brand is belief—not just in their technology, but in people. The identity and security professionals who’ve kept enterprises afloat without recognition for too long. The ones who understand how deeply fragmented and fragile identity systems have become. The ones who finally see a solution that speaks their language and elevates their purpose.

Of course, Silverfort’s employees are the ultimate believers. Previously focused on the features and benefits of their technology, they now rally around deeper reasons to believe in the company and its future–serving the people battling on the frontlines against cyber attackers, and challenging the status quo to “find a way” to do the impossible.

No doubt, Silverfort has always been supremely innovative.

But today, when they show up in the world, they’re not just making the technical case—they’re making the emotional one, too. Their new brand validates and galvanizes, igniting the kind of connection that turns potential customers into believers and believers into champions.

Because belief is how transformation takes root.

And that’s the work we love most.

To learn more, read our Silverfort case study.

Beyond Trends: 2025’s Top 5 Paradigm Shifts for Brands

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

More is possible for, and expected from, brands than ever before. The role of emotion in heightening the quality of connection has reached a tipping point, pushed over the edge by hyper segmentation, AI, demographic shifts, and ever-increasing competition.

Emotion and E-ROI will dominate brand strategies in 2025—and it’s mission-critical to understand the difference between them.

  • Emotion is the energy that sparks connection—how a brand makes its audience feel.
  • E-ROI (Emotional Return on Investment) is the measurable value brands gain when they successfully leverage emotion—turning connection into loyalty, brand equity, and revenue growth.

Emotion drives action. E-ROI measures impact. Brands looking to lead in 2025 must embrace both. Here’s how the emotional landscape is evolving and what it will take to win.

1. Emotional Personalization Will Fuel Authentic Engagement

By 2025, generic approaches will be dead on arrival. The brands that win hearts and market share will have outgrown personalization based on demographics or purchase history. Instead, they’ll own emotional personalization, using AI and emotional intelligence (EI) tools to anticipate and respond to customer values, desires, and real-time emotions.

Brands that embrace AI-powered personalization report 26x higher year-over-year revenue growth than their competitors​.


Nike and IBM have led the charge, mining emotional data to craft stories and experiences that resonate with customers’ aspirations. The SNKRS app powers product customization while collecting customer insights that Nike uses to shape brand interactions, and IBM’s Watson customizes customer service responses based on mood and context cues. 

In 2025, expect more brands to meet customers where they are—emotionally and situationally—making each interaction feel human and deeply personal.

2. Purpose-Driven Narratives Will Be Non-Negotiable

With Millennials and Gen Z holding the reins of purchasing power, demand for purpose-driven brands will intensify. Brands that tie their purpose to real societal change will earn the highest E-ROI. Social impact won’t be a bonus for consumers—it will be a core driver of emotional connection and brand loyalty.

Research shows that emotionally connected customers are twice as valuable as highly satisfied customers​.
—Harvard Business Review


Brands like Allbirds and Patagonia have shown how purpose, when woven into every aspect of the business from sustainability efforts to employee culture, can drive both emotional engagement and financial growth. 

By 2025, purpose will be the cost of entry.

3. Brands Will Balance Data with Emotional Intelligence (EI)

Data has been king for a decade, but 2025 will herald the rise of EI as a business asset. Brands will still rely on data, but with a more human lens that balances quantitative insights with the subtleties of emotions. Those who can decode emotional data will deliver experiences that feel intuitive and connected.

Companies ranked highly for emotional intelligence generate 20% more revenue growth and 18.3% higher share price increases​. 
—Capgemini


Brands from Dove to Salesforce are demonstrating the superpower of EI–from challenging beauty standards in ways that meet deep emotional needs, to detecting consumer preferences and sentiment with AI to tailor marketing strategies in real time. 

Such strategies will reverberate across B2B and B2C markets throughout 2025, benefiting both companies and customers.

4. Emotion Will Drive Innovation

By 2025, emotion will influence more than just marketing—it will become central to product development, customer experience, and organizational culture. Brands will embed emotional intelligence in their innovation processes, ensuring new products resonate emotionally from the start, with responsiveness to needs as they evolve.

