Overlay
Let's talk
Emotive Brand
Get in touch: [email protected] 510-496-8888

Hello!

Tag: Advertising

Generation Z: A New Generation With New Challenges for Brands

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Gen Z, Already?

For the past several years the spotlight has been on one generation: yes, millennials – the most studied and arguably the most sought after (or talked about) generation by brands and businesses to date. We, for one, have discussed: what brands they love, where they put their money, where they put their loyalty, why where they work matters, if all the “millennial advertising” hype is even worth it… Now, it seems the focus is shifting. The internet, advertisers, and marketers today are starting to pay a little more attention to those millennials’ younger siblings: Gen Z.

There are three major narratives floating about Gen Z:

1) The generation is just an exaggerated version of millennials: more distrustful, more digital, and more diverse.

2) Gen Z is not like millennials at all. They spend less, collaborate less, and care less about brand names.

3) Some combination of the latter. So, what is it?

Who Is Gen Z and Why Even Pay Attention?

When you dive deep into the available research and stream of news articles making claims about who Gen Z is and isn’t, it’s hard to make out fact from fiction. When it comes down to it, we just don’t know enough – yet. The studies ask too few people in too few areas at too few ages to make any kind of definite conclusions.

What we do know for sure is this: Gen Z is still young and developing. The oldest of the Gen Z generation is just about to enter the workforce – that means late teens/early 20s. Gen Z grew up during the Occupy Wall Street Movement. They were young when 9/11 happened. They don’t remember life without the internet or social media. Now, they are a generation of about 70 million – the most diverse and multicultural of any generation before – and everyone is paying attention.

New Spotlight: Generation Z

As a branding agency, we are excited to keep up-to-date on this emerging generation. Based on what we know and the current research out there, here’s what we can predict about Gen Z.

Experiences Aren’t Forever

We’ve talked a lot about building resonant brand experiences. However, Gen Z might be demanding a different type of experience than generations before. This is a generation who lives on SnapChat. And what differentiates SnapChat from other social media platforms? SnapChat’s entire identity is based on its impermanence. The photos disappear. And it doesn’t stop at SnapChat. Other platforms like Whisper and Secret are among the most popular with Gen Z – both of which offer the value of privacy within the guise of being “social apps.”

Our guess why? In a world of information-overload and constant availability, fleeting experiences feel unique and special. Brands that embrace the ephemeral might find new success with this generation – think experiential events, mixed medium, VR …experiences that allow individuals to shape them. This is exciting for brands who must step up with creative, innovative, fresh, and brief but lasting ways into this generation’s heart.

An Entrepreneurial and Innovative Spirit

Gen Z seems to be a notably independent generation. A recent HBR study found that ¼ of Gen Z students display interest in starting their own business. And according to Gallup, 8/10 kids want to be their own boss, and 4/10 want to start their own business. In fact, 70% of teens are already their own boss – self-employed and making money by teaching piano or selling clothes on YouTube – showing an increase from generations before.

This means businesses and brands are going to have to work hard to keep up. Innovation is even more of an expectation. Companies who want to attract young talent are going to have to work hard to tailor jobs that allow Gen Z to create, innovate, and disrupt.

Dreams With A Price Tag

Initial studies have shown one big difference between millennials and Gen Z: Gen Z cares more about money. According to a Lincoln Financial Group study, around 60% of them already have a savings account and 71% say they really want to focus on saving in the future. Many articles note that this generation worries more about college debt.

Two interesting examples of brands who are catching on to this thrifty nature are Spirit Airlines (a budget airline) and Stayful (an app for competitive boutique hotel rates). Both brands pride themselves on transparency and value – in short, you get what you pay for. And both have found immense success with targeting this emerging generation.

It’s not necessarily that Gen Z is scared to spend, they just want to make sure what they are buying is worth it. This means brands who are transparent about value should find success with this younger generation as well. We also expect brands who are able to offer and demystify financial planning tools will thrive with this generation.

Brand Is A Given. It’s What You Do With It.

What’s most interesting about Gen Z for brands today is the generation’s general mistrust of them. Especially the big ones. Claims aren’t enough for this generation. Neither are ads. They always look closer – because they can. The technology and the resources to dive deeper are right there. What’s the culture really like? Is it inclusive? What are the work conditions? How does their CEO behave?

Like millennials, authenticity and transparency are values that sit at the heart of this. That’s why we see this generation trusting individuals more than institutions. That’s why this generation cares about what’s in the news surrounding the brands they buy from. And that’s why just sticking a logo on a clothing line is not going to cut it (not that it did before).

