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Category: Brand Transformation

Designing and Maintaining an Emergent Brand

Posted on by Jonathan Haggard

When the Emotive Brand design team creates a brand system, we design it to last for many years. In order for a brand system to last that long, it needs to be consistent with a specific core idea, yet flexible enough to grow over time in order to accommodate changes in the landscape, growth into new sectors, building out sub-brands, etc. Let’s explore two different methodologies in conducting brand design and the end result of each: modernist design and emergent design.

Modernist Design: One Solution

Modernist design methodology is built on the practice of digging to find the golden nugget of a single solution, then testing and polishing that nugget into something that is refined and workable for the specific problem at hand. The rules for the solution are codified and set in stone. The specific problem is continually solved using the same set of rules. However, this often leads to the same solution being applied to multiple different problems as a way of short cutting the design process. Why wouldn’t businesses be trying to use the same solution? It’s what they have in their toolkit – but they aren’t aware that this method is ill-fated from the start. It’s the classic “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” 

In contrast, emergent design strives to give you the raw steel to work with, so you can create hammers, pliers, screwdrivers, drills, any tool that will naturally solve the problem at hand yet still remain true to its core composition.

 

Emergent Design: A Step Further

Similar to modernist design, emergent design also strives to find that nugget, but goes a step deeper and inspects the atomic composition of the nugget, and uses that underlying structure to let the rest of the design system emerge naturally from its basis. 

Just as nature is able to adapt to its environment, emergent design adapts to an ever-changing business environment. Take the butterfly. Within the core of a butterfly is a systemic solution to a specific set of problems, but those problems can vary across the entire planet, yet the core of the butterfly is able to adapt. Circumstances were created to benefit an insect that drinks nectar and transfers pollen across plants. This in turn became beneficial to the larger ecosystem. The butterfly never receives education or is told specifically what to do in its role, but the structure of the creature itself lets its behavior emerge naturally. 

 

Designing To Let Your Brand Learn on Its Own

Emergent rulesets are cultivated naturally from the core of a brand in response to execution. We learn in the same way. Our core has a few properties that are true no matter what, then we are let loose to execute that core within the world. The results that we receive from our behaviors directly modify our core and lead us to change our next execution. A new rule has emerged.

Let’s say that you’re a naturally curious teenager. Your curiosity is your core and it naturally leads you to learn new things. So you pick up guitar and learn a few songs to show your friends. You get a positive reaction and a big rush of dopamine. A new ruleset has emerged. Learning new things at a deeper level facilitates your core curiosity in a beneficial way and so that emergent ruleset of deeper learning becomes interwoven with your core. This modification to the core will change your behavior to not only be curious about things, but to learn them on a deeper level in the future.

Adaptation and learning are innate characteristics to emergent design. Take Darwin’s finches below. They are of the same family (share the same core), but have adapted to their environments over time. Emergent brands do the same thing. The core is not prescriptive, but emergent. The core family of these birds did not restrict their adaptations, because if it did they wouldn’t be able to propagate as much as they have. Because the core was able to be modified from external factors, the core let an adaptation emerge in order to take advantage of a new food source. In business, this means your brand can flourish entering a new market and still represent the core of your company. 

An Emergent Brand Is Self-Maintaining

Emergent design leads to the opposite of a traditional brand guidelines document. Instead of specifying very specific instances where the system was designed to work, we instead specify the core concept and underlying structure of the brand and let the rules dictate themselves. An emergent system grows over time, it adapts to its environment, and as a result the rulesets change and grow over time as well. This eschews the typical PDF or printed guidelines document where everything is set in stone and ushers in a new era of digital-only guideline systems that are accessible and editable by your design team.

When a designer looks at an emergent brand, they should be able to take in the system from seeing just a few examples and be able to execute the system without drudging through 5 pages of what NOT to do with your logo. The componentry at work isn’t the thing that needs to be systematized. The most critical thing that a designer needs to understand about an emergent brand is what defines the core and what properties are being used to express the core.

When we consider the Embark example above, this is what the core of a brand looks like. Embedded into the geometry of the mark is a series of hexagons. This is all you need to design the rest of the Embark system.