“We must make a product or service that delivers in the person the emotions we care about—it’s an art.”
—Don Norman, UX Design Pioneer


This shift is evident in Adobe’s creation of a community in which customer feedback drives product updates. Not only do customer concerns and input guide improvements, but the community has forged emotional ties resulting in more repeat buyers and less churn. 

In 2025, this level of connectivity will no longer be exceptional, but expected.

5. Emotional Impact Metrics Will Define Success

As emotional impact takes center stage, traditional metrics like click-through rates and sales will no longer be enough to compete. Brands will need new KPIs focused on emotional connection, loyalty, and long-term brand affinity.

“The ability to recognize and use emotional data at scale is one of the biggest, most important opportunities for companies.”
—Deloitte


For leaders spearheading change, the ability to gauge emotion will determine outcomes of transformation programs. EY found that traditional KPIs are insufficient, lagging indicators, and that the behavior and emotions of the people are better predictors of whether a transformation program is on track. 

In 2025, internal and external initiatives will lean on emotion-driven metrics that precede, and therefore can help guide and realize, business impact.

E-ROI: The New Currency of Brand Success

The ascent of E-ROI in 2025 represents tantalizing opportunity–and potential peril. Brands that fail to invest in emotion as a strategic asset will fall behind. Those that tune into emotion will not only move their organizations forward, but also entire markets and even movements. 

Visibility and functionality are now table stakes. To lead, brands must evoke, engage, and elevate every interaction with emotion as a catalyst for connection. The meaningful and enduring impacts they create for their audiences will translate into transformation, innovation, and growth for their businesses.

Leading in 2025 means leading with feeling.

The Evolving Role of the CMO: Chief Alignment Officer

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

No role in an organization has evolved more rapidly than the CMO’s. It used to be that owning branding, communications, and campaigns defined the job. Now, CMOs need to be experts on customers, marketing tools and advanced analytics, and business strategy. Brand management remains an essential duty, but in service of driving business growth. Most importantly, because a CMO’s work connects directly to sales, product development, IT, finance, and other parts of the organization, CMOs find themselves needing to play a growing role in aligning their organization around new ways of thinking and work that will help them engage customers more effectively.

For those in TL;DR mode, the quick takeaway is: CMOs are being stretched, so they might sometimes need a hug (but please ask first).

Here’s a by-no-means exhaustive look at some of the shifts that we’ve seen impacting how a CMO shows up:

From To
Voice of the Brand Voice of the Customer
Intuition & Instincts Data & Technology
Brand Management Brand Innovation
Strategy + Execution Alignment

 

Voice of the Customer

The amount of information we have about customers is only increasing. How does a temperature between 70-75 degrees impact consumer behavior on Monday’s v Fridays? What is the correlation between a new Netflix series and GPU buying decisions? What invisible patterns in customers can data now make visible? More and more, it’s up to the CMO to develop the customer insights that shape how a business goes to market. And because so many groups touch the customers, from sales to product to finance to corporate strategy, the level of collaboration required to align on these insights requires a significant investment.

Data & Technology

The increase in customer data a business can capture also gives rise to new suites of tools and technologies that a CMO can use to mine for insights, optimize campaigns, and deliver experiences across channels. When almost every brand action can be quantified, decisions about how to go to market are becoming increasingly data-driven. As a result, the CMO is responsible for leading the digital transformation of the marketing organization which requires deep partnership with IT (among others) to develop the tooling and data models that align with the organization’s technology systems. While a CMO needs to rely on her or his instincts and intuition when it comes to decision making, increasingly they need to justify their strategies with that data that points to a certain direction. The more fluent a CMO becomes in technology, the easier it becomes to reconcile data-driven insights with gut instincts.

Brand Innovation

More than anyone in the organization, a CMO needs to connect the dots between a brand’s legacy and its future vision. As much as products need to innovate, brands must as well to remain relevant: messages need to resonate with how the world is changing, and their expression needs to drive differentiation. But in doing this, a brand must also feel familiar and to take advantage of the equity it’s built with audiences. As brand management becomes increasingly data-driven, brand innovation is also becoming more dependent on analyzing trends, creating new audience definitions and segmentations, and audiences, and delivering next-level experiences that are hyper personalized and hyper-relevant. And these insights provide fuel for both brand and product innovation. The CMO that can use data to drive innovation across the organization is one that will stick around.

