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Category: Emotion is the Strategy

The Fastest Path from Vision to Impact

Posted on by Emotive Brand

At Emotive Brand, we believe that to ignite transformation, visionary leaders need more than a process. You need a propulsion system. A strategic jet pack for navigating unprecedented complexity and disruption. We call it Emotional Acceleration.

As always, change starts with an idea that transcends accepted yet invisible limits. But more than ever, success depends on speed of activation. How fast can you align teams, shift behavior, and inspire action?

You can launch into endless proof points, but unless people can feel it—unless they not only see the path ahead but are deeply compelled to see where it leads—vision remains stuck in the realm of idea, not reality.

Ideas need believers.  This truth lives at the heart of Emotional Acceleration, our approach to transformation. It’s how we move clients rapidly through an evidence-based arc, from nascent vision to lasting impact. Here’s how it works:

 

Illustration of the arc of transformation from Vision to Belief to Momentum, to Impact.

 

Transformation starts with vision

Emotional Acceleration launches from a clear articulation of the power, potential, and meaning of the vision, balancing precision and inspiration.

What are the purpose, values, and beliefs that give rise to the vision? How will this vision shape the future, and for whom? Here, our clients’ boldest ambitions find their footing.

“Emotive’s strategic approach revamped our brand, aligning it seamlessly with our vision for CodeOps. Through collaborative efforts, they crafted our narrative and positioned us effectively in the market.”

—Lesley Rubin, VP Marketing, Crowdbotics

 

Shared belief makes vision real.

Audacious vision must become a shared mission that people can not only see and understand, but feel and own.

We gauge how teams, customers, communities, and stakeholders feel today, and determine the emotional shift needed to cultivate buy-in, alignment, and deeply held belief.

“I’ve been part of a lot of these projects and it’s usually a case of the CMO leading this. Sometimes, the CEO is excited about it, but then it sort of peters out. We have the CFO excited. We have the CTO excited. Everybody’s like, “This is awesome. We can’t wait for a new brand.”

—Dennis Fois, CEO, Bloomerang

 

Momentum builds as belief drives action.

On a solid foundation of shared belief, it’s time to move internal and external audiences to action, motivating new behaviors and choices.

Online or off, in big and small moments, we craft interactions that intentionally shift and reshape clients’ emotional impact on people, to forge connection and loyalty.

“It was an amazing partnership to accelerate us from a start-up to a growth-stage company much faster.”

—Eric Futoran, CEO, Embrace

 

Impact endures and expands.

This iterative, collaborative phase sustains and amplifies transformative outcomes, adapting as client goals evolve and the landscape changes.

We measure essential results, including business metrics and emotional impact, to identify needs for refinement and emerging opportunities.

“Emotive Brand got us right from the start. They were able to understand our technology, our vision for the future, the nuances of what makes us different, and delivered us a brand that launched us and moved us from stealth to exit.”

—Alex Henson, Head of Marketing, Moveworks

 

Emotional Acceleration is dynamic, not linear. It’s flexible, not one-size-fits-all. The path looks different, and unfolds via unique trajectories, for each organization.

Yet the principles of clarifying a bold, differentiated vision, building shared belief, generating momentum through meaningful experiences, and sustaining impact with thoughtful calibration? They apply to all industries, sectors, and objectives–because all rely on the efforts and emotional investment of human beings.

Roundtable with Bloomerang CEO Dennis Fois and CMO Ann Fellman: Part 1

Posted on by Emotive Brand

The Power of Emotion

One of the most purposeful organizations we’ve ever collaborated with, Bloomerang helps nonprofits raise more with the end-to-end giving platform and expert team built for purpose.

This has been a particularly rewarding partnership, with client-agency alchemy arising from a shared belief. It’s the idea embedded in our name—that strategic use of emotion is central to the success of brands and businesses.

At the risk of making them blush, Bloomerang’s CEO Dennis Fois and CMO Ann Fellman are the kind of leaders we call Visionary Reinventors. They have the emotional intelligence and daring to push higher, and look deeper, for the good of their business, people, industry, and the 23,000 nonprofits they serve.

