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Category: Design & Brand Expression

Five Brands That Embrace Emotion

Posted on by Emotive Brand

Looking for a quick hit of strategic inspiration? A dose of oxytocin in brand form? We found five examples that are hitting the mark by moving people. Emotional connection for the win.

Over recent years, the rise of emotion has been undeniable. The following five brands—across diverse categories and including one of Emotive’s own clients—offer proof that the era of emotion has arrived. Can you feel it?

1. Unlocking the potential of those who advance the world.

Boston Consulting Group (BCG), global consulting firm.

Many brands claim to be human-centered, but few actually are. BCG’s succinct yet powerful premise—supporting the leaders who move us all forward—is inherently emotional and deeply human. And it’s refreshing to see that emotion and humanity are injected throughout the brand, even in how insights are presented.

Acknowledging the unique challenges of leadership today and rather than preaching from on high, BCG presents expertise in a relatable and trustworthy way by inviting chief executives to “Hear from Fellow CEOs.” Their CEO Moments of Truth YouTube videos attract hundreds of thousands of views each.

The brand is also emotionally bolstered by fostering strong, ongoing relationships with past employees, referred to as alumni and considered part of the BCG family. BCG’s Alumni Program includes a learning library and events to connect current and past employees.

We get the impression that, through and through, BCG walks the walk in “unlocking the potential” of the people it serves and employs. Good feels all around.

2. Clean feels good.

Clorox, multinational manufacturer of consumer and professional products.

Clorox’s latest campaign, “Clean Feels Good,” pivots from the science of disinfecting to the emotional upside of cleanliness. They teamed up with a neurotech firm to measure and show how the everyday act of cleaning—far from a mere burden—is for many people a proven way to boost mood and foster a sense of wellbeing.

We notice that spot-on (or off) expertise, as seen in their online database of practical cleaning tips, is balanced with touches of emotion throughout the Clorox website, as in, “Follow our tips to save time, money and possibly the day.”

More than ever, Clorox positions itself as a health and wellness company that exists to help people thrive—not just kill germs. They don’t just grab attention by challenging expectations—they earn engagement and loyalty by highlighting a source of joy hiding in plain sight.

3. Powering the inclusion economy.

Katapult, leading omnichannel lease-purchase platform.

Spanning B2B and B2C, Katapult—an ecommerce-focused FinTech company—is one of Emotive Brand’s clients and an example of how feeling elevates brand in any sector.

With empathy and optimism, Katapult challenges the dreary status quo of retail purchase plans, dominated by predatory rates and gatekeeping via credit scores. A friendly, buoyant brand identity showcases a fresh point of view: Seeing the good in people is good for business.

For retailers, Katapult encourages openness to overlooked, unfairly excluded consumers. For shoppers, Katapult opens doors to major purchases, central to quality of everyday life but too often out of reach. We enjoyed the collaboration, and the chance to help level a playing field tilted for too long.

4. Keep your options open.

Red Hat, leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions.

In an interesting twist, Red Hat’s recent marketing humanizes AI to show its potential flaws and differentiate the company’s offering. The result is a message that connects emotionally—as opposed to relying solely on the kind of forgettable AI technology proof points in which we are all now drowning.

The campaign ties back seamlessly to the compelling, central brand premise—creating better technology with open source. Rather than a bland functional claim, the concept of openness infuses the entire brand with purpose and feeling: Open source, open culture, open to possibilities.

As Red Hat explains on their site, “Red Hat exists not only as an enterprise software company but as a catalyst for change, built on the belief that open unlocks the world’s potential.” We appreciate the tight connection between the functional and emotional, a hallmark of the strongest brands.

5. Own the dream.

Rocket Mortgage, major online mortgage lender formerly known as Quicken Loans.

Rocket Mortgage’s recent rebrand is a dramatic example of leaning into the power of emotion. While homeownership is treated as a numbers game by most companies in the industry, Rocket has opened the door to deeper connection with prospects and customers.

They now show up with warmth, humanity, and recognition that what they offer is more than home loans—it’s the fulfillment of a deeply meaningful aspiration for most people. The brand shift is especially powerful in an uncertain economic climate, when many are doubting their belief in the classic American dream.

Visually and verbally, the new brand tone is clear in a more approachable logo, simpler data identity system, and a voice of understanding and encouragement for customers making big financial decisions.

Even in small moments, Rocket finds ways to engage. The online application funnel feels helpful and human, like when they explain that “prequalified” is just “another way of saying ‘let’s estimate what you could afford.’” After all, in a lengthy transaction as emotional and momentous as buying a home, a little empowerment at each step likely goes a long way.