Building Alignment

It’s not enough for a CMO to develop a winning marketing strategy and execute flawlessly. As organizations become increasingly customer-centric, a CMO needs to bring every function in the C-Suite into the conversation about how to drive growth. From gaining the full embrace of Chief Revenue Officer for their marketing strategies, to the creativity of the CTO as you make your strategies more data driven, to HR working to bring new talent to the table, to the head of Product working in partnership around how to claim new audience segments, and the CTO finding budget to drive the strategy forward, marketing has become increasingly a team sport.

It’s no wonder that CMO turnover is high, and those in their positions feel they’re continuously in the hot seat. While the complexity of marketing is growing and budgets are coming under increasing scrutiny, there’s never been a more exciting time to be leading a marketing organization. All the data organizations have been amassing and the tools ready to parse it can reveal truly amazing insights about customers and how to connect with them. But only if a CMO can enlist the organization in lending a hand in making this all happen. And this comes down to storytelling and building alignment.

We’ve worked with many organizations to craft what we call a Growth Manifesto—a narrative that shows how the thinking that goes into brand development can open up new possibilities across an organization—from how people think about innovation to the collaboration required to bring new ideas to life. We’ve seen that a Growth Manifesto serves as an incredibly effective tool for building that alignment that is essential to getting every part of an organization living a new brand promise. While CMOs will always own the brand, communications, and marketing lanes of a business, as their role evolves, we’re seeing how they also need to become experts at building alignment between the functions that marketing depends on.

If you have thoughts about the new challenges CMOs face today please add to the conversation below. And if you’re thinking about ways to address specific marketing challenges in your business, we are always happy to help you think through how to approach the challenge.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and creative agency that unlocks the power of emotion to propel a brand, culture, or business forward. We are a remote-first agency with a footprint in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Engine of Productivity: Wellness in the Workplace

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

How we define the workplace has changed radically over the last few years. Offices no longer represent the primary workplace, and remote and hybrid modes of working are becoming the norm rather than the exception. And this has greatly disrupted the way we work. The “office rhythm” is out the door when you’re zooming with people three time zones away one minute, taking a call from the car while you drive your kids to school the next, and collaborating with colleagues face-to-face once or twice a week. It’s hard to connect. Hard to disconnect. And it’s hard to orient yourself in a culture without the daily cues to keep you on track.

All of this leads to wellness issues. The stress of being connected all the time. Or the self-doubt that leads to quiet quitting behaviors. The physical toll of being rooted at your desk all day. The erosion of mentorship in the workplace, and the rise of coaching to fill the gap. HR professionals are on the front lines of a crisis, and they’re responding by paying more attention to wellness than ever before. Employee well-being has emerged as a major focus as organizations replace the free-lunch and foosball-driven ethos with programs aimed at helping people thrive personally so they can thrive professionally.

The data supports this trend: corporate wellness directly influences the emotional and physical health of employees and, by extension, the health of the entire organization. Companies that prioritize wellness not only see an uptick in morale but also in productivity and retention​​​. In fact, 83% of employees report that having a psychologically and emotionally healthy workplace correlates with a significant increase in productivity.​​

Crafting Cultures That Resonate with Employees’ Needs

Leaders in HR play a pivotal role in translating these programs into strategic elements of the company culture. The trend is clear: holistic wellness programs that address the full spectrum of well-being—mental, physical, emotional, and financial—help retain people and attract new talent. They make people more productive, as happier employees take fewer sick days, are more loyal, and bring a higher level of creativity and energy to their roles. And they add to your overall organizational resiliency, which is critical to navigating the ups and downs of today’s volatility.

How to make well-being a strategic element of your employer brand

1. Define a Wellness Philosophy: Have a candid conversation with leadership about why your organization values wellness, and how much you’re willing to invest in it. This is a crucial first step to getting your leadership team aligned on the value that wellness creates for the entire organization. You’ll need to address the holistic equation of well-being—physical, mental, emotional, and financial—and how each dimension drives employee performance and satisfaction.

2. Consistently communicate your POV on Wellness: Use every communication channel to consistently reinforce how wellness is woven into your corporate culture. Share stories that highlight the positive impacts of wellness initiatives on employees, strengthening the perception of your brand as caring and supportive.