They were gracious enough to sit down with us for a roundtable discussion exploring how emotion is core to driving their tremendous growth.

 

Emotive Brand:  When you composed the RFP, emotion was front and center in terms of how you thought about success. We’re curious—where does this passion for emotion come from? What was missing from the equation prior to our work together?

Dennis:  My feelings were that Bloomerang fell too much on the empathy side, without any bite or desire or drive or ambition. The opportunity here is to change the [nonprofit] industry, where there’s a scarcity mindset—that you can’t ask for more. They [nonprofits] read bad reports: “Oh, Giving Tuesday was down.” The academia around it is depressing. And so there is this construct of constraints and not abundance. I want to create a bright light of ambition–fast-charging, but also with hope and optimism.

This is a time when we’ve never seen so much generational wealth. There are over 11 million millionaires in the United States alone. We’ve never had this amount of disposable income. There’s literally no reason why giving shouldn’t be going up every year. So this idea for emotion, this passion, needs to come through.

I want to sit on a rocking chair on a ranch when I’m older and reflect that we built a generational company that is looked on as, “They actually shook things up. They were the catalysts for more investment, more technology, better resources.”

But if you connect yourself to the industry and say, “We’re going to do more here,” then you need to bring empathy while also being a bit of a challenger.

Emotive Brand:  I’ve been sitting in a group of management consultants for the past two days, and one of the things that we heard loud and clear again and again was that leaders who are all empathy are the worst leaders imaginable—empathy has to be conjoined with performance for any impact to actually occur.

Dennis:  That’s well said. Yesterday at our kickoff, we talked about the issue that we have–and that’s complacency. We are doing so well. Our retention rates are off the hook. I have never seen anything like it. And you could say, “We are on a tear here,” but if you’re being intellectually honest, you say, “Are the gross retention rates, the fact that your customers don’t churn, because you’re that good? Or is it the feature of a complacent industry?”

If you allow the standards of the industry to define your standards, you’re done. And so there needs to be a perpetual engine, an internal drive to lift and change the industry, to overcome inertia. It’s very easy to forgive yourself for mediocre performance when you’re doing good work.

It’s a wonderful blanket of comfort to say, “Yeah, but I’m working on something really important. I helped that nonprofit. I am doing life-changing work here.” It’s a dynamic that we have to manage.

Emotive Brand:  Ann, amidst all the success that Dennis has just outlined, what did you believe was missing from the brand today or the equation that you were bringing to market?

Ann:  I grew up in B2B marketing. My whole career was tech, and speaking tech. I’d read paragraphs and be like, ‘What on earth did I just read? I have no idea what that said. That means absolutely nothing to me.’

So I’ve always believed that this is not B2B. This is B2H. We are selling to human beings. We are selling to people who have emotions. Whether I’m making a software sale, or buying some consulting, I’m going to be emotional about spending that money. I just am. And so I’ve always been one to say, “Can we push the brand, the marketing, the message to an emotional level, because we’re humans.” We’re not selling to computers–yet.

It’s okay to put emotional color and commentary into your message and how you show up, because it’s more enjoyable. You remember when you have fun doing something. We had a wild kickoff yesterday, talking about some pretty serious stuff. We’re asking people to work harder, do more, and at the same time, we’re laughing and making jokes about poop emojis– [laughter]

Dennis:  Sorry.

Ann:  And so we’re being real human beings with emotion to connect. We’re going to do hard stuff, but we’re going to have joy in that. So when we think about what makes a really good company, yeah, you got to have all the tech, but you’ve got to have a powerful story that connects with humans, right there, front and center.

Emotive Brand:  That’s amazing. We just wrote a white paper about the role of emotion, and the research says it’s even more important in B2B. Maybe because the decisions are big and weighty, and there’s more riding on it.

Ann:  Yeah. You could lose your job if you make the wrong decision–put in some really crappy tech and you end up destroying the teams, their momentum, and morale. There’s so many layers of emotion behind these decisions.

Emotive Brand:  Our experience working with many tech companies over many years is that they undervalue the so-called soft skills and soft metrics that actually drive not just decision-making, but the change and transformation necessary for those companies to show up in the world in a really significant way. It’s interesting how much that’s pushed to the margins, especially in the world of B2B, where to Amber’s point, I think it has the most potential to make a difference.

