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Category: Narratives & Storytelling

How Client-Side Experience Informs Agency-Side Strategy: Interview with Emotive Brand Creative Director

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Interview with Skott Bennett, Creative Director

As Creative Director of Emotive Brand, Skott puts his client-side experience to work. An expert at creating meaningful solutions that meet the unique needs of both our customers and clients, Skott offers thoughts on how his years inside companies much like many of our clients inform his work agency-side today.

What drew you to agency work?

I always tried to bring an agency approach to my client-side experiences. And where I found this approach really worked was with brand-related projects. Identifying and defining the true purpose behind an organization, and then developing and implementing those solutions across the organization – that’s where I was most fulfilled. And I’m thrilled that it’s now my focus – helping brands better articulate what makes them special and unique.

How do you think working on in-house creative teams prepared you for your current role?

Working on the inside of technology brands – like many of Emotive Brand’s clients – made me fully aware of the challenges these kinds of organizations face. These companies are founded and fueled by smart, determined people who come from high-performance engineering cultures. They have incredible vision, but oftentimes something breaks down when they try to present that vision to the outside world.

Articulating a brand’s purpose isn’t easy. You spend years building complex technology that solves tough problems and then you take it to market by making it simple? I have nothing but empathy for founders or leaders who get stuck on that. It’s a contradiction, but ultimately “look how hard this was to do!” isn’t the story that’s going to delight a customer or grow a business.

That’s why there’s so much value in ensuring that key stakeholders – those people who labored over their solutions and products – play a part in the creative/idea process. Even at the early stages, it’s critical. It has to be a team effort.

Having experienced the frustrations inside many companies today first-hand, what do you think some agencies are missing about what their clients really need?

The best agencies don’t just help you come up with a brand strategy or throw a visual identity at you. They actually educate you and help you sell that strategy inside the brand – from top to bottom. Most agencies will get hyper-focused and worried about selling to the person who’s always at the table. But there’s a lot more people who need to get on board for the roll-out to be successful. The agencies who stand out to me are the ones that have helped craft the plan and sell the plan throughout the entire organization.

Working client-side, you also realize how hard internal change really is. You can’t throw people into a new planet without a spacesuit. You have to bring them on the journey. And that’s where the value of having an outside perspective really kicks in.

Can you speak more to the value of bringing an outside perspective in?

What happens a lot inside a company is that people figure out how to get things done inside the building. “I know how to get Sales to agree to X. I know how to get Product to sign off on Y.” Just focused on the inside, it’s easy to lose sight of the most important people: your customers. The audience isn’t just your department head or your CEO, but it’s easy to get stuck in an echo chamber where those people become the only people who matter. And outside perspectives – the really good ones that are based on sound strategy – can smash these type of echo chambers.

Does your in-house experience allow you to build more trust with clients?

The best thing about in-house creative teams – something that even the best agencies can forget – is that no one is going to know the brand as well as them. That’s why you have to make them part of the process. When an in-house team feels like they’re being dictated to and not partnered with, trust is impossible. And no one’s happy.

Respect is key. In-house creative teams must be brought to the table. Maybe they’ve already tried to solve the problem the agency is trying to solve. Maybe no one thought to ask them and they’re sitting on a great idea. Ignoring them is a big mistake. Their talent, insights, and knowledge are integral to getting to the best solution possible.

We talk a lot these days about agile strategy. What’s the importance of agility for clients today?

Tech companies move fast. We all know that. And in-house creative teams move even faster. It’s a go, go, go mentality. Creative brief? Please. Like that ever happens. You have to go straight from idea to execution in most cases. Working on the agency side, you get the chance to take a deeper dive and really explore solutions and methods. But you also have to be agile. Companies are trusting your ability to both deep dive and also to stay quick-footed, flex, and move in pace with their business. As a result, I make it my operating principal to combine the deeper dive into strategy and research with the insane speed of a high-performing in-house team. That’s what clients today need.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco strategy and design agency.

Brand Narrative : The New Origin Story for your Business

Posted on by Paige Lansing Valle

Is Your Origin Story Enough to Make Your Business Stand Out?

Origin stories have been embedded into modern marketing’s rulebook for as long as we can remember. And for good reason. Historically, they did help companies stand out. Origin have traditionally been the place where a brand explains what business ventures meant to their leaders and for the greater world – personally, historically, economically, and culturally. They helped make brands more human and emotive. People could empathize with stories embedded in the American Dream and felt connected to self-starters, underdogs, and garage-to-riches tales.

Now, many startups and new companies still buy into the importance of an origin story for the same reasons. But are origin stories the best way to make your business stand out? Although they are meant to help brands differentiate themselves, these days they all sound alike. And because there’s a clear and recognized formula, people are identifying origin stories as just that: formulaic, sometimes trite, forced, and simply more of the same.

Out With the Old, in With the New

At the same time, increasing choices, crowded marketplaces, and constant innovation demand an even greater need for businesses to stand out. Businesses that stand out connect and communicate why their business matters to the people integral to its success. The epiphany in the garage story is no longer enough. Even worse, the story that leans on someone who “identified a need for…” sounds like the founder was out looking for a pet project. It suggests the brand has no authentic purpose. And forcing a compelling origin story will only hurt your brand in the long run.