3. Align Wellness with Strategic Goals: A key part of your wellness initiatives involves connecting the dots between employees’ well-being and the strategic objectives of the company. For example, link mental health programs like mindfulness sessions to innovation to demonstrate how they result in a more creative and productive workplace.

4. Showcase the Impact: Evidence that wellness works only deepens belief in it as a necessity. Share real-life examples of how wellness programs have improved workplace outcomes. Highlight case studies and testimonials from employees who have benefited from these programs. Create case studies that demonstrate improved productivity, reduced stress levels, and better teamwork.

5. Lead with Wellness: When leaders actively participate in and advocate for wellness programs, it sends a powerful message that no matter where you sit in an organization, you’re still a person with the same needs for support. The more leaders participate and evangelize your wellness programs, the more they become a core part of the company ethos.

6. Offer personalized Wellness Options: There is no one-size-fits all when it comes to well-being. By offering personalized wellness options that can be tailored to individual needs, you underscore your commitment to supporting each employee uniquely. This flexibility makes the programs more effective and highlights your company’s dedication to its workforce.

7. Measure Success and Adapt: As your employees engage with wellness programs, their needs will change. You need to continuously assess and adapt your wellness initiatives to keep the offerings relevant, the energy fresh, and the impact high. By actively managing the portfolio of wellness offerings, you show your workforce that rather than checking a box, the organization is committed to making wellness a foundational element of your employer brand.

Thinking Beyond Wellness Programs

Wellness programs alone can feel like Band-Aids if they’re not connected to the employer brand—the internal expression of your mission, purpose, and values—that drives your organization. As employee well-being emerges as a dynamic force that shapes every aspect of workplace engagement and productivity, employees need to feel that it is part of your organizational DNA.

At Emotive Brand, we specialize in connecting business strategy to culture strategy to develop employer brands that are not just smart—they resonate emotionally. Making sure that employees experience wellness programs as part of a larger narrative around how you value people is essential to delivering the experiences that contribute to an organization being a great place to work.

If you have thoughts about the role wellness programs play in culture strategy, please add to the conversation below. And if you’re thinking about ways to get your culture better aligned to your business strategy, we are always happy to help you think through how to approach the challenge.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and creative agency that unlocks the power of emotion to propel a brand, culture, or business forward. We are a remote-first agency with a footprint in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Creating a Brand That Resonates: 3 Grammy-Worthy Lessons from Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.”

Posted on by Nick Ott

Is your brand telling a story for now or a story forever? Take a lesson from pop music and learn how to create a brand that lets your customers feel like they “can be someone.”

Imagine a slightly different 2024 Grammy Awards. In this one, there’s still a comeback performance from a reclusive 1980s star, but instead of Tracy Chapman singing “Fast Car” alongside Luke Combs, it’s Billy Ocean singing “Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car.” Can you picture Taylor Swift singing along rapturously to his lyric: “Lady driver, let me take the wheel”?

Probably not, but why? Both “Fast Car,” and “…Get into My Car” were released in 1988 and Ocean’s was the bigger single that year, number 15 on the year-end singles charts versus 76 for “Fast Car.” So, why was it Tracy on the stage in 2024 instead of Billy?

Emotional resonance
While Billy Ocean still has his fans (I’m one), his singles are largely characterized as novelty hits: bright, catchy, quick hits of dopamine. If “Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car,” were released today, we’d say it was written with engagement in mind. It could inspire a TikTok dance.

“Fast Car,” on the other hand, has only grown in popularity, becoming a staple cover of artists spanning generations and genres, all of whom want to do what that song does uniquely well: connect emotionally with their audience. It communicates the eternal human desires for escape and rebirth—desires that are universal and enduring. It gives a voice to people with those desires. In this respect, Tracy Chapman is capable of speaking for them on an emotional level.

At Emotive Brand, we create brands that aspire to deliver the emotional resonance “Fast Car” delivers, and believe there are a few things that any company can learn by connecting the songwriting process to the brand-building process.

1. Consider the emotional needs of your customers (not just their material needs)
“Fast Car” is a song with a story: its protagonist is a woman stuck in a cycle of poverty and struggling to care for an alcoholic father. While many people can empathize with that, not everyone can see themselves in it. “Fast Car” feels universal because it tells us the emotional needs of its protagonist, not just her material ones: wanting to belong, wanting to “be someone.” Nearly everyone knows what that feels like, regardless of circumstance.