Dennis:  Yes. This is a really good point. I understand where it comes from, especially when you’re talking about a technology company. Listen, the technology companies are by and large product companies. The goal as you scale is to sell the same product over and over. And if you’re not careful, it creates a very inside-out view—you want to stay very close to the true essence of the product, describe that in the best possible way and get everybody to say the same things over and over again. Obviously, that avoids a real understanding of how people buy, so that’s where leadership needs to step in.
Most organizations want to sell based on the value of change, and you can only sell the change if you have stories.

Ann:  It’s always the phrasing of ‘this thing does blah-blah-blah.’ But no. Now you need to fill in the last piece, which is, so I can do what? Who cares? So I can raise more, so then I can deliver more.

Emotive Brand:  As you frame the success of your leadership team, I can’t help but think that on some level, it’s because there is a greater sense of emotional investment, not just in each other, but in the success. It cannot only be a rational desire for success.

Dennis:  I think what all of us have in common is that it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to be working on a project like this. It’s where unbelievable financial success and outcomes and high quality company-building comes together with a genuine world impact. It’s not a unicorn story where we’re changing the world through AI. No, it’s real societal impact. Normally, you have to pick one of the two.

Ann:  Yeah, we chose the hard path. We chose to push ourselves further.

Emotive Brand:  It’s like a reflection of what you want for nonprofits. The bar raising.

Ann:  We’re choosing to raise the bar, and we’re going to take our teams and our customers with us in that choice.

Emotive Brand:  Yeah. I mean I love the proverbial eating your own dog food, but I’m curious, do you see brand as the mechanism to communicate that to your prospects and current customers?

Ann:  It has to. No customer wakes up thinking about your business every day or your product, unless there’s an absolute problem. So your brand is that positive manifestation of the outcomes, and then you’ve got to put it front and center, all the time.

Emotive Brand:  And so is success in your mind if Bloomerang is always connoted with unlocking that sense of abundance and opportunity? Is that the ultimate kind of emotional unlock that you hope to achieve?

Dennis:  I think so, because if we successfully do what you just said, then you basically blast it through all of the excuses not to grow. Now you’re confronted with your own reality–what is driving you? Well hopefully, it’s that passion for the purpose.

 

Our gratitude goes out to Ann and Dennis for taking the time to reflect with us. Keep an eye out for Part 2 of our conversation, focused on the power of partnership. We’ll look into the alchemy of Bloomerang and Emotive Brand’s stellar collaboration.

The Future Belongs to Those Who Make Us Feel

Posted on by Emotive Brand

As technological, political, and societal shifts accelerate at mind-scrambling speed, not all are lost. A new type of leader is rising to meet this unprecedented moment: Visionary reinventors.

While more traditional leaders are disoriented by growing complexity, visionary reinventors maintain clarity, direction, and unstoppable momentum.

They know that as AI ascends, uncertainty abounds, and culture morphs and even fractures, one thing remains constant–the strategic power of human emotion.

By defining, honing, and owning the emotional impact of the brands and organizations they lead, visionary reinventors forge meaningful and enduring connections with customers, investors, and employees.

This emotion-centered approach empowers a fiercely proactive posture. Visionary reinventors don’t wait for the world to be ready.

These modern leaders move people, markets, and industries above features and functionality to the higher ground of belief, a place of new perspective, where change is not feared–but desired, demanded, and inevitable.

They know that innovation alone does not and can not unleash true disruption. Visionary reinventors understand that today, more than ever, disruption unfolds from an emotional epicenter.

Passionate conviction ripples out, igniting the energy of a movement. What once felt like foundational truth is revealed as dogma, suddenly inadequate and unbearable, making way for new possibilities and deeper purpose.

After all, the elevation of human potential is what makes technology truly powerful. And in ever more saturated markets, how products make us feel is what drives their value.

Consider these two examples, each with a functional and emotional premise.

image-functional-and-emotional-premise-examples

Make no mistake–the emotional framing captures truth. It simply translates the functional premise into the human meaning, painting a picture not of a product but of a better future for people.