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.

Interview with Eric Futoran on Rebranding Embrace to Lead the Mobile Revolution

Posted on by Jim Humes

September 2026: Since this conversation, Embrace has reached exactly the kind of value-defining moment we discuss below. On July 21, 2026, Embrace announced its acquisition by Palo Alto Networks, extending Palo Alto Networks’ observability platform with Embrace’s real user monitoring and digital experience monitoring capabilities; the deal closed on August 27, 2026. It’s a milestone that reflects the bold, disruptor position Eric and his team built the brand around. We’re proud to have helped Embrace articulate and express that position as the business evolved. Read more about that work in our Embrace case study.

Embrace is a company dedicated to unlocking the potential of mobile technology. As companies envision new ways that mobile can transform the ways people live, work, and play, they are asking their mobile teams to deliver mission-critical experiences that are increasingly bold and ambitious. Developers need help managing the growing complexity of what they build—so they can dream bigger about the role mobile plays in their future—which is what Embrace helps them do.

Emotive worked with Embrace Co-Founder and CEO Eric Futoran and his team to redefine their brand and align their organization on the next chapter in their growth story—you can see the full engagement in our Embrace case study. As they prepared to launch the new Embrace brand, we had a chance to sit down with Eric to get his insights on how the process helped bring his team together to bring a new story to market.

Emotive Brand: You spent a few months going deep into the why, how, and what of Embrace, with a lot of healthy debate about how to tell the Embrace story. What are some things you learned along the way?

Eric: As a founder, I’m so used to thinking about the long-term vision for the company and how we can power the incredible promise of mobile. And in some ways, this visionary thinking is too far out for people to map to the work in front of them. A lightbulb went off after a conversation with Emotive about how to frame the role our brand needs to play over the next two years. It made the goals much more practical and a lot easier because it didn’t have to play out the brand vision in such detail. And to be honest, I think it made the result more exciting because we could see how it could impact the ways we go to market. While mobile disruption will take five or ten years to realize, not every company thinks that far out. The most significant personal learning was to shrink my time frame and be okay with that.

Emotive Brand: Throughout our work together, you continually encouraged us to swing for the fences about where we could take the brand. What were your instincts telling you about creating a bold story?

Eric: My thinking was that we needed to push ourselves out of our comfort zone. For all sorts of good reasons, we are focused on the weeds of what’s in front of us. But you don’t build a brand for today. A brand needs to be aspirational by definition and build the bridges between today and the better future we’re all working to create. If we had stayed too much in our comfort zone, we would have created a brand that was good for us today but not tomorrow. By learning how to get comfortable operating outside our comfort zone, we recognized new possibilities for where we could take our brand.

Emotive Brand: Building a start-up brand in a newly forming category brings several challenges in building awareness, understanding, and advocacy with developers. How did you see emotion as part of the equation in bringing this all together?

Eric: When you connect with the brand, there’s an implicit connection that goes beyond the functional ways you will use the brand. For example, when you look at the Apple logo, it has nothing to do with what they do and everything to do with setting the emotional context for their offerings. When you’re talking to developers, I think it’s crucial to think of them as people with goals that inspire them and challenges that give them headaches. Developers are so used to seeing the same set of messages and color palettes and comparisons that they feel like they’re being sold to rather than a brand trying to build a genuine connection based on how well they understand their experience. Our goal is to make developers feel empowered by giving them technology that meets their needs and confident that they have a great partner in Embrace to help them achieve their goals. Emotion allows developers to recognize their aspirations and pain points in our brand, which creates a very human connection.

Emotive Brand: As someone who has successfully brought two start-ups into growth mode, when do you think it’s the right time to invest in brand?

Eric: I’ll preface this by saying I hate this answer—it depends. Everyone has a different product and a different strategy. For us, we’re trying to do something very different in our space and cut through a lot of noise that is out there. So brand is an important tactic to tell a unique story that keeps us from getting lumped in with companies we don’t compete against.

If you think about the other end of the spectrum, where 80%–90% of SaaS products live, they drive differentiation based on doing something slightly better or cheaper than their competitors. These companies typically use brand to create a different emotion rather than paint a bolder vision. The majority of SaaS companies are highly iterative, which Embrace is not. We built our company to be a disruptor.

Emotive Brand: We started working together when there were signs of a weakening economy, but you invested in your brand when others were holding back. What were your reasons to keep pushing forward on the brand front?