Brands should do this too, regardless of industry or offering, because one way or another, to some degree or another, every buying decision is an emotional one. No matter how rational or materialistic your customers may seem at the moment of decision, they are human beings with human needs, goals, and emotions. If your offering helps your customers cut costs or make a business process more efficient, perhaps your brand is helping them advance their career or gain the respect of their peers. As we’ve recently said to one client, “even CFOs have feelings.”

2. Make your story timeless
A good story can always grab attention, but to endure, it needs to resonate beyond the moment. Tracy Chapman’s own brand was that of an “activist” singer (her second single was “Talkin’ ‘bout a Revolution”). She could have written “protest songs”: straightforward stories about the specific political and social issues of her day, but songs like “Fast Car” offer a different perspective, framing social issues through the lens of perennial, emotional desires.

Similarly, while your product or service may be meeting a need that is very much of the now, your customers’ most important needs are their aspirations: longer term goals that are often both primal and enduring. You do your brand an enormous disservice if you don’t identify those aspirations and connect your offering to that distant horizon. If you make plain to your customers how you can help them reach their goals, your brand can truly resonate.

3. Share the spotlight
As we’ve seen, for most listeners of “Fast Car,” the song isn’t about Tracy Chapman, or even about an unnamed protagonist; it’s about them. Instead of putting the spotlight exclusively on the singer of the song, “Fast Car” lets listeners hear themselves within its lyrics and makes them the hero of a shared narrative.

There are few more important lessons for any brand to learn. Even with a truly revolutionary, world-shaking offering, a brand is almost always better off being an enabler of heroic change than the hero or heroine making that change. Iconic consumer brands (and iconic musicians) have understood this for decades, but many B2B brands still struggle with it.

Today, many brands are built like a Billy Ocean hit, with more hook than pull. Whether that means confusing their product with their brand, or hyper-focusing on the tangible benefits they offer at the expense of the needs of their audience, they tell a story exclusively about themselves, and one their customers can’t see themselves in. But if you can create a brand like “Fast Car,” tapping into near-universal desires for things like belonging and significance, you’ll forge emotional bonds with your audience that will endure beyond that first attention-grabbing moment.

Rebranding in 2024? Move Fast to Go Slow.

Posted on by Bella Banbury

As 2023 winds down, odds are you’ve already set your goals for 2024 and are taking these last couple of weeks to tie up loose ends and get ready to take a running leap into Q1. But before you turn out the lights on the year, we have one piece of advice: if a rebrand is something you’re considering before the end of Q2, the time to start is now.

“Starting now” doesn’t mean kicking off the project. But it does mean you need to socialize the endeavor with your leadership team, clarify the goals, secure budget, identify internal teams and resources, define the brief or create an RFP, find the right agency partner that can deliver the work based on your timing and budgets, and get all the appropriate agreements in place. All of this takes time—time you don’t want to steal from the strategic work that goes into the rebranding process.

Make the time to go slow
A rebrand is never a cookie-cutter project (and beware of those who claim otherwise). Because brand impacts every part of your organization, the process is as much about building internal alignment as it is about creating a new story, identity, or positioning. You need to make time to explore the implications that moving in different directions can have on your business. You need to create space to surface philosophical differences and provide the frameworks for getting people on the same page. You need to understand what different teams require of the new brand and how they can put it to use. The more deeply you can dive into these conversations, the better chance of seeing the essence of your company come to life in stunning language, arresting design, and experiences that set you apart.

When you need it yesterday
Over the years, we’ve seen the New Year brings a desire to make things new, and 2024 will be no different. Maybe a competitor that jumps into January with a refreshed brand or a story that tilts the playing field away from you. Maybe a new opportunity asks you to rethink your positioning or dial up your differentiation. Maybe a new round of funding translates into headcount and the need to elevate your employer branding.

While you can address things like product positioning or messaging updates with short-term solutions, bigger brand-related conversations beg for deeper consideration. You can certainly shore up your website copy and discuss new features and functionality without needing a brand overhaul. But when your company is ready to go to market in a new way, it’s time to take a deep breath and start planning for a rebrand.

