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Tag: Activation

The Value of Investing in Your Brand to Drive Long-Term Growth


Posted on by Chris Ames

Attention Span Is Dead, Long Live Attention Span

For years, we’ve been told that our attention spans are shrinking. There is so much information, so many channels and devices vying for our attention, that we couldn’t possibly focus on anything for too long. Combine that with economic pressures, shareholder expectations, and the race to keep up in the digital age, and you get something called short-termism.

Fueled by our fixation on metrics, short-termism is a concentration on quick wins to move the needle. It posits an immediate, attention-grabbing impact over strategically driven, brand-building initiatives that have a higher long-term ROI.

Shorterm-ism Is Shortsighted

This type of thinking is contagious because for those who are tasked with moving the needle – whether it’s sales, marketing, or social media analytics – the pressure to demonstrate an uptick in growth is relentless. While you may signal towards growth in the short-term, this strategy erodes the underlying brand equity and robs you of a chance at something sustainable.

Beyond being unsustainable, it sets up a false dichotomy – that short-term growth and long-term brand building are mutually exclusive ideas. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Investing in your brand is the easiest way to drive – and most importantly, maintain – growth.

Play the Long Game

McKinsey’s research covered more than 600 large and mid-sized publicly listed companies in the U.S. over the preceding 15 years. They found that firms with long-term strategies had 47% more top-line growth than other companies, 36% higher earnings, and added an average market capitalization of $8.67 billion.

Similarly, a U.K. study by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), which analyzed 500 effectiveness case studies over 20 years, showed that long-term campaigns were three times more efficient than short-term campaigns, three times more likely to drive market-share improvement, and 60% more likely to deliver profit improvement.

Brand Building Is Worth the Burn

So, if long-term brand building is much more conducive to growth, why do so many people fall for the trap of short-termism? Because brand building is difficult. We demand everything from brands. Consider this excerpt from Barbara E. Kahn’s book Global Brand Power:

“A brand must be elastic enough to allow for reasonable category and product-line extensions, flexible enough to change with dynamic market conditions, consistent enough so that consumers who travel physically or virtually won’t be confused, and focused enough to provide clear differentiation from the competition. Strong brands are more than globally recognizable; they are critical assets that can make a significant contribution to your company’s bottom line.”

That’s a tall order, but it’s a necessary one if you truly want to grow. A focus on long-term brand building doesn’t mean you can’t have quick wins. Sometimes, quick wins are necessary to boost morale or capitalize on a time-sensitive trend. It just means that each endeavor needs to ladder up to larger brand strategy.

In a conversation on brand building, Angela Richards, KFC’s Group Marketing Director, discussed the importance of creating lasting emotional connections, even when the immediate goal might be a short-term tactical one.

“We have a really big innovation funnel and a really strong retail calendar, but for us more recently, that functional retail calendar has morphed so the brand directs the retail calendar – and the brand’s job is to create that emotional connection,” she said. “It’s okay now to say we are less reliant on new product development to drive those sales, because that emotional connection of the brand leading the retail calendar is driving core sales and core growth.”

The Magical 60:40 Ratio

The big challenge for CEOs and CMOs is finding the perfect balance between the short and long-term. Unsurprisingly, the aforementioned IPA study highlighted the fact that long-term brand building campaigns and short-term activation campaigns worked best in synergy. Strong brands had better results from their activations channels and strong activations, in turn, drove more sales for the brand. On average, they found that “effectiveness seems to be optimized when around 60% of the communications budget is devoted to brand building, and around 40% to activation.”

Whether it’s the mad rush to keep pace with the digital era, the lure of immediate ROI, or simply a lack of education around the importance of brand building, many companies are sacrificing an enduring market share for quick wins. As McKinsey and IPA have demonstrated, correcting this balance is essential if you want your growth to last.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design firm in San Francisco.

Educate, Activate, Accelerate: Three Tips for Bringing Design to Life

Posted on by Chris Ames

Working on a brand project can feel a lot like being back in school. You do your homework, you research, you drink coffee late into the evening. And just like graduating, there comes a crucial moment at the end of the journey where the agency hands off the assets. This hard-earned diploma might be a new visual identity, a new website, or even just a new logo. As far as the SOW is concerned, the “work” is over — but of course, this is where the real work begins: activation.