This is how visionary reinventors communicate. They don’t convince—they inspire belief. They don’t pull people along—they create a strong emotional current that moves people to alignment and action.

Ideas propelled by emotion have a magnetism and magnitude that can’t be neatly contained in any pitch deck. How they make people feel can’t be replicated by competitors. And once unleashed and embraced, they can’t be stopped.

Emotion’s catalytic role in transformative leadership lives at the core of Emotive Brand’s approach. Every day, we have the privilege of partnering with visionary reinventors to reimagine brands, create categories, and ignite change.

We’ve seen it firsthand. The future isn’t built by those who wait for the world to be ready—it’s built by those who make the world feel ready.

The Business of Transformation is Human

Posted on by Amber Johnson

How we feel matters. It determines—and has the power to transform—how we show up in the world and for each other, and in the end, the type of impact we create. We see it in our work with Emotive Brand clients all the time.

The most rewarding part of strategic writing and design is not spotting our work in the wild—perched on grocery store shelves, splashed across websites, or looming large on billboards. It’s having the opportunity to change how people think and feel about their work. You know, that thing they spend most of their limited time on earth doing.

At Emotive, we get to see clients’ faces brighten as we reframe what their company and brand stand for, to illuminate higher purpose and uncover deeper meaning.

When the strategy and creative are right, it’s clear–because sparks of transformation flicker before your eyes. Client teams light up with new ideas to shape all areas of the business. Their energy level and ambition rise. Too many leaders say emotion is intangible. We know it’s palpable.

How people feel matters more than ever, and can tank or propel the success of brands and businesses. Here are three reasons why.

Humans now face constant change and uncertainty.
The seismic jolt of the pandemic keeps reverberating, alongside a push to get people back into the office. There’s the specter of layoffs, political division, and the high cost of living. With technology, epitomized by AI, progressing faster than humans can adapt, upheaval is neverending.

“Change leaves people and organizations feeling confused, vulnerable, and fractured at a time when resilience, cohesion, and collaboration are necessary to perform at the highest levels.”

—Harvard Business Review

 

People are exhausted by constant change. So if you want to spearhead transformation, you have to give them something worth caring about, something they can feel and believe in.

People are fed up with corporate bullshit.
The scourge of shrinkflation. Greenwashing. Planned obsolescence. Employees’ and consumers’ tolerance for being deceived is depleting. That’s why the number of B Corps and Benefit Corporations keeps climbing, along with the popularity of de-influencers and the “right to repair” movement.

“During the challenging year of 2020, only 4.5% of B Corps failed, compared to 12.5% of American businesses overall.”

—Federal Reserve Board

 

Getting ahead of these issues, instead of waiting to be exposed and called out, is not just the right thing to do. By building trust and loyalty with employees and consumers, a proactive approach can save and sustain businesses.

Humans need more than products and paychecks.
Your brand or organization has a golden opportunity to lift people up at a time when all of us are fighting battles that wear us down. Like navigating education and healthcare systems that fall short, being squeezed as part of the sandwich generation, or needing purpose at work but struggling to afford soaring rents as a Gen Zer.

Retention, loyalty, and growth—the aims of transformation programs—are best served through genuine connection and alignment with how people feel and what they care about.

“The human emotions of people working at the centre of a transformation play a pivotal role in its success or failure.”

—EY and Oxford University report

 

At Emotive, we leverage emotion to transform brands and businesses in ways that contribute, even just a little bit, to a better world for people. No mere paycheck can compare.

The Unstoppable Rise of Emotion: Why Leading with Feeling is the Rational Choice

Posted on by Emotive Brand

Wherever humans are present, emotion is a constant. 

It’s the silent force guiding decisions, the vital spark that translates ideas into action. We know it intuitively: the choices that matter most—whether you’re choosing a partner, purpose, or product—aren’t tabulated in spreadsheets. They’re made in hearts and minds.

So why in the world of business do we so often dismiss emotion?