It’s time to step away from the expectation of crafting the perfect origin story. If you have to work tirelessly to make it compelling, it’s never going to be the origin story you need. Focus on your corporate brand narrative to bring your brand aspiration and purpose to life. When developing a narrative, consider the following:

Make it Roadmap

A successful brand narrative brings people along on the journey. With this story, they understand the brand purpose in a way that brings them along, answering the questions: “Why does the business and its leaders care so much?” “And why should we care?” This content helps the people most important to your business understand where you came from, where you are, and where you are going.

Take for example Yellow Leaf Hammocks’ narrative. In “addition to sustainable social change, [they] believe passionately in…broadened horizons and a spirit of adventure.” Their narrative describes the impact of what spending “15 minutes a day in a hammock” is for the consumer, the world, and the community they aim to uplift. By framing and explaining how exactly they empower and transform a community of artisan weavers, you become emotionally connected to their brand journey.

Add Emotional Pull

Your corporate brand narrative should convey your passion, explain your aspirations, and make your audiences feel inspired about the road ahead. These emotionally infused goals are, in the end, more important and compelling than the tales of where you first thought of your business idea or where the first product was created. Your narrative is what people will get behind. It is the story that will recruit the talent you need, attract loyal customers, and acquire consistent backers.

Create Common Culture

A corporate brand narrative helps people get aligned around your business by establishing a shareable story. It gives your audiences something to buy into and helps them understand why they should care. By being able to rally around a clear and unified purpose, they are able to join you in sharing your goals and aspirations. The stronger and more clear your narrative, the more focused, effective, and inspired the people who matter to your business will be.

As an example, Sweetgreen, a local-foods restaurant chain, tells their story in a very simple way that brings everyone together around a common set of values. Because the company believes food brings people together, inspiring and growing a strong community built around common goals is especially important to their success.

Build Brand Engagement

A strong brand narrative will build engagement by communicating your brand’s aspirations and purpose in ways that feels true to your brand, capturing the hearts and minds of the people most important to your success. Your narrative will help situate and ground your business while communicating why you are different and why that matters. By getting people aligned, headed in the same direction, and rallied behind a common purpose, brand engagement will sky rocket. So don’t dwell on an origin story if it’s just not there. Instead, focus on your corporate brand narrative to help your business stand out and flourish.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy firm.

Employer Brand: It Doesn’t Happen by Messaging Alone

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

“The words printed here are concepts. You must go through the experiences.” – Saint Augustine

People today, including employees and prospective recruits, are looking for more meaning in their lives and in their work. This is why there has been a rise in budgets directed to more meaningfully connect with employers and an increase in budgets to develop a company’s Employer Brand.

Messaging alone won’t pull employees in

This is especially true when investing in your Employer Brand, and trying to build a Meaningful Workplace. It becomes far more involved than simply sending a PDF of the master plan to every employee or hanging posters in the cafeteria. Indeed, every aspect of the master plan’s deployment needs to be done in a highly sensitive and respectful way.

It has been said that messaging is dead, meaning that the idea of simply creating and broadcasting a bank of words, no matter how charmingly poetic they may be, simply doesn’t cut it any more.

Such business transmissions smack of company speak, and worse, of marketing. Eyes glaze over. Defensive shields are erected. Pure messaging attempts fail.

The goal, after all, is a meaningful outcome that seeks to bring the employer and the employee closer together. This is not to say messaging doesn’t play a role in the development of an Employer Brand.

What it does say is that messaging cannot be the primary tool for instilling a sense of ambition, for evoking feelings, and for creating a meaningful culture.

This excerpt is the eighth in a series from our white paper titled The Meaningful Workplace.

Photo credit.

Does your Business need an Updated Brand Narrative?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Does your brand need a Brand Narrative?

Your brand does if it faces any of these situations:

  • Differentiation: Does your brand have a sober, unexciting, or blurry identity in an increasingly competitive and perhaps commoditized market? Are you able to cut through the clutter in ways that matter?
  • Growth: Is it getting harder to increase market share, drive sales, and improve profit? Are new markets and products growing quickly enough?
  • Talent: Is it getting increasingly difficult for your brand to recruit the talent you need? Is your top talent leaving? Are competitor’s hiring the talent you hoped to hire?
  • Engagement: Are your employees aligned and heading in the same direction? Is your brand being held back with issues around collaboration, innovation, and loyalty?
  • Complexity: Is your business growing rapidly in both size and scope? Have you just acquired a new company? Do you have disparate product lines and target audiences? Are your brand and workplace behaviors inconsistent and counter-productive?

Of course, a strong Brand Narrative will also help your brand even if it’s operating from a position of strength. Successful brands can further establish their preeminence, forge far stronger and harder to break bonds with both customers, prospects, and employees, and increase the perceived distance between themselves and their near competitors.

A good Brand Narrative adds a bright North Star to your brand strategy. It helps you create brand experiences that change the way people feel about your brand, based on the emotional rewards of your brand promise and the way you strive to make people feel in every interaction.

To learn more about the Emotive Branding Methodology, please download the paper below:

Download White Paper

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.