Sure, you may have a framed degree on the wall, but if you’re not taking active steps to bring those lessons to life, all you’re left with is student debt. So, how does a company truly activate its new design assets so that they become something useful?

We spoke with Senior Designer Robert Saywitz on the subject, and in his mind, you need to educate, activate, and accelerate.

Educate

“First things first, a general education of branding and design will lead to an appreciation of the process. Because of time constraints, many clients don’t understand the amount of work and thought that goes into creating something so simple. This misunderstanding can lead to conflict or mismanaged timetables down the line. One of my favorite quotes is from Charles Mingus. ‘Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity,’ he said.

A quick primer creates a shared understanding that leads to a stronger partnership. When both parties understand what’s happening, the dynamic changes from the mechanic who knows everything to a shared sense of involvement. In addition, it gives the client a framework for evaluating the work you create. It’s so easy to get hung up on terminology if you’re not familiar with things like wordmarks or typefaces.

When you take the time to equip your client with the right context, you empower them to take ownership and feel more invested in the brand. People can’t invest in the brand if they don’t understand it.”

Activate

“Often, a client isn’t exactly sure what they need. So, when the time comes to hand off the assets, they might request a super minimal brand guidelines document as the end deliverable. It’s only as you go through the design rounds together that they start to think critically about what they actually need. Suddenly, this simple PDF they requested starts to grow. You start to ask, ‘What would be the most meaningful way to bring this to life for each department?’ Maybe it’s sell sheets, marketing collateral, or even an entire microsite that serves as a brand hub with templates, assets, and explanations.

At the end of the day, activation will only ever be as meaningful as you make it. Design assets can be a thing that sits untouched in a folder on a server, or valuable tools that solve real-world needs. The biggest mistake I see is when an agency rushes to hand everything over. Activation is not some tiny part of the pie, it’s a process that should permeate to all aspects of the brand. From brand guidelines to workshops to education sessions, there are many ways to activate your brand internally.”

Accelerate

“When everyone is educated and bringing the brand to life, things accelerate fast: design has the assets they need, sales understands the story, messaging is aligned and consistent with the aesthetic, everything is unified and connected. Your brand starts to work for you instead of the other way around.

As an example, my first experience with jetBlue incorporated this type of holistic design thinking. From the moment you walk into the terminal, you’re greeted by their specific color palette and clever messaging that guides you through the experience. Every interaction is purposeful and deliberate — the messaging on the walls, the napkin at the airport bar, the uniforms of the flight attendants and how they interact with you, the graphics on the actual plane — it’s all connected and telling a singular story. People are being walked through an experience with a level of care and detail that goes beyond mere functionality. It’s an end-to-end experience where design elevates the highest possible value of a brand. When it feels like a single hand crafted every touchpoint, people fall in love with your brand. A company is a complex thing, but peoples’ experience of the brand should be a simple, unified interaction.

When you’re firing on all cylinders, everything becomes a useful tool. Assets, guidelines, strategy, writing, the tone of voice, it all gets funneled together and draws people in. That’s why it’s so important not to bifurcate the process. You don’t want to simply hand off a document and say, “Hey, good luck.” Educate the key players, make them understand and fall in love with the story — so they are compelled to go tell it themselves.”

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency in San Francisco.

Mistakes to Avoid When Activating Strategy

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Activating strategy is an integral part of moving your brand and business forward. Your brand strategy is a road map for success that positions your business for the future. It’s the set of tools meant to bring your brand to life and move your business forward.

Activating strategy means you need a strong go-to-market plan in the hands of a motivated, aligned marketing team to steer how the brand looks, behaves, and speaks – inside and outside your business walls.

Strategy is Set. So, What’s next?

 The value of a strong strategy can’t be fully realized until the strategy comes into real life execution. And often times, strategy never fully moves forward. There are lots of reasons for failed execution. And without a plan for really implementing your strategy and bringing your brand to life, any strategy (no matter how good) loses its value.