The cost of delay
The longer you wait to get the gears in motion, the harder it can be to reach your organization’s goals. Sales kick-offs, trade shows, customer and investor roadshows, and other activities can put your project on the back burner. And, like someone showing up to the Oscars in an outdated outfit, you’ll be missing opportunities to attract the attention you need to grow.

Here’s the good news: without making any big budget outlays, there are steps you can take right now to ensure you’re in control of the timing for when you update your brand:

Lay the Groundwork
Start the internal discussions with your key stakeholders to build alignment on goals, expectations, timing, and budgets.

Identify an Agency
Research potential agencies that align with your business, your vision, and your values. Look for an agency that knows your space and has worked with companies at your stage of growth.

Prepare an RFP or Creative Brief
Detail your branding objectives and requirements, including timelines, key deliverables, events you want to leverage for a brand rollout, and your desired budget. The more complete the story you tell about what you want, the easier it will be to find an agency that can deliver.

Select an Agency
Meet with your top agencies, review their proposals, and meet their teams. A branding project will span months, and chemistry is crucial to ensuring good communication and a positive engagement style throughout.

Procurement & Planning
Onboarding an agency, finalizing SOWs, and scheduling planning sessions all take time. Depending on your organization’s procurement process, account for this time accordingly.

Preparing for Kick-Off
Gather all the necessary materials that will help your agency hit the ground running, including documents, product demos, and research. Identify key stakeholders early to avoid project delays during interview scheduling.

If you are planning any brand initiative in 2024, we can’t overstate the importance of starting the process sooner rather than later. When the process gets underway, you’ll undoubtedly encounter challenges you hadn’t predicted and twists and turns that you’ll be grateful to have some extra time to address.

If you’re contemplating going on a rebranding journey and are looking for guidance, Emotive Brand is here to help. Let us know how we can help you get ready to jump into the process.

Q&A with Sarah Cincotta of Aperian About Rethinking the Brand of a DEI Pioneer

Posted on by Jim Humes

As the DEI category grows larger and new entrants fight for attention, it can be hard for companies to identify the right partner for their journey of creating an inclusive workplace. Founded in 1991, Aperian is a pioneer in helping organizations develop culturally diverse teams that deliver measurable value. Trusted by over half of the Fortune Global 100, their experience serving over three million learners has driven their evolution into a data-driven, product-led company.

Emotive worked with the Aperian leadership team to redefine the company’s brand as it embraced a new strategy, refreshed its values, and developed a new visual and verbal identity to further differentiate its offering in a crowded space. As they go to market with an updated brand and story, we had a chance to chat with Managing Director of Global Marketing Sarah Cincotta to get her insights on the process of rebranding an industry leader to accelerate its growth.

Emotive Brand: There was a lot going on when you undertook this work. Your two co-founders were stepping back after decades of work to build the brand, and your two co-presidents were stepping up to face the challenges of competing in a rapidly growing space. Why was this the right time to re-examine your brand? 

Sarah: The DEI landscape has really exploded over the last few years, and every indication is that it will be a growing part of the corporate culture and governance landscape going forward. This has attracted a number of new competitors to the space who are aggressively building their brands. We found that even though we have longevity and heritage in this space, our message was getting drowned out. One of the biggest assets of being an early leader is that a significant portion of our business historically has come from client referrals. But we got to the point where we were seeing business plateau, and we knew that to keep pace in this rapidly growing landscape, we needed to reposition our brand.

Emotive Brand: Aperian’s go-to-market strategy is also evolving to match the dynamics of the marketplace. How did that play into the work of updating your brand?

Sarah: Aperian offers both live training and asynchronous online learning. As our company evolved, clients began to associate the Aperian Global brand with live training and the GlobeSmart brand with our online products. The market wasn’t always aware of the connections between our offerings, and even internally we struggled to blend those sides of the business. We’ve also added other products to our portfolio during our 30 years in business, and we used the brand development process as an opportunity to unify all of our offerings under a single umbrella.

A big part of this process was building an identity around Aperian that could speak to our existing customers as well as help us build awareness in the SMB segment. With our go-to-market strategy shifting to a product-led approach, our goal was to develop a brand that could deliver a unified message across all segments. By simplifying our brand architecture, we can go to market with a suite of products rather than point solutions to meet the needs of different customers. Our new brand story also gives our sales team a better starting point for engaging customers in our portfolio. And as we get more comfortable leaning into the emotional foundations of our brand, we’re already seeing how our brand is opening the door for new types of conversations with the people we serve.