Eric: A lot was the practical nature of where we are as a company. We have a best-in-class product with a well-defined product-market fit, but no one knows about us. Our best move in this situation is to lean into brand and marketing initiatives to fuel our growth. Until now, we’ve underinvested in brand because we never felt the pain because the economy was on fire and people were less cost-conscious. The rising tide lifts all boats. But now, as the tide is wavering, we need to make sure we’re positioned to compete in any market condition. We’re still growing, but our brand activities give us the ability to grow faster.

When VCs tell companies to lengthen their runways, I think that’s good advice for seed-stage companies where money is the greatest asset instead of time. For a growth company, time is of the essence because you’re now measured on what you achieve or don’t achieve over time. To reach our potential, we need to increase our awareness, and brand is a key component of that.

For a growth company, time is of the essence because you’re now measured on what you achieve or don’t achieve over time. To reach our potential, we need to increase our awareness, and brand is a key component of that.

Emotive Brand: As a CEO, you were deeply involved in this process. What were the pluses and minuses (if any) about a founder being so involved?

Eric: In many ways, it depends on the founder. We needed to make a bold pitch based on where Embrace is as a company. And for that to occur, we had to get out of our comfort zone. I think I implicitly had to be part of that initiative because it is really hard to ask a head of marketing or sales or product to put themselves out on a limb and take that risk without the founder being part of it. I’m not a marketer by any means, but I know the power of good storytelling. So from an ideal perspective, the founder and CEO should 100% be part of the process to ensure the brand’s story aligns with the bolder vision for where the company is heading. You’re not just telling the story of this moment in time—you’re telling the story of the people and the journey as part of that company. And so, if I hadn’t been as involved, we may have lost some of the potential of what the brand can do and the impact it can create.

Emotive Brand: As part of this work, we worked with you to develop a Growth Manifesto that tells the story of how you plan to grow over the next two years and beyond. How did this help your team connect the dots and align around the strategic pieces of your business, product, and GTM strategy?

Eric: It helped build a bridge between the near-term goals for driving awareness and our longer-term vision. When we started writing the Manifesto, the combination of the two came together. We were able to frame what we do in the five-to-ten-year vision of how mobile will transform the world and get people excited about this future, and then we made it real by focusing on the next two years and what will be required. The two horizons don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

But the team is still digesting the Growth Manifesto. When rolling out anything new, you need to create a drumbeat of communications and experiences. I have an ‘ism’ on this called the Rule of Three: give people the information in three ways and at three different times. That’s what we’re doing with the manifesto so that it becomes part of our everyday thinking.

Emotive Brand: Because we’re Emotive, we need to ask you about feelings. Do you think feelings and emotions play an essential role in the B2B technology and AI space?

Eric: 100%. Our customers are people. The people they serve are people. I think a lot of businesses forget that. We’re a very customer-first, customer-centric company because I truly believe it’s the right way to do business. Rather than B2B, we’re Human-to-Human. Retention is king for all SaaS companies. In addition to having a great product, you need to treat your customers right because they are making a bet on you. There will be bumps in the road, but they’re betting both on your vision and your ability to support them when the product isn’t working the way it’s supposed to, and they need you to take action. The only way you retain customers is by treating them like partners, like people whose success you genuinely care about. That’s the only way you’ll build a relationship that can weather the storms that arise. It’s not commonly expressed in the B2B space, but business is all about leading with emotion.

Why B2B Tech and AI Companies Need a Growth Manifesto

Posted on by Jamey Aiken

One of the most important goals of a brand is to drive growth. Focusing a start-up on carving out market share. Positioning a fast-growing tech company to lead its category. Providing a foundation for product or portfolio innovation as a company seeks to reach new audiences. Or helping a global corporation expand its footprint into new geographies. Whatever your aim, brand can accelerate results.

But one of the biggest (missed) brand opportunities is engaging individuals in your organization to see their role in creating the future. When growth is a generic goal, people can assume that someone else is leading it. Disconnected from purpose or vision, growth can feel like a performance driver that serves only the goals of stakeholders. For companies to grow sustainably, positively, and strategically, people in the organization need to feel excited about what growth brings. 

The key to framing growth for your organization is making sure people see business as a process, not an entity. No matter where you are on a growth trajectory, success depends on behaving more like an organism than an organization—continually adapting to changes in the marketplace, the industry, the economy, and the culture. But when change and uncertainty prevail, most businesses are poorly equipped to communicate this distinction to their employees. Conventional objective-setting tools tend to be reactive rather than responsive. And typical brand building blocks tend to define what’s come before rather than guide people to consider what lies ahead.

A new approach for engagement

Emotive has a different approach to helping businesses fulfill their greatest ambitions. Growth is the goal. Emotion is the strategy.