At Emotive Brand, we’ve always believed that emotion isn’t just powerful—it’s essential. Feelings drive loyalty, ignite movements, and deliver measurable outcomes. Our new white paper, The Unstoppable Rise of Emotion, makes the case by showing how strategic use of emotion amplifies impact in ways logic alone never could.

This isn’t just a theory. Emotion has become a pillar of effective leadership, branding, and business strategy.

Why Emotion Is Now Imperative 

As generational and technological shifts redefine expectations, emotion is no longer optional—it’s the ultimate competitive advantage.

Decisions—personal and professional—are emotional at their core. And the data proves it. Reflecting a dramatic shift that began accelerating in the late 90’s, 70% of brand decisions are now driven by emotional factors, and emotionally connected customers deliver 306% higher lifetime value.

Emotion is the key to staking your claim, standing out in saturated markets, and forging real connections in an increasingly skeptical world. 

What You’ll Discover in the White Paper

The Unstoppable Rise of Emotion doesn’t just explain why emotion works. It’s your guide to transforming how you connect, lead, and grow. Download the paper to explore:

  • The Science of Emotion: Why our decisions are rooted in feeling—and what that means for business.
  • The Barriers to Emotion: Cultural biases and structural blind spots that keep organizations from fully embracing emotion as strategy.
  • The Framework for Change: How to rethink impact and embed the power of emotion throughout your brand, culture, and leadership.

The way forward isn’t a feel-good tagline or even a generous injection of emotion into a campaign. Success requires that you lead with feeling—everywhere, all the time.

For Leaders Who See that More Is Possible

The future belongs to those who can connect—not just inform with rational benefits, but resonate through shared humanity. It belongs to leaders who understand that emotion is the driving force behind the most transformative decisions we make.

For leaders who want to build legacies that include but also transcend brands, The Unstoppable Rise of Emotion is your blueprint.

Download the white paper today and reimagine the role of emotion to amplify your impact, deepen relationships, and earn enduring loyalty.

Feel the Shift: The Rational Strategy for Emotional Transformation

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Humans are hard-wired to resist change. You can’t achieve transformation simply by enforcing new systems or strategies. You have to move people—employees, customers, and leaders—toward something greater. Something they can feel and believe in.

That’s why Emotive Brand embraces emotion as an ultra-potent tool for driving change and growth at every level. And this isn’t a hunch. The data is clear: emotionally resonant brands deliver 306% greater customer lifetime value.

Emotion is more than just a fleeting feeling. It’s a life force. It’s the spark that drives decision-making and forges loyalty. It’s how employees evolve into passionate advocates, how customers become lifelong champions, and how ideas turn into movements that redefine industries.

Yet, for many leaders, emotion remains ethereal—untethered and unquantifiable–due to a lack of the emotion-based metrics that, finally, more and more companies are using to reshape and reimagine performance. It’s all too easy to fall back into the comfort of the status quo: familiar tools of logic, data, and process.

By pulling these familiar levers, you may sustain performance in the short term, but you’ll rarely–if ever–ignite transformation.

By contrast, when you add emotion to the change management process:

  • Decisions resonate and inspire alignment.
  • Cultures thrive, not just function.
  • Brands forge deeper, longer-lasting connections.

We work with Visionary Reinventors—leaders who understand that emotion has the power to inspire action, build belief, and catalyze growth. Whether it’s redefining categories, aligning culture to accelerate ambition, or creating brands that matter, our mission is to amplify their impact by harnessing emotion.

True transformation is the outcome of bridging reason and passion, human and brand, in ways that resonate so deeply that people are moved to action.

If you’re ready to transform, we welcome you to read our guide, The Unstoppable Rise of Emotion, and discover how to leverage emotion as your most rational—and powerful—strategy.  Download it today.

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.

An Emotive Founding Story

Posted on by Emotive Brand

Emotive Brand was born out of a belief that the brands that make you feel are the ones that move you to action. This founding tenet arose from real, hands-on experience.

In 2009, Tracy Lloyd and Bella Banbury had the guts and heart to not only start an agency, but ignite a movement to change how brands communicate. What those early days lacked in glamor, they made up for in joy–and grit.