So when developing a brand strategy, one should always be simultaneously asking “What’s next?” This purposeful mentality helps ensure that the brand strategy is carried through, and all the strategic hard work pays off for your brand and your business.

How Activating Strategy Can Go Wrong

So ensure all the work, time, and resources you dedicated to creating a powerful strategy for your brand pay offs for your business in the end. We’ve identified some common mistakes to avoid when activating strategy:

1. Inviting too many stakeholders to the table:

Activating strategy with swift, efficient, and peak-impact is hard when there are too many stakeholders involved. Making things happen shouldn’t be that challenging. Often, large organizations struggle because too many people are involved, and too many levels of approval are needed to move the strategy forward. It’s important that leadership gets aligned from the start about who the key decision makers are and how the chain of command will be structured to ensure a smooth roll-out. This is often a question of pinpointing who’s in charge. Getting approval to move something forward shouldn’t be a matter of jumping through loops.

2. Poor communication between key stakeholders:

Even with a narrowed down group of key stakeholders, when everyone is on a different page about what’s happening and when, activating strategy is difficult. If stakeholders span across departments (as they often do), make sure there is constant communication between individuals. Work as a team and schedule meetings, create calendars, and document progress so that everyone can get aligned.

3. Forgetting to delegate:

Any leader knows that it’s hard to give up power. But part of being a successful leader is being able to delegate, giving work to the right people at the right time. Let people help you meet your goals and objectives, and make them shared goals and objectives. Trust that your people can help bring the strategy to life, bringing them along on the journey. In fact, taking it all on is not realistic or conducive to how the strategy should be brought to life. Delegating from the start helps get everyone within your organization on board with the strategy. This means a better lived brand promise and a better understanding about where your brand is headed, for everyone within your organization. This means people are more engaged, fired-up, and involved in the future.

4. A timeline that isn’t working:

It’s easy to get ahead of yourself. You’ve created an exciting strategy and everyone is ready for it to come to life. But creating an unrealistic timeline for execution isn’t going to help you. So make sure you’re realistic about how long goals and objectives are going to take. Do your research, add time in for mistakes, and accommodate for blips in the road. Set realistic expectations that keep everyone in line. Furthermore, ensure that your timeline is actually followed. Hold people accountable for deadlines and stay true to your allocation of time. Following a timeline will help move the project forward at the right speed for strategic execution success.

5. Always shifting strategic priorities:

Strategic execution is not a time to be going back and forth or flip flopping from decision to decision. Stick to the strategy you’ve created and stay true to your plans. Often times constantly shifting priorities are due to previously mentioned problems like lack of communication between stakeholders, or putting too many people at the table. If priorities do shift, take the time to explain the shift to everyone involved. It’s important that the process is fully understood by everyone working towards the project’s success. A brand strategy is a time of change, make sure this change is clear, directed, and not diluted by unnecessary shifts in plans.

6. Lack of budget:

This is one of the most common mistakes we see during strategic executions. Often times, people don’t realize that investing in brand strategy is only step one. It’s easy to underestimate and overlook the resources needed to actually execute the strategy you’ve worked so hard to create. That’s why planning from the start of the strategic project is key. As a result, when you invest in a strategy, make sure you consider what resources you’ll have available to execute.

And be realistic: change comes with a price-tag. A new visual identity that refreshes your brand and moves it into the future needs a brand logo, photography, all branded material, and a new website. Creating a knock-out visual identity is great, but until it actually lives in the real world it’s not worth anything. Make sure you have the resources allocated for every aspect of the strategy to pay off. So you don’t have to change everything overnight, but you do need to consider what your business can afford to change before you embark on a new strategy.

We know that the best and most meaningful strategy in the world can only make a positive impact on your business if it’s implemented thoughtfully and effectively. Managing and executing change is no easy task. In the end, a go-to-market plan is essential to bring the strategy to life. Avoid these common mistakes when activating strategy and help transform your strategy into a successful, living reality for your brand.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy agency.