When clients need to realize important outcomes, we work side-by-side with executive leaders to co-author a Growth Manifesto of how—and why—they want to grow. We call this a Growth Manifesto because it serves as a powerful tool for cutting through the noise of function-specific goals, objectives, KPIs, and OKRs to make business and brand more emotionally relevant to the people in an organization. It connects major initiatives—corporate strategy, product, go-to-market, brand, people & culture—in a single, coherent narrative that aligns everyone behind the promise of the brand and the actions required to support it. 

Why create a Growth Manifesto?

Because narratives are fundamental to how human beings share meaning. Stories have the power to move and transform people both intellectually and emotionally. Unlike a traditional plot line—which tends to be self-contained with a beginning, a middle, and an end—this narrative is open-ended. It asks people to see themselves in the situation. It calls on them to imagine what they can do to pursue a higher purpose. It gets people into action by helping them understand the role they need to play on the journey ahead. 

Why do you need a Growth Manifesto when you have a business and brand strategy?

How often does your organization engage in substantive dialogue about what lies ahead? Our experience is that growth conversations begin in past actions, which can be limited by strategies that communicate what you already know—or what you’ve already got—rather than how you intend to do business tomorrow. We also see many organizations that undermine success by planning in silos, despite their best efforts at cross-functional thinking. (Can a marketing team develop an effective go-to-market plan in isolation from the deep thinking poured into a product roadmap? Nope. But it happens all the time.) And a “set-it-and-forget-it” mindset often tanks the desired effect of corporate mission, vision, and values statements. 

The Growth Manifesto does three important things:

  1. It establishes a clear point of view that will influence, guide, and help create your organization’s future. This isn’t a PR exercise. This strategic narrative will have an impact only if it’s deeply felt and true to your business culture. It requires expanding your perspective beyond the products or services you offer, connecting your brand to the broader context of your customers’ lives and to their aspirations.
  2. It ties everything together. All businesses, whether big or small, have multiple critical initiatives going on at any given moment. If the narrative about how they connect is haphazard or unintentional, people will start quilting their own. The result is multiple, individual narratives in pursuit of different end states—in other words, brand confusion.
  3. It creates structure, not stricture. For employees to be truly invested, your narrative must invite some level of co-creation and adaptive thinking. You must give everyone the tools and direction they require to do their jobs well, without being so prescriptive as to limit their tactical freedom to execute. You must ask every employee to use their imagination as they help build and reinforce your brand. 

The Growth Manifesto isn’t meant as a one-and-done alignment activity. It’s an integrative tool that sets a deliberate direction for your business at a given moment. It’s intentionally designed to flex in response to change. To be revisited and updated over time. To adapt in the same way that your business must adapt to the world.

We know that as competition intensifies and companies experience mounting performance pressure, time horizons tend to shrink and most organizations adopt tunnel vision to focus on their most immediate needs and concerns. The Growth Manifesto allows everyone across your business to keep their heads up, with eyes fixed on the horizon, holding both near-term and long-term goals in clear view. More than just selling products or seeking this quarter’s profitability, a Growth Manifesto gives people the ability to see, believe, and participate in creating a future that they know is not only possible but necessary.

See how we helped Lookout, a leader in cybersecurity and cloud security, create a Growth Manifesto that aligned its organization around a shared vision for the future. Read the Lookout case study here.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design firm for product-proven B2B technology and AI companies.

Challenger Brands: Design that Disrupts

Posted on by Emotive Brand

Challenger Creative

This post is the last in our three-part series on challenger brands. You can read a general primer to challenger brands or a deep dive into B2B challengers right here.

Previously, we chatted about the power of adopting a challenger mindset, how to compete against your category, and what the B2B world can learn from B2C disruptors. In these examples, most of the strategies were internal. It was a question of knowing how to recognize the pressure for change, creating shared conviction, having the capacity to execute, and building out a realistic work plan.

But still, the question remains: what does this actually look like in the real world? Today, we’re going to dive into some examples of challenger brands that use design to disrupt. While there’s no one definition for challenger creative, you tend to know it when you see it. Most recently, it’s an aesthetic that incorporates clean branding, catchy names displayed in modern fonts, bright pops of color, and sleek packaging. It’s unapologetically bold, playful, and unafraid to subvert the expectations of the form. It’s a design that knows how to transform positives into negatives and creates a lasting impression.

Thanks for the Warm-Up

Sometimes you’re fighting against the market, and sometimes you’re fighting against people’s perceptions. From a marketing and viewership point of view, the relationship between the Olympics and the Paralympics is a contentious one. As we all know, the Olympics air first and garner much more attention and ad budget. So, how do you respond when everyone thinks of your offer as secondary?