Emotive Brand’s first home was more warehouse than studio, complete with broken glass, no heat, and a single bathroom that was also somehow the kitchen. Yet executives from some of the world’s most iconic brands not only loved their time there, they kept coming back for the kind of collaboration that leaves you feeling lighter, brighter, and ready to take on the world.

Tracy and Bella’s fundamental premise was that if you could define the emotion you want people to experience, clearly express why your brand matters, and evoke those feelings at every touchpoint, you could generate a flywheel of enduring connection and impact. 

This strategy was never limited to crafting clients’ brands. The Emotive team lived and breathed the philosophy, with consideration for every client interaction–from a mid-meeting tequila shot to greeting clients at the ferry with Blue Bottle coffee in hand. Bella explains, “When people came to our office, we wanted that to be the best part of their day. We wanted it to be an experience beyond what they could imagine. It was this balance of incredible preparation, polish–”

“And, you know, personalization for each client,” Tracy interjects, with the easy rhythm and warm spark that defines their partnership, best-friendship, and Emotive Brand.

Tracy continues, “Let’s be real, though—emotion is not what brings most clients to our door. They come to us for solutions to complex, mission-critical business problems. But to dismiss emotion as fluff is an often fatal mistake for brands. After all, regardless of what you’re selling, every buyer on the planet is human. And feelings happen to be a very powerful element in breaking through and connecting with humans to motivate decision-making.” 

From day one, they left the status quo—where logic overshadowed emotion—far behind. The ripple effect of Tracy and Bella’s connection and conviction extended outward, attracting a crew of whip smart strategists, designers, and innovators who were just as passionate about balancing head and heart. 

Over 15+ years, each individual has contributed new insight, originality, and inspiration. Together, Tracy, Bella, and team discovered–again and again–the enormous power of emotion to move people, advance ideas, and grow businesses. Never complacent, Emotive has continuously shaped and refined their approach, learning which strategic and creative components catch fire and which fizzle out.

Tracy and Bella’s vision for a different kind of agency became a reality and, thanks to the resilience of Emotive’s purpose and people, it has endured. There were stretches of economic uncertainty and political upheaval, when the agency learned to adapt and respond to changing client needs. And when COVID chaos descended, they found new paths to connection no matter the distance.

Through it all, they refused to compromise. Emotive has helped industry heavyweights and disruptive upstarts find their footing and seize opportunity, whether that’s rebranding after an acquisition or shaking things up in a market shift. Holding steady at the center of the work is a unique focus on what Tracy and Bella call “Good Growth”—growth that’s transformative, sustainable, and most importantly, human.

As founders and friends, they’ve built a remarkable legacy of powerful brands through exceptionally collaborative partnership, with impact that expands what’s possible for clients’ businesses and people. 

The movement they kicked off in 2009 continues to expand and unfurl, more resonant than ever. With the rise of emotionally intelligent leaders who center purpose and seek to catalyze change, Emotive Brand is poised to help bridge meaningful emotional connection and measurable business success like never before. 

Guiding their teams and clients into the future, the two are as united, committed, and inspired as ever. Playing to each other’s strengths and bringing out the best in the talent, leaders, and brands drawn into their orbit. Thankful for all they’ve learned and achieved, and everyone who contributed along the way. As they look ahead, Tracy and Bella know–and feel–that the best is yet to come. 

“Tracy is fearless and so unique—she becomes the CEO Whisperer, with a way of telling them what everybody else is too scared to say. She can deliver truth to people who are often shielded from it. She does it from a place of strength and a foundation of having done the work, but once she breaks through, trust is earned and the relationship is locked in. Amazing.”
–Bella

“Bella is the glue that keeps it all together at Emotive Brand. From the day she put on the CEO hat, she made shit happen. We all know there would be no Emotive Brand without her because she figures out the hard stuff, enabling every single one of us to deliver easier and faster. She’s operationalized how we work so we can do better work for our clients. As her partner in crime and co-founder, I feel like with her beside me, there’s nothing we can’t do together.”
–Tracy

 

Fin.