But Emergent Design Depends on the Designer

The thing about emergent design systems is that you need really good designers to see them through thoughtfully. You can’t just plug any person into your design role and expect them to be able to execute on an emergent brand. They need to be able to see the underlying structure of your system and know where to push it to adapt to your business’s needs. Take Yamaha for example. Their core is “Sharing Passion & Performance.” They make products that range from dirt bikes to professional audio equipment. If they had a strict modernist brand, both of the products below would share the exact same design characteristics. However, they don’t. The dirt bike is light, stripped-down, colorful, and aggressive. To the right, the guitar amplifier is a solid and reliable heirloom that is beautiful enough to be passed down to your grandchildren. They still stuck to their core of “Sharing Passion & Performance,” but they adjusted the aesthetic values of the execution based on the emergent nature of the forms of the products themselves and the demographics of the people who would buy them.

How To Interview Designers for Your Emergent Brand

Here are some questions to gauge fluency in emergent design and the underlying intention behind design candidates.

What is your philosophy of design?

  • See if they have a specific idea of what they are trying to accomplish in their practice. If they are early on in their career, it might be fuzzier. Avoid people who just want to make “cool shit” without any conceptual thinking backing it up.

Where do you start in your design process?

  • Look for whether or not concepting is at the start of their process, or if it’s there at all. Concept underlies all emergent design.

Can you show us an example of something where you had to research a really complex topic in order to come to your design solution?

  • It’s critical for designers to have a cogent understanding of the topic they are designing for. They are making decisions that are directly impacting the communication of the business and they need to understand it thoroughly.

What is the underlying idea in a specific project and how was that idea brought to life in componentry?

  • See if the idea extends into typeface selection, color choice, graphic system. There should be an underlying idea that has informed the whole system and that idea should be woven throughout everything.

You wouldn’t use only a hammer to build a house. There’s a myriad of problems that you run into that require special tools suited to each individual job. Emergent design allows for multiple tools and solutions to naturally occur that all remain true to your original core element. It’s a flexible methodology for chaotic times and a philosophy proven by nature for 3.5 billion years.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco-based brand strategy and design studio.

Kick the Door Down with Your Brand Manifesto

Posted on by Chris Ames

Building a successful brand can feel like building a ship in a bottle. There are so many delicate and interlocking pieces to monitor and keep safe within a defined system. It’s a process that rewards research, meticulousness, measuring twice, and cutting once.

Yet in nearly every project I’ve been part of, there comes a time when the kid’s gloves come off. People get restless, get sick of being extra careful, and want to kick the door down with their idea. Maybe everything feels technically right, but nothing is resonating in an impactful way. The fact is, when it’s time to go to market, brands can’t afford to be a ship in a bottle. Eventually, they have to break out and stand for something – even if that means being vulnerable and inviting waves of criticism. Invariably, someone says, “We need a manifesto.”

What is a Brand Manifesto?

If a vision and mission steer your organization in the right direction, a brand manifesto is the incandescent energy source propelling you forward. It’s inspired, creative, motivating, an appeal to pathos. It infuses the emotional “why?” into a brand. Why do you matter? Why should we care?

As Chris Langathianos writes, “The manifesto is a versatile tool designed to clearly articulate what the brand stands for – what is it that gets its employees out of bed every morning and motivates them every day to deliver on the brand’s vision. It is explicitly not about a brand’s product or service, but rather speaks to the heart of why they sell it in the first place.”

It’s Apple saying, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” It’s Nike saying, “If greatness doesn’t come knocking at your door, maybe you should go knock on its door.” The brand manifesto is a cultural cornerstone for the brand that resonates in a personal way. It should lay the groundwork for why employees should work hard to deliver upon the brand’s value proposition and create an exceptional customer experience.

In Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk “How great leaders inspire action,” he suggests that if your brand truly wants to inspire an audience to follow you, your core message should focus on your organization’s purpose. “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it,” he says. “If you talk about what you believe, you will attract those who believe what you believe.”

Internal vs. External Manifestos

Traditionally, a brand manifesto starts as an internally-facing document. But more and more, companies are using manifestos as external glimpses into the cultural mindset of the organization. Not only does this help potential customers connect with their values and beliefs, but it also attracts top talent to join a purposeful, inspired company. Think of it as manifesto marketing.