With a bold commercial that repositions the Olympics as merely the “warm-up,” this commercial asserts that the Paralympics is where Super Humans do battle. Even the way the commercial starts—leading the viewer from the firework show to a tunnel underground—demonstrates that this is an alternate, grittier world we are entering. It sets the tone for the whole games. Anyone can run on two feet—come see a real show.

Challenger Brands Design that Disrupts Paralympics

The Perks of Being a Couch Potato

In a world of Amazon, Walmart, Target, and Overstock, is there anything gutsier than trying to sell furniture online? Burrow, a sofa startup, is up to the challenge. Incorporating gorgeous photography, cheeky copy, and a deep understanding of millennial behavior, they have created a campaign that is capturing attention. Their tagline, “Good for Nothing,” is a perfect self-deprecating turn of phrase that speaks to their sense of humor and willingness to disrupt the status quo.

“‘Good for Nothing’ positions Burrow as the sofa brand that’s serious about leisure,” says Red Antler Co-founder and Strategy Chief Emily Heyward. “And the goal of our out-of-home campaign in New York is to remind everyone who’s rushing by and commuting in the busiest city in the world that it’s OK to go home tonight and do absolutely nothing. Hopefully on a comfortable Burrow sofa.”

Challenger Brands Design that Disrupts Burrow

Repairing the Male Ego

Challenging giant corporations is one thing, but using design to challenge stigma and vulnerability is another. Hims, a personal wellness brand, is fueled by one challenger belief—men are allowed to want to take care of themselves. The question is, does the market agree? Well, by March of 2018, Hims had already sold roughly $10 million in product and reached $200 million in valuation. (They only launched in November 2017.) So, that’s a big yes.

“These brands have an aesthetic that appeals to millennials,” said Allen Adamson, Brand Consultant and Co-founder of Metaforce. “It’s smart design without being ostentatious or too snooty. All these products are stylish, and they don’t necessarily pick up on the cues of the category. They pick up on the design language that surrounds young people today.”

Hims’ product line reads like a short list of things that should be difficult to market to those who are uncomfortable talking about them—hair loss, erectile dysfunction, skincare, and vitamins. Instead of shying away from stigma or taboos, they’ve turned it into a massive business opportunity.

Challenger Brands Design that Disrupts Hims

Bird Is the Word

E-scooters are a controversial business, but don’t expect Bird’s founder, Travis VanderZaden, to back down from a challenge. Bird was named Inc’s business of the year, and with good reason. In 14 months, they have expanded to 120 cities and notched a $2 billion valuation.

The design of Bird feels both professional and whimsical at the same time. The black and white look of the scooter is sleek and clean, but the animated landing video on their website looks like something out of Pixar, full of color and imagination. They seem to capture the childlike freedom of riding a scooter and the Uber-like vision of transforming how a city runs. Their design leaves them poised to take on anyone, whether that’s fellow e-scooter brands, ride-sharing, or even automobile makers.

“He told me the idea of adult scooters and explained how riders would just leave them on the sidewalk, and I was incredulous. I thought he was crazy,” says David Sacks, an early PayPal executive who invested in the company’s seed round. “Once I went to Santa Monica, I realized it was magical,” he says, after he scootered to his destination, without waiting for a cab or sitting in traffic. “I started thinking about how big this idea could become and realized that it’s transformational. You could have millions of these, and start displacing car trips for commuters—and eventually redesign cities.”

Challenger Brands Design that Disrupts Bird

Time to Face the Challenge

Now that we’ve covered strategy, mindset, and design, it’s time to adopt a challenger mindset for your own brand. Every year it gets harder and harder for brands to stand out from the pack, meaning there’s never been a better time to be bold, fired-up, and willing to take a risk to differentiate yourself.

To learn more about how your product-proven B2B brand can benefit from adopting a challenger mindset, contact Tracy Lloyd at [email protected].

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design firm for product-proven B2B technology and AI companies.

Designing for Emotion

Posted on by Aoife Gibbs

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
– Maya Angelou.

For many people, brand design is an exercise in choosing a color palette, pictures, shapes, and layouts. Bright colors and aspirational images of people in perfect settings holding beautifully designed products can get people’s attention. They make us want something better, newer, shinier, more beautiful, or more powerful than what we have now. And it works. Until the next bright, shiny thing comes out that diverts people’s attention.

Brand Design is a Science

For design to work — to capture people’s hearts in addition to their minds — a lot more needs to go into it. There is thought, research, and strategy behind every design decision. Hours upon hours of research and experimentation to turn words and concepts into a brand. And the most important ingredient that makes design work is being very specific about the emotions you want to conjure in people.