Brands who want to succeed today have to work even harder to build their brand from the inside out. Invest in the culture and the leadership that will drive you in the right direction. Adapt more transparent practices. Figure out new ways to personalize. Don’t just rely on a logo (Gen Z isn’t interested in being a walking advertisement). Say what you stand for and let people experience your brand in a different way – in their way. Recruit and retain talent that exhibits the creativity to do so. As Gen Z evolves and comes into view, we believe brands have a big opportunity to do the same.

Keep posted for more about this emerging generation and more.

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

Marketing Strategy That Fuels Growth

Posted on by Carol Emert

[et_pb_section bb_built=”1″][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text]

More than ever, CMOs are being looked to as the primary growth drivers of their companies. But what if you seem to be doing everything right and growth is still falling short? You have a strong brand strategy in place, a good sales team, and your marketing strategy is being executed on time and on budget. What then?

Chances are good that, if you’re experiencing a disconnect like this, the problem lies in the connection between your brand and your target audience. You may be reaching them. But how successfully are you really connecting with them?

How can you identify the problem? And what can you do to nurture your target audience while giving your sales team the support they need to drive growth?

Marketing Strategy That Drives Growth

At Emotive Brand, we find that the diagnosis for this condition virtually always comes from the outside.

The area where insiders typically have the least insight is the hearts and minds of their target audiences, which are so easily obscured behind the company’s own view of where its value lies. Companies often also find it challenging to stay on top of new developments in communications when their core competencies lie elsewhere.

Cue your agency. It’s the agency’s job to:

  • Understand your brand, products, and services in a new and exciting way, through the eyes of the people who can make it grow.
  • Use customer, marketplace, brand, and contextual insights to define strategic shifts that will win them over.
  • Create the right message and present it creatively to get their attention and rekindle the connection.
  • Identify existing and emerging channels that will best support your message and resonate with your audiences.
  • Tie it all together in a marketing strategy that drives growth.

Rebooting Advertising and Marketing Strategy

We’ve been working with a Silicon Valley client whose technology is so smart it inspires us. This company has been in business 15 years. It has a crack product that’s unique in the market. The product should be selling itself.

But there’s a problem: the company has under-marketed both its brand and its product. Its sales are lackluster. We identified five primary marketing challenges:

  • Marketplace perceptions hadn’t kept up with the company, so potential customers had outdated ideas that needed to be overcome before they would even pay attention.
  • Its advertising and marketing communications were telling an old story that didn’t communicate the product differentiators and reinforced outdated perceptions.
  • Its communications style was out of date and disconnected from both the brand truths and its audiences.
  • The client was spending ad dollars against a broad target rather than an audience aligned to its sales target, wasting precious marketing dollars.

We dug into this project to understand the marketplace, the product, and the brand through the eyes of our client’s target audiences. And we transformed its marketing strategy with some fundamental shifts.

Aligning Marketing Strategy with Sales

First, we used creative and surprising ways to talk about the product in advertising. Solidly rooted in meaningful customer insights and up-to-date product truths, the creative is doing a great job at grabbing the attention of sales prospects. Fresh and resonant messaging and design are replacing apathy with interest and engagement.

We also employed account-based marketing (ABM), replacing the client’s broad advertising strategy with a personalized approach. We’re targeting the sales team’s hottest prospects, in the places where they are most likely to engage.

This more resonant, tailored messaging is reinvigorating the company’s sales as well as its brand, making it relevant again and helping nurture prospects who might have ignored a more general message.

If you need fresh ideas for connecting with your sales prospects instead of merely reaching them, Emotive Brand would like to connect with you.

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

[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]

The Right Ad, Just When you Need It: Talking “Moment Marketing” with Randy Wootton

Posted on by Sara Gaviser Leslie

Randy Wootton and Moment Marketing 

Continuing our Emotive Brand expert series, we’re interviewing past and present Emotive Brand clients to discover what they do better than anybody else – and how that expertise can be used to embolden your brand today.

In this post, we speak with Randy Wootton, former CEO of Rocket Fuel, a past Emotive Brand client whose positioning project resulted in a major acquisition for the company. In this interview, we talk about the evolution of marketing and advertising today and why brands poised for success are focusing in on what Randy calls “Moment Marketing.”