And it makes sense! If you’re able to distill everything your brand stands for into one concise, emotionally resonate paragraph, why wouldn’t you leverage that? Through advertising, communications, and packaging, brands are tapping into the values of their target personas and letting them know they stand for something real.

How to Write a Manifesto

How should a manifesto look and feel? I love this abstract checklist from Mark Di Somma, where he says it should have:

  • The anger of a placard
  • The commitment of a doctrine
  • The beauty of a story
  • The hope and excitement of a vivid dream
  • The sense of a philosophy
  • The call to action of a direct response ad

Obviously, every company is different with its own unique way of expressing itself. But in general, brand manifestos speak in a collective voice, an active tone, and are prompted by a burning desire to change the status quo. If you need help getting started, an easy fill-in-the-blank exercise is, “We are A, we believe in B, and that’s why we C.”

This is something that should be able to be read aloud with verve. The implicit danger here, of course, is sounding too hyperbolic, too chest-beating, too self-important. Why is a software company talking like they are about to storm the beaches of Normandy?

The key is to ground your manifesto in the reality of what you do – then examine the highest-level emotional impact of why that matters. What does the world look like if you realize your company’s vision and mission? It’s still ownable, it’s still you – it’s just the best, most impactful version of you possible.

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

Return on Meaning: Five Evaluation Criteria for Your Business

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Brands Rooted in Meaning Win Big

Return on meaning for businesses and brands is a compelling notion. In today’s world, it’s important to reconsider the ways you matter to people that are authentic to your brand’s purpose in the larger world. Now is the time to return to core human needs and evaluate where your brand fits in. This is why savvy leaders are taking a different approach to brand strategy. They are embracing the ideals of purpose, empathy, and meaning. They are creating newer, deeper, and more enduring connections with the people vital to their brand’s success, both within and outside their organizations.

In this approach, the keys to success are honesty and authenticity. In other words, the meaningful claims your business makes needs to be absolutely true. They also need to be seen as empathetic in order to resonate with the people involved.

How Do You Identify the Roots of Your Brand’s Meaning?

Consider how your product, policies, and procedures add to individual and collective well-being, both for your customers, your employees, and the communities and world around you. We suggest you explore these five areas as you pursue what matters most about your brand.

1. Human Safety/Security

In what ways does your brand help people feel more comfortable in the world, improve their sense of protection, or otherwise reduce feelings of insecurity?

2. Human Connectedness

In what ways does your brand give people a stronger sense of community, provide better ways to connect and communicate, or otherwise reduce feelings of disconnectedness?

3. Human Personal Growth

In what ways does your brand help people grow in body, mind, and spirit, or otherwise reduce feelings of meaninglessness? And inspire action and growth?

4. Positive Social Contribution

In what ways does your brand improve collective well-being across society or otherwise reduce social decline?

5. Positive Environmental Impact

In what ways does your brand work to ensure better lives for future generations or otherwise reduce negative environmental impacts?

Your brand may not be able to draw upon all five of these roots of meaning. At the same time, it may have multiple ways of creating meaning based on a single root. Regardless, the test is always how true the supporting evidence is and how well you see it through the eyes of others.

A Refreshing and Gratifying Audit

You should feel proud and gratified after such an audit. At its best, an exercise like this will reveal how your brand generates meaning in ways you never before considered. When you use these meaningful attributes to shape your brand strategy, amazing things happen. Suddenly, you’re able to elevate your story, connect on deeper levels, and fundamentally change the way people think, feel, and act with respect to your brand.

As such, more positive energy is created within and around your brand. This energy attracts the prospects you need to grow and move closer to your vision for the world you do business in. It gives your current customers good reasons to become long-term loyalists and advocates of your brand. It draws in the recruits you need to grow and innovate. It aligns, engages, and motivates your employees. It gives your leadership new depth and purpose.

Return on Meaning: A New Path Forward

By identifying your brand’s deep-rooted meaning, you set the stage for a more competitive presence, a stronger organization, and a better future. This is because meaning naturally generates more meaning. As you embrace the meaningful goodness of your brand, you and your team are inspired to build upon it and to develop new roots of meaning.

Step back from your daily pressures. Walk in the shoes of others. Go back to the basics of core human needs. Gaze deeply into your brand and let it reveal the roots of meaning that will help your brand thrive now and over time.