Get Emotional: Dove Real Beauty

There’s no better example than the “Dove Real Beauty Sketches: You’re More Beautiful Than You Think” campaign. Instead of making people aspire to obtain the next level of beauty, it aims to inspire the beauty of self-acceptance. And by designing for emotion, Dove created one of the most memorable campaigns of this century.

Dove has always been the bastion of positive emotions and they know their largely female audience’s self-esteem has been negatively affected by the world’s view of beauty. In the film, a forensic artist draws each woman as they describe their features. The women each meet someone and strike up a conversation. Unbeknownst to them, that person then describes them to the artist. The side by side sketches are revealed and the emotional impact is massive by showing how self-critical behaviors are so ingrained, and so limiting.

To address this topic, Dove had to know their audience. As someone with Body Dysmorphia, I definitely fall into that target group and could relate to the stories. This could have been filmed in so many different ways but there were key design decisions that took emotion from a ripple to a wave. The styling of the set in blues and soft natural light were made to create a calm environment, it pulled you in and made you feel safe. The choice of music, both sad and beautiful, played alongside the words they used to describe their features and create a specific mood. The choice of how the subjects were captured — the shifting eyes, nervous twitches — in describing themselves created a contrast to the moments of realization when they discovered that others saw more beauty that they could see in themselves. The design choices in how the sketches were gracefully displayed highlighted the individual and made the audience feel this person deserved their attention. And most importantly, the bittersweet experience of seeing both the problems women face with self-acceptance and the opportunity they had to see themselves in a new light brought to your eyes. The likelihood of you forgetting the message, the film, and the brand is zero, because the experience wasn’t designed to make you buy soap — it was designed to make you feel.

Emotion is a human characteristic that separates us from machines. In digital design, it creates an experience for the user that implies another person like them is on the other end of the connection. Color, sound, photostyles, logos, and fonts all contribute to deepening the emotional impact of a brand. The decisions we designers make in combining and balancing these pieces can be profound when we’re focused on the feelings we want to evoke. Brands can become living breathing entities that create community, promote values, or inspire movements by their very presence (when you’re wearing a Patagonia fleece made from recycled bottles, you’re wearing a reminder to recycle). When we think of brands as containers for feelings, our design choices help us artfully bring them into every part of an experience. Design is how we invite people to embody authentic emotions — ones that create lasting memories and deepen relationships.

What Is a Brand Idea?

Posted on by Chris Ames

How do people make business decisions? Whether you’re debating a specific word choice or overhauling an entire brand, there’s always a tension between the rational and emotional, the aesthetic and strategic. It’s easy to have a gut instinct over the things that inflame your curiosity, but what about the minuscule? As decision fatigue sets in, how do you ensure your choices are aligned, consistent, and ultimately laddering up to something greater than the sum of its parts?

This is where the concept of brand idea shines. A brand idea is an essence or embodiment of what you stand for. Think of it as a stake in the ground that is used to guide your look, feel, and voice. It gives an emotional dimension to your brand, demonstrates what it’s like to do business with you, and serves as a shorthand for how your brand shows up in the world.

A brand idea is not a tagline. It’s not necessarily something that people would ever see. It’s more of a guiding principle that people feel from your brand experience as a whole.

Examples of Brand Ideas

Let’s look at Starbucks. For years, their brand idea was to be the “third place” in your life. Popularized by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, the third place is a social setting that’s separate from home and work. According to Oldenburg, third places are “anchors” of community life “where you relax in public, where you encounter familiar faces, and make new acquaintances.”

For Starbucks, “third place” works as a call to action for people to engage on a much deeper level than just getting properly caffeinated. Because as they say, life happens over coffee. And given that they have nearly 30,000 retail shops, the idea of serving as an anchor to community life is one they can legitimately occupy.

Decision-makers at Starbucks aren’t always going to agree on the latest holiday cup design, or exactly how much adult contemporary to include on their playlists, but if they are aligned at the highest brand level, every decision will be in service of a greater purpose. That top-level consistency is felt across the board, even if there are individual variations in look and feel.

When Brand Ideas Become Taglines

Obviously, Starbucks would never make “third place” an external message. People would be like, “Your coffee won third place in a coffee contest? I’ll pass, thanks.” But sometimes, brand ideas are so compelling and succinct that they become external taglines.

As brand consultant Will Burns says, “True brand ideas are insulted when you call them taglines. And for God’s sake, don’t call them ‘slogans’ or the brand may unfriend you on Facebook. The best taglines rationalize everything a company/organization has done and inspire everything it will do.”