Emotive Brand: What advice would you give other companies, regardless of industry, that are operating in an increasingly competitive market?

Sarah: A great exercise would be to see how difficult or easy it is for employees across the business to articulate what makes your company different and better than everyone else. At Aperian, we had the problem of having too many reasons we could claim we were different, which is not a bad thing, but we found it prevented us from rallying our brand around a single idea that we stand for in the hearts and minds of our customers.

Emotive Brand: So what is the idea that you rallied around?

Sarah: Simply put, it’s the butterfly effect: how one small change can cause ripples that create an outsized impact. We call this The Aperian Effect, and it gets to the heart of how pursuing our mission can change a workplace, an organization, and the world for the better. After the team landed on this idea, we discovered that back in 2016, Ernie, one of Aperian’s co-founders, sent a state-of-the-union email to employees that referenced this same idea. It was a confirmation that in the process of developing a brand for our next chapter, we were staying true to the DNA that makes Aperian such a unique company.

Emotive Brand: Before partnering with Emotive, your internal team had done some work to update its brand platform. What did you discover while working with Emotive? 

Sarah: Our previous work helped us align on the language of our key messages, but what was missing from our work was the emotional piece. Focusing our team on how we want our customers to feel opened up entirely new conversations about where our brand could go. Our work is intrinsically emotional, but getting intentional about creating a specific emotional space—and having the confidence to lean into it as we go to market—has made a big difference in how we’re building relationships with customers.

Emotive Brand: Aperian is blessed with a dedicated group of people who have been with the company for a long time, and a new brand represents a significant change in how a company sees itself. How did you onboard people into this process? 

Sarah: There is a good reason why one of our values is, “Stay curious and keep learning.” This mindset creates the perfect opening for communicating openly and transparently about the motivations behind undertaking this work. Our management team hosted bi-monthly coffee chats where people could bring their questions, which allowed employees to learn more about the thinking that went into the new brand. We also made it clear that this was an evolution of Aperian, not a dramatic shift. And by educating our teams about brand and letting them see the iterations of the work that helped us land our new identity, they could see the care and consideration that went into the process. We have a new logo and a new color palette, which is great, but our employees also understand the why behind them.

Emotive Brand: As part of this work, the team also refreshed the language around the company’s values. Why was this important to do? 

Sarah: The rebrand could have fallen flat for our employees if we hadn’t taken the time to reflect on our values. In the same way that we refreshed our brand to support our changing strategy, we agreed that our values had to shift to align our culture to our aspirations as a company. So we undertook a process to preserve the ideas core to our existing values, but to evolve them to shape the behaviors that would take us forward as a company. We articulated our new values using language that is more action-oriented, measurable, and emotional, and we’ve found this has made our values more relevant and accessible. Their language is showing up in everyday conversation. Teams are using them to ask better questions about how they can contribute. And across the company, we’re seeing how they can elevate our expectations about how we show up for each other.

Emotive Brand: Now that you’ve launched your new brand, what initial reactions have you experienced? 

Sarah: The big takeaway from me, internally and externally, is that in creating a better articulation of who Aperian is and what makes us a different kind of company, we’ve unlocked a new language for sharing our story with the world. It’s a matter of simplifying so we can amplify, which in a crowded market makes a tremendous difference. We’re getting ready to roll out a campaign, and just knowing that we’ve found the right notes to hit gives us confidence that it’s going to make an impact.

Finally, the fact that our co-founders, Ted and Ernie, believe in the work we’ve done is the most important endorsement. We’re stepping into the future in a way that honors our past, which is critical to the customers and employees alike who have made Aperian a company unlike any other.

Redefining What it Means to be a Tech Branding Agency

Posted on by Emotive Brand

This year pushed us to refine how we work with high-growth tech companies to deliver brand positioning that resonates—tight budgets, big expectations, and the ever-present need to differentiate forced us to deliver smarter and stronger. The lessons we learned didn’t just challenge us—they made us better.

They sharpened how we deliver impact, aligned us even closer with our clients, and the outcomes? They speak for themselves. Here’s what we learned about speed, emotion, simplicity, and alignment—and how those lessons are driving real sustainable growth.