Redefining What it Means to be a Tech Branding Agency

Posted on by Emotive Brand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s been a year

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

Business and Brand Strategy: Separated at Birth

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Peanut butter and jelly. Abbott and Costello. Disco and dancing. Some things in this world simply go together. So why is it that business strategy and brand strategy don’t always get invited to the same parties?

Growth is the Goal
We’ve written a lot about the importance of aligning business and brand strategy. Leaders intellectually get this, but many organizations fall into ways of working where business and brand strategy represent two different schools of thought. Delivering on financial goals (business) versus understanding customers and their needs (brand). Defining winning through the lens of revenue, profit, and market share versus winning hearts (and then wallets) through engaging experiences. Economics versus Psychology. Science versus Art. The truth is, these are just different sides of a bigger conversation (we call it a Growth Manifesto) that revolves around how an organization drives growth.

The lack of alignment between business and brand strategy results from not having this shared vision of growth. Without it, the business side of the house will identify, quantify, and prioritize growth opportunities that most readily deliver on an organization’s financial goals. Brand and marketing teams will develop new and better ways to meet their customer engagement goals. Product teams will develop roadmaps and pursue innovation based on how they see user needs and technology evolving. Sales teams will go to market with tactics that drive immediate wins. HR leaders will attract and retain talent based on what each silo needs. Everyone will hope (assume) they are marching to the beat of the same drummer.

The reality: situations that resemble a three- or even six-legged race. But it doesn’t have to be like this.

Aligning leaders around where the business needs to go begins with getting clear on ALL the ways an organization can or will deliver value—for customers, employees, stakeholders, and its communities. When you’ve aligned on the value you can create and the impact you want to deliver, getting brand and business strategy working together is a far easier task.

When was the last time you brought your leadership team together to discuss how you create value and for whom? A workshop that gives everyone a platform to discuss opportunities for creating new value through the lens of brand, product, customer engagement, go-to-market strategies, investing in employees, and supporting causes and communities can give you a bigger picture of the opportunity landscape. And it creates a conversation that brings business and brand strategy into the same arena.

What Your Business and Brand Strategy Should Answer Together
Once you’ve brought people together with a shared vision for creating new value, it’s time to get down to brass tacks. Answering these questions can take you a long way toward building a plan for how every part of your organization gets aligned on growth:

  • What are the short- and long-term goals for the business? Is there an exit strategy? A merger or acquisition in the future? How does your brand need to support these efforts?
  • What are the revenue and growth expectations? Are there specific target revenue goals the board is looking for? Your investors? Wall Street? Are your goals based on revenue, profitability, market share, or something different? How does your brand need to behave to support that strategy?
  • What is the growth strategy? Is it based on selling products or solutions? Innovating new products and offerings? What role does your brand play post-sales?
  • What’s the human capital plan for achieving your desired business goals? Does that involve recruiting a different team? How can your talent acquisition team become an extension of your brand team?
  • What is the product roadmap? Are you entering into new markets? Developing new products? What are you building vs. buying to enhance your product offering? How can your brand open doors for you in adjacent markets?
  • Is your business structured to accelerate the progress toward goals and objectives? Do you need to shift your organizational structure? Are you ready to bring new members into the C-suite? Do you have a brand leader who is also a business leader?
  • How should you allocate resources to accomplish these goals?

These questions are integral for shaping both your business and brand strategies. By looking at brand and business together in the same set of questions, you’re ensuring alignment is in place before you start to execute.

Clear Goals Enable a Clear Brand Strategy
With a clearer picture of where you want your business to go, the brand strategy will answer:

  • What category do you fit into?
  • How do you define product-market fit?
  • What is the competitive landscape?
  • What is your positioning in the marketplace?
  • Who are your top target audiences?
  • What is the value proposition?
  • In what ways is your brand unique?
  • How does your brand look and feel?
  • What voice does your brand speak in?

By having the conversations required to make business strategy and brand strategy work together, you’re creating your own competitive advantage (in our experience, most companies don’t commit to the discipline of doing this type of collaborative exploration). As a result, you will not only find more opportunities to differentiate your brand in ways that create value, but because the organization is aligned, you’ll be able to do it with far less friction. And this is how you drive short- and long-term growth in any market condition.

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

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