Most of the time, taglines are simply rational facts communicated well to an audience. They want you to know a piece of information that is very specific. When we think about Nike’s “Just do it,” Apple’s “Think different,” or Kaiser Permanente’s “Thrive,” something much bigger is happening. No one is talking about product-level specifics; they are appealing to a higher state of emotion, purpose, and meaning. These are inspirational, aspirational brand ideas.

LEGO, a brand that has celebrated creativity since 1932, is sublime. Their idea, “Inspiring the builders of tomorrow,” is felt throughout every manifestation of their brand. The company’s retail outlets are designed spaces for family “building” events and kid-friendly exploration areas. LEGOLAND encourages kids to open their imaginations at construction sites that dot the theme parks. Even LEGO movies inspire and encourage the act of making.

GEICO’s “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance” has seared itself onto the public’s subconscious, but it doesn’t really evoke an emotion or communicate anything about the types of people who use their product. We just imagine a vaguely Australian gecko and move on.

Beyond campaigns, beyond marketing jargon, a great brand idea establishes a common way of seeing. It’s a viewfinder for observing a brand’s unique place in the world, the industry, and most importantly, in people’s hearts.

So, what’s your brand idea?

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design firm for product-proven B2B technology and AI companies.

Make It Sexy: The Big Impact of Branding “Boring” Things

Posted on by Chris Ames

Branding and advertising are infamous for making us covet things we don’t actually need. The super sleek sheen of a Tesla or an iPhone or a bra designed by NASA’s top scientists are alluring, but at the end of the day, they are merely luxuries. The question of getting people to need something they want is sales 101. But more and more, branding agencies are tackling the inverse.

How do you get people to want the things they need? Is there a space for surprise and delight in the most boring, pedestrian motions of daily life: applying a bandage, brushing our teeth, wiping our bums? Welcome to the world of utilitarian branding.

Utilitarian Branding

In our work with clients, we constantly espouse that nothing sells itself. No matter how brilliant your app is, if it isn’t differentiated in a meaningful way, it will get lost in an increasingly crowded market. Why don’t they get it?

Later at the supermarket, while staring at the endless wall of variously-plied toilet paper, I totally get it. Everyone draws their own line in the sand around the things they deem to be purely functional. I don’t want toilet paper; it’s just a basic thing I need to keep existing. As such, I’ve probably purchased a different brand every trip, based on price, stock, or some arbitrary impulse about the cartoon mascot. The big issue—and market opportunity—is that the basics are often invisible to customers. You’re not competing against another brand, you’re competing against indifference. All it takes is a little branding love to transform a random purchase into a deliberate, ongoing relationship.

Who Gives a Crap

Australian brand Who Gives a Crap might be the platonic ideal of millennial branding. Take a thing no one enjoys shopping for—toilet paper and tissues—give it gorgeous design, ship it directly to people, and donate 50% of the profits to build toilets in the developing world. If you had a crowdfunding launch, a subscription service, a purpose-driven mission, or irreverent copy on your card, you just hit bingo. In my entire life, never once did I imagine someone complimenting me on my toilet paper. But through great branding, they’ve managed to bring some delight to the crappiest part of your day.

Welly and Tru-Color Bandages

The best branding addresses a pain point, and the good folks at Welly understand this better than anybody. Co-founded by Eric Ryan, the same mind behind Method and Olly, Welly offers vibrant, delightful, and stackable first aid kits. The tin kits include bravery bandages for those who love an adventure, single-use antibiotic ointments, and other first aid essentials like medical scissors and tweezers. Like Who Gives a Crap before them, they are taking something dull and infusing it with an abundance of life.

Beyond creating customer loyalty, utilitarian branding can have a profound effect on our identities and the way we move around the world. Earlier this year, 45-year-old Dominque Apollon had an emotional reaction to the most “boring” act possible: putting on a bandage.

“Ever wonder why bandages were only available in one skin-tone shade?” asks wellness brand Tru-Color. “We did, because there’s beauty in individuality, no matter the skin-tone.”

For years, various apps, products, and solutions have promised to transform our lives on a massive scale. The truth is, sometimes the most transformative moments in our day come from the smallest corners.

“I definitely didn’t expect the complex emotions that would swirl as I watched it just … blend in,” writes Apollon. “A seemingly trivial exercise I’ve repeated 1000x on my body with ‘regular’ ones since childhood. This felt like belonging. Like feeling valued. Sadness for my younger self and millions of kids of color.”

In the eyes of Apollon, this “purely functional” product has a purpose far beyond the utilitarian.