The Speed Trap
Speed is non-negotiable these days. Clients demand it, and we’ve gotten pretty good at delivering—getting them what they need, in the way they need it, and at the level of quality we’re known for. But here’s the thing: speed only works when it’s a team effort, and that means getting stakeholder engagement from the start.

What I’ve learned is this: you can’t wheel in your CEO at the end and expect them to be on board with your new brand positioning and strategy. If they’re part of the decision, they need to go on the journey with us. When that happens, speed isn’t just fast—it’s transformative. You get that unanimous, “Yes, let’s launch this” kind of moment, where the team is aligned and energized. And that alignment often leads to bigger budgets, more opportunities, and an even greater impact.

The irony? Speed doesn’t mean less input—it means more. It requires buy-in, collaboration, and executive involvement at every stage. When that’s in place, speed becomes a strategy for not just delivering fast but for delivering bold, game-changing brand transformation.

Mergers and Acquisitions is an Emotional Journey
M&A is often framed as a numbers game—valuations, synergies, integrations. But what I’ve learned is that mergers aren’t just strategic—they’re deeply emotional. You’re asking people to let go of what they know, trust new teams, and find their place in a completely reimagined structure and company culture.

Here’s the truth: getting the product architecture right is where it starts. It’s not just a technical exercise—it’s about helping people see how their work fits into something bigger. Driving internal engagement takes empathy, emotional intelligence, and a lot of patience. When leaders and teams go on that journey together, you can move past the fear and resistance that derail so many mergers and acquisitions.

When the product and brand architecture is clear, everything else—company culture, brand positioning, and go-to-market strategy—starts to align. But if you skip this step, the whole thing falls apart. The real work of M&A isn’t just building a unified company—it’s building trust in what comes next.

Emotion as a Strategic Catalyst
For years, emotion was dismissed as soft or secondary to logic. But this year, I saw that narrative change. Leaders are finally recognizing that emotion isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s a strategic force that drives brand growth, brand loyalty, and product innovation.

In B2B especially, emotion plays a critical role. It’s what builds trust, inspires confidence, and creates the kind of connection that sets your brand apart. Decisions in this space carry personal and professional risk—people don’t just want rational benefits, they need to feel like they’re making the right choice.

What I’ve learned is that emotion isn’t optional anymore. It’s how you differentiate in a crowded market. It’s how you connect with your team and customers on a deeper level. And it’s how you transform your brand from something people notice into something they believe in.

Great Work Comes From Great Partnerships
I’ve always believed trust is the foundation of great work, but this year reinforced just how important it is. The best projects weren’t just about deliverables—they were about partnerships built on trust and mutual respect.

When leaders let us in—when they trust us to challenge their thinking on brand strategy and positioning and push them toward their biggest ambitions to achieve sustainable growth—that’s when the magic happens. These partnerships didn’t end when the project wrapped—they stayed connected. They came back to us for advice, shared their wins, and asked for guidance on new challenges.

The takeaway? The best work happens when you stop treating the relationship as transactional. It’s not just about the results you deliver—it’s about the trust you build along the way.

The Hard Truth About Simplicity
Everyone says they want simplicity. Clients want clear brand positioning, differentiated product positioning, cohesive product and brand architecture, and straightforward brand narratives. But here’s the hard truth: simplicity isn’t hard because it’s complex—it’s hard because it means letting go.

Letting go of old narratives. Letting go of the way things have always been sold. Letting go of the familiar and embracing something new. That’s emotional—there’s fear in leaving behind what feels safe, even when it’s not working anymore.

But when you push through that resistance, simplicity becomes transformational. It sharpens your story, aligns your team, and makes your brand or platform truly customer-centric. Simplicity isn’t a shortcut—it’s a leap of faith. And when you take it, the impact is undeniable.

The hardest work isn’t about strategic frameworks or deliverables—it’s about getting to the heart of what matters. Simplifying complexity, building trust, and leaning into emotion aren’t easy, but they’re where real transformation happens.

It’s been a year

This year brought challenges and clarity. For that, I’m grateful—grateful to our team, our clients, and mostly to my ride-or-die, business partner, and best friend for navigating it all with me. She just knows how to make shit happen.