Download our Purpose Beyond Profit white paper.

Are you interested in learning more about how your brand can have a stronger return on meaning? If so, contact us at Emotive Brand.

Brand Strategy for Turbulent Times

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Business is in Flux

Brand strategy matters now more than ever. COVID-19 is a health crisis first, but also, an economic one. Many businesses that we work with are feeling uneasy about the current economic situation and the long-term effects of COVID-19 on business. Financial markets are no doubt showing extreme symptoms. There is an unignorable sense of shutdown and although the world has faced other economic crises before, this time is different. Business leaders, VC funders, investors, consumers, and employees are unsure how long this will last and to what extent they must shift strategies. Even economists are uncertain of how to quantify the true impact.

As the initial shock of this new world fades, brands are being forced to transform the way they do business overnight, continually adapting, thinking, and acting with empathy and purpose. These companies are facing more difficult choices. Below are some brands that have made significant shifts to how they operate to put their brand forward in more meaningful ways.

  • In early March, U-Haul provided free 30-day storage spaces for college students impacted by evacuations at university campuses amid school closures.
  • Top Auto Insurers, like AllState offered customers refunds for not driving during COVID-19 crisis. Since so many consumers can’t hit the road, insurance companies agreed that there was no reason to ask customers to pay normal rates.
  • Retail stores like Michaels, Ace Hardware, and Petco are offering curbside pickup services for a contactless way to purchase essential items.
  • Dyson shifted innovation focus to ventilators.
  • Local restaurants and chains have devoted profits to donate to healthcare providers experiencing a deficit in medical supplies and families in need.

So how can today’s brands start to adapt their offerings, reposition, shift and shift their communications, behavior, and marketing to maintain relevance and meaning in today’s turbulent world?

Brand Strategy Matters Now More than Ever

With much in flux and lots at stake, businesses need more customized brand solutions now more than ever. An external perspective can help businesses make sure their positioning, narrative, and go-to-market strategy are on track with shifting market trends and demands. Brand strategy has become more and more important to sustain a thriving, successful, and inspired business.

More Customized, More Tailored, More Agile

Business support needs to be more customized, tailored, and agile. Strategy has to move even faster in order to stay ahead and stand out. Positioning matters even more and brands need a strategy that is attuned to their specific needs, services, and current challenges.

Emotive Brand has listened to the needs of our clients and adapted our own client solutions in response. We have introduced a more agile approach to using strategy and design to solve business problems. More customized, easier to buy, lower commitment, and higher impact.

In Today’s World, Every Business Has Different Needs. We Help:

  • Leaders who need a new corporate narrative to maintain relevance
  • High-growth companies in need of an updated go-to-market strategy
  • Struggling companies needing to invest in a turnaround strategy
  • Corporate cultures that are off kilter because the company has grown too fast
  • Companies facing demands for top-line revenue growth quarter after quarter
  • Leadership teams having trouble formally articulating their brand purpose
  • Companies struggling to recruit fast enough and attract the top talent they need to innovate and grow
  • Websites that need an update to compete and convert
  • Brands that need to reposition to stay competitive in a crowding market
  • Brand identities that are falling flat and need a refresh

Whatever the issue, an external perspective will help you dive into matters and create customized and tailored solutions that overcome these challenges. A brand strategy that positions your business for success and helps your business thrive will weather the tides of 2020.

Learn more about our services that can help you transform your business and make your brand matter more.

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

Illustration created by Starline

Transforming Business Through Empathy

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Empathy and Business? Some say no, we say yes.

There are many factors that add meaning and purpose to a brand, and they all stem from a single source: empathy.

Empathy is the ability to walk in another person’s shoes. That is, to see and experience the world from a perspective different from your own.

Here we explore how empathy plays a vital role in shifting brands from a bland and vulnerable position to one that is robust in meaning and purpose.

Empathy as a driver of brand strategy

When you’re close-in to a business’s daily operations it’s hard to see how your brand is perceived by the people you serve, both as customers and employees. To create a meaningful and purposeful dimension for your brand requires you to step out of your own perceptions of what’s good and valuable about your brand. It forces you to look at your brand – and everything it represents – through the lens of human needs, values, and aspirations. Through an empathetic approach, it’s easier to see the meaningful outcomes people experience based on their interactions with your brand. As such, empathy leads you to the deep-rooted, emotional connections that can be forged to create strong and enduring bonds. You won’t reach this point without allowing yourself to take the necessary steps back to the most common and fundamental needs, values and aspirations of humanity.