Put Utilitarian Branding to Good Use

There are countless other examples. Virgin America turned the drudgery of the airplane safety video into a viral pop song. Shhhowercap manages to turn the least sexy object alive into a bona fide power statement. Quip adds an elegance and futurism to toothbrushes normally reserved for astronauts.

All of these are brilliant in their own way, but when I think about the most impactful opportunities for the future, it’s applying these lessons to underutilized resources. How many more people would interact with say, the DMV, a public health clinic, or a library if they looked and operated with the speed of the other brands in our lives?

The UK went to big lengths to redesign its postal service, as well as the products and experiences it offers. For some, that slightly improves a boring errand. For others, that could be the difference between getting a passport, opening up your first bank account, or getting a driver’s license. In other words, freedom and autonomy.

We will always be attracted to the biggest, shiniest inventions in tech. But if you really want to make an impact on people’s lives, start small.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design firm for product-proven B2B technology and AI companies.

Maintaining Brand Relevance in a Fast-Paced World

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Brand relevance amidst new expectations

In a time of constant change and heightened customer expectations, the greatest danger facing most brands today is loss of brand relevance. People are ultra-connected. Markets constantly shift. New trends emerge. Competitors enter and shake things up. And customers expect more from the brands they buy from. As a result, many businesses struggle to stay relevant—trying to get ahead of competition, adapt fast enough, and maintain their position in the market.

In order to survive, brands need to evolve in a way that differentiates them from their competitors, and at the same time meets the needs of the customers who matter to their business. Oftentimes faced with an issue of relevance, brands struggle between two ends—wanting to gain parity with competitors and adapt to market needs, while feeling worried about losing established brand credibility or diluting their brand image.

As a result, maintaining brand relevance comes down to two courses of action:

  1. Adapting to the current needs of customers in the market, or
  2. Disrupting what people want to buy. Many businesses do this by creating new categories or subcategories altogether—altering the way customers approach a purchase, and making their brand a pioneer in a new category

Sometimes in these situations, brands have to reposition altogether. This is why brands that maintain long-term relevance are often bold, strong brands—constantly moving forward, innovating, adapting, and disrupting, while making sure they stay true to the core of their brand. So how do you know what direction to take? How do you make sure your brand maintains value in a competitive marketplace?

Here are some rules of brand relevance

Be customer-centric. Everything your brand invests in, builds, and brings to market should be designed to meet the needs of your target markets. This includes needs that customers themselves might not yet be aware of. It’s about working to see what others don’t. These kinds of insights can allow you to create brand relevance in ways that your competitors are not. So get in your customers’ heads. Analyze their purchase patterns. Examine the ways they live their daily lives and build a brand that integrates seamlessly into the lives of the people who matter to your success.

Focus on experience. Focusing on your customers means focusing on how people experience your brand. As a result, every touchpoint counts, and relevancy can only be maintained if your brand interacts and engages in relevant ways. It’s not only about a single product. Or a new website. Your brand has to create a holistic experience that is relevant to your target audiences at every point.

Don’t forget what makes you different. Jumping on a bandwagon may be a short-term fix, but it’s not going to help build long-term brand relevance. You have to adapt in ways that still play to your brand strengths and emphasize why your brand is different. You don’t want to lose your brand’s differentiating factors in an attempt to stay relevant.

Create, innovate, and engage. Be open, take chances, and don’t be afraid to push your limits, engage in fresh ways, and find unique ways of meeting your customers’ needs. Don’t put your brand or business in a box. If you do, you will lose any chance of staying relevant in a competitive market. So as leaders, make sure you strive to build a workplace that encourages creativity and innovation. And don’t fear doing something new.

Align decisions with your purpose. Make sure you’re making authentic brand decisions. Trying to stay relevant but not doing it authentically never works. So look to where you want your brand to head. What are your long-term goals and aspirations? How can you maintain relevance while moving towards those goals?

Relevant brands are successful brands

Brand relevance is never a sure thing. Anything can change at any moment. As a result, smart brands understand the rules of relevance, and earn and re-earn their position in the marketplace each and every day. Think of all the brands and even entire categories of brands that have fallen off the map, many of which used to hold immense value for groups of customers. How? Loss of relevance is probably to blame.

Maintaining brand relevance means maintaining the trust and loyalty of your customers. Brands that commit to being relevant brands are focused on and oftentimes ahead of what their customers might expect and need, willing to rise to the top, take a risk, and redefine what they do and/or how they do it, all while staying true to who they are as a brand.

So take time to consider how you can build a more relevant brand. Maintaining brand relevance is the key to remaining valuable to the people who matter to your business and where it’s headed.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design firm for product-proven B2B technology and AI companies.