Empathy as a cultural ethos

Your business is a set of policies and procedures that have been conceived and designed to produce desired metrics (e.g. productivity, efficiency, profitability). Empathy can be used to elevate how well these functions not only produce the desired metrics, but do so in a way that aligns to the needs, values, and aspirations of the people involved. Empathy helps you create a more human-centric culture, by encouraging you to rethink and reconfigure the nature of your policies and procedures. As such, empathy helps you better engage and motivate employees. This means they’ll be far more likely to listen to, appreciate, and follow your leadership.

Empathy as an engine of innovation

If your business, like many, is struggling with hyper-competition and increasing product commoditization, innovation will be a primary focus. Nothing inspires innovation better than empathy. By encouraging your development people to “walk in your customer’s shoes”, either literally or through sensed experience, you bring them closer to what’s really important and valuable to the market. An empathetic attitude sheds new light on what’s needed now and how to best address that need or opportunity.

Empathy as a leadership practice

We’re all born empathetic. As babies we all had the capacity to perceive how others were feeling and what they were experiencing. Sadly, over time, we lose this skill. However, it is remarkably easy to revive and put to good use. Mindful leadership is the goal. All it requires is that you adapt your leadership presentation and style based on an understanding of your follower’s needs, values, and aspirations. You don’t necessarily change your management objectives, you simply radically improve your leadership performance by forging more meaningful connections with your followers.

If you are looking into the future, looking for new ways to transform your business, and have questions about your brand’s ability to navigate the rough seas ahead, you’ll want to carefully consider your own, and your organization’s, capacity for empathy. The strongest businesses going forward will be known for how their meaning and purpose-led behavior enhances both individual and collective well-being. They only reach this strong position by embracing empathy every step of the way.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.
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Emotional and Meaningful Brand Connections Matter Right Now

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

The Time for Emotion and Meaning Is Now

Battling the arduous winds of COVID-19 will take more than a shift in your communications. It will require a real change in behavior. Right now, people are experiencing a whole slew of complex and contradictory emotions. Some of these feelings are ephemeral and are changing every day; others like uncertainty are staying around for the time being. So to truly connect with people where they are, you have to speak their emotional language. That’s why having your brand behave in a more emotionally charged way and putting the focus on building truly meaningful experiences is what really matters right now.

At Emotive Brand, we’ve built our methodology on our belief in the power of emotion. Our methodology has never proved more important or relevant than now. Emotive brands forge emotional and meaningful brand connections by caring deeply about people and aligning their actions and communications to the deep-rooted human needs, desires, and aspirations of all those important to the brand.

We see the keystones of such connections as empathy, compassion, and mindfulness. In our seminal white paper, “Transforming your brand,” we introduce these key drivers of thinking in this way:

“Emotive brand strategies use empathy to better understand and address the needs, values, interests and aspirations of people, both within and outside of your business. As such, we take your brand’s positive attributes and match them against what we know about the ideas and ideals that people care about, connect to, and that can change their behavior. We also encourage our clients to adopt new behaviors that are more empathetic toward both their employees and customers, and to use the insights they gain to identify ways to make their workplace and offerings more personally relevant and emotionally important in the moment.”

Why Empathy?

Empathy is being able to vicariously experience how another experiences something. It’s not actually having the same experience, but rather allowing yourself to see the world from another’s perspective. For example, you don’t have to be blind to understand what life is like without the key sense of sight. Empathy is an innate trait (children are naturally empathetic), and simply needs to be sourced from within. We take an empathetic view of your audiences and then assess how your brand addresses their deepest needs. The results are sometimes unexpected, but always gratifying to our clients, and cultivating empathy is especially essential in navigating uncertain times like these.

Why Compassion?

Compassion is putting the insights you gain through empathy into practice in a helpful way. This is the essence of problem-solving. You come to understand another’s needs and then redesign products, experiences, and communications accordingly. This means greater creativity, innovation, and a continually broadening perspective. We turn to our compassionate nature to translate the unique intersection between your brand and basic human needs into actionable practices that bring the resulting meaning to life.

Why Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the practice of being more aware of the surrounding world and more alive to its inherent possibilities. It is about having a broader perspective and a universal respect for others. It is recognizing that more unites us than separates us. It is about being humble, feeling connected, harnessing and using energy in new and more gratifying ways. When you employ a mindful attitude in everything you do, you enable a mutually-beneficial balance between your tangible business needs and the intangible meaning that will help your brand thrive in a COVID-19 world and beyond.

Every brand strategy we develop embraces the practices of empathy, compassion, and mindfulness. Through this we are better able to match your brand’s attributes with what truly matters to people today on deep and meaningful levels. At the same time, the brand behaviors we develop aim to promote these factors on both leadership and organizational levels.

Making Meaning A Way Of Doing Business

Organizations and leaders are often overwhelmed by circumstances and respond by turning inward both as individuals and on an organizational level. A state of mindfulness enables organizations and leaders to rise above the immediate situation and to turn outward to others on a deeper and more personal level.

Brand behavior that promotes an empathetic, compassionate, and mindful culture helps ensure that your brand will evolve into the most meaningful state possible. As a foundation for your brand culture, these vital traits also make sure that your brand’s meaningful way of being is sustainable and enduring.

As brands seek to confront the challenges of this new world, it’s only natural that they turn to meaning. But it is important to remember that it’s one thing to claim meaning, and quite another to continuously create meaning both within and outside your brand organization. When empathy, compassion, and mindfulness inform the organization, drive its decision-making, and shape its vision, meaning goes beyond being a buzzword and becomes a way of doing business.

Download White Paper

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

Image by Alen Pavlovic

Adopting a Human Mindset

Posted on by Peter Antonelli

Over the past weeks, we’ve transitioned to a new life at home, the place where everything now happens with little exception; a blurred, ever-shifting diagram dividing work, our relationships, family life, and rest. In this way, coronavirus has become the great equalizer. The pandemic has also clarified the differences between how we live our lives and the support we’re able to receive, or not. It has swiftly and single-handedly altered our needs as people. It has forced us to prioritize what matters most and accept what’s out of reach.

As a result, we have competing practical needs; dependable information, access to income, food, childcare, the ability to help others, and new skills to help ourselves navigate what we used to rely on services for. These are all now top of mind—a moving target of priorities with a different urgency than we’re accustomed to.

Our emotional needs, though, don’t have to be as elusive. Despite social distancing and self-quarantine, we have the ability, the responsibility, to turn towards one another, even if remotely. The opportunity to listen, to help where possible, to empathize, be optimistic, to relate—the opportunity to tap into a human mindset is now. It won’t cure COVID-19, but a human mindset is among what we need most to stay afloat. Simple practices that elevate our spirit and connect us to others can go far and don’t need to compete with priorities or put us in harm’s way.

The same opportunity is true for brands.

If you are a leader within an organization, consider this: What is the mindset of your brand during this time, and how might your brand tap into the human qualities necessary to meaningfully connect with your audience?

Here are four considerations to get started.

Adopt an ethos of service.

Whatever industry your brand is in, now is the time to adopt a service mentality. Consider the resources you have available and imagine how they might be used to contribute to the needs of your customers and beyond. Identify an opportunity to help and make it happen.

Human mindset

 

In the world—An early example of adapting an ethos of service is LVMH who transformed their perfume and cosmetics factories to produce free hand sanitizer in France.

To consider—What service is your brand uniquely positioned to offer people during the pandemic? How might you activate it within the next week? At a local scale? A global scale?

Send a virtual care package.

Finding opportunities to extend the spirit of your brand to people who are homebound is a simple way to stay connected and provide respite from news alerts. Success isn’t measured in dollars spent, rather in feelings felt.

In the world—Scribe, a wine producer and vineyard in Sonoma known for its casual warmth and strong sense of community, has sent patrons its winery playlist so they can recreate a little bit of the Scribe experience in their home.

To consider—Identify a feeling that reflects the soul of your brand. How might you extend that feeling to customers virtually over the coming days?

Provide immediate, material relief.

For reasons beyond the current pandemic, trust is at an all-time low and people are craving honest, results-oriented leadership more than ever. In the truest sense, today’s actions speak considerably louder than words. By reflecting on the emotional and practical needs of your customers and taking decisive, immediate steps to support them, brands are positioned to forge stronger relationships than ever.

In the world—One example of note is Unilever’s effort to ease financial instability, by pledging early payment for their most vulnerable small and medium-sized suppliers.

To consider—What tangible actions can your brand put into motion today that will solidify and communicate commitment to your customers?

Initiate conversation, then let others do the talking.

Despite social distancing, helping people feel that they are part of a community is a powerful thing. By enabling the voices, experiences, and perspectives of people to be heard, not only is a forum to contribute established, but the potential for impact is broadened.

In the world—At the local level, Nextdoor’s #icanhelpchallenge is activating communities by providing a forum for neighbors to volunteer their time in support of others.

To consider—How might your brand elevate the voices, stories, and needs of your customers? What grassroots initiatives can your brand enable or strengthen?

Today, everything counts. Every behavior, gesture, and message, however small. Whether you’re an individual, a two-person startup or a Fortune 100 corporation, the opportunity for meaningful connection is the same. It starts with prioritizing people and embracing a human mindset.

Peter Antonelli is Chief Creative Officer at Emotive Brand in Oakland, 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.

Making Everyone a Brand Champion

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Developing brand champions is critical

Good brand strategies don’t stop at defining why the brand matters. They go further to define the attitudes and behaviors that will define the brand experience in ways that truly matter.

Behavior is best defined on two levels: brand and workplace.

Brand behavior

Brand behavior focuses on the tangible and controllable aspects of your brand. These include the brand’s visual identity and it’s voice in marketing and advertising. Brand behavior identifies the shifts that will generate the feelings with which the brand seeks to be associated. Coupled with new messages that blend the brand’s promise with its key benefits, your brand presence will start to be seen in new, more appealing, and better differentiated ways.

Workplace behavior

Workplace behavior addresses the way leadership, management, and staff can all shift what they do, and how they do it, to better fulfill the brand’s promise. These shifts focus on the role of people who either shape (by designing customer interactions), or who actively create customer experiences (by making a presentation, doing a demonstration, etc). The ideas within the workplace behavior show how they can make the brand’s promise come true, while at the same time evoke the brand’s feelings within every brand experience.

Making everyone a brand champion

Good brand behavior is extremely practical. It helps those specifically involved in managing and promoting the brand to ensure a coherent brand presence. It also helps everyone else in the business see the role they can play in the helping the brand succeed by fulfilling on its promise.

Brand behavior is also an invaluable tool when dealing with outside vendors, including PR and advertising agencies. While brand behavior does not proscribe PR or advertising executions, it does provide these important partners with a strong sense of what makes the brand matter, what they can do to help make the brand promise come true, and how they can evoke the brand’s feelings within the executions they create and manage.

Brand behavior is much more than a set of rules

Brand behavior is helpful advice and guidance, not a set of strict rules or harsh dictates. It recognizes that the brand needs to be able to remain current, and to react to emerging trends and opportunities. It also needs to establish its presence in an increasing number of places.

As such, good brand behavior invites individuals within the organization, and outside vendors, to explore a constant stream of rich and relevant ways to convey the brand’s truths, engage people in the brand’s promise, and change the way people feel about the brand.

All together now

By aligning internal leadership, management and staff, as well as external vendors, brand behavior plays a vital role in shaping brand experiences that are consistently meaningful to customers and prospects. It helps make your promise come true. It helps you create a unique emotional aura around your brand that makes it more appealing and gratifying. Most importantly, it draws more people closer to your brand, so prospects are more likely to try it, customers are more likely to be more loyal, and your brand is more likely to thrive now and in the future.

It’s never been more important to matter as a brand. You take the first steps when you identify what’s most rationally and emotionally valuable about your offering, and embody that in a single brand promise. Your brand thrives when you couple that promise with brand and workplace behavior that’s designed to make it all come true. As shifts in behavior take place, more and more customers and prospects see the truth of your promise, realize its benefits for themselves, and respond in kind.

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IMG credit: http://www.markcypher.com/dusseldorf/dusseldorf.php