Below, we discuss his book in-progress and hear what he has to say about one-to-one marketing, audience segmentation, AI, and the future of advertising. Could advertising ever be truly helpful for consumers? Even welcome? Randy says it’s possible. Read his interview below:

Tell me about your book-in-progress, Moment Marketing?

First, let me clarify what I mean by “moment”. When I use that term, people often think about big moments in their lives: the groundbreaking discovery, a wedding proposal, or solution to a difficult problem. But 99% of moments are banal. Moment marketing means you reach the right person at the right time, at the right place, in context.

Last weekend, for instance, I sat on my couch and watched the Raiders with my 11-year-old son. He played a Disney game on his phone. I checked email. It was a perfect opportunity for Disney – or a similar advertiser – to create a wraparound experience. If they could push an ad to me for a 20% discount on my next trip while also placing an ad in my son’s game, chances are the advertising would be a lot more effective than a Disney billboard I pass on the way to work.

If we’re targeting individuals, is that the end of audience segmentation?

I think it is. Segments can be helpful but they also limit you. Think about one of the popular segments: soccer moms. Marketers make many assumptions about this group and target based on age, gender, and location. But segments don’t capture the robustness of individuals. They don’t describe individuals; they don’t tell you that one mom has other kids who do baseball and guitar but hate soccer.

When you track individuals’ actions, interactions with brands, and purchases and then target them one-on-one, you can be much more precise. What’s even better than that, though, is engaging them at the right time, in the moment.  

You have said that consumers could eventually welcome advertising. Really?

Think about Amazon today. When you look for a book, they suggest other titles you might enjoy as well as reviews of those books. When you get this data at the right time, in context, it improves your experience. Consumers aren’t opposed to advertising, they are opposed to bad advertising!

In a world of Moment Marketing, what will stop advertisers from hounding me with ads for the pair of shoes I didn’t buy?

Online advertising today is disruptive and interruptive. Moment marketing requires companies ingest lots of data in near real time and take action in less than 20 milliseconds. That’s where AI comes in. You need insight engines to mine all of this data or you’ll get overwhelmed and drive your customers and prospects crazy. AI can help us discern the relevant data and then deliver advertising at the right time, in context.

Do you think marketers are ready for AI?

Right now, we are still in early innings of understanding the possibility of data. Think about when people first rode in cars. It probably seemed very dangerous. People named cars “horseless carriages” because the only way they could conceive of the future was through lens of the past. We are going to see computers make decisions more and more often. Marketers will have to surrender control and trust results. Otherwise, they’ll stand in the way of progress – and higher conversion.

How does this affect non-digital commerce? Brick-and-mortar stores?

It will be the end of those flimsy circulars we get in the mail, for sure. I see marketers getting really good at combining offline and online. Holiday shopping, for example, will be defined by mobile. When I go Toys R Us to shop for Christmas presents, that’s when I want to know about the hottest toys and receive a discount coupon.

The opportunity to stitch online and offline together thru predictive marketing is radical. When marketers understand individuals and context, they create more meaningful experiences. Companies that successfully do this will differentiate themselves in the market and, ultimately, capture more than their fair share of revenue.

Stay tuned for what both Randy and Emotive Brand do next.

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

Meaningful Millennials: On Millennial Advertising

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Millennial Advertising

We’re back with our ongoing installments of “ Meaningful Millennials ,” where we interview millennials on a variety of different subjects that are top of mind for us in the studio.

As a brand strategy firm, we work with a lot of clients who are looking to reach, connect, and engage with millennials in productive, positive ways. Millennials now represent the largest group of consumers within the U.S., and thriving brands today are highly aware of this. When millennials are wielding over $170 billion per year in purchasing power, there’s no ignoring us.

I heard fourteen millennials’ thoughts and here’s what I learned:

Millennials have higher expectations, bigger demands, and greater criticisms of the brands who target them. We want more efficiency, better innovation, and greater convenience and quality. We care that the brands we choose to buy from are transparent, authentic, purpose-led, and dedicated to social giving. We’re wary of pushy brands who feel like they know us a little too well, but at the same time, want brands and their advertising to be highly personalized and feel unique to us. That’s why the brands that are succeeding with millennials are finding new ways to seamlessly weave themselves into our lives – creating meaningful experiences while maintaining a hard-to-get aura.

Read more about what millennials have to say about millennial advertising today.

“I do my best to avoid advertising. I don’t listen to the radio or cable. If there’s an option to pay more to opt out of commercials, like on Hulu, I do it in a heartbeat.

That being said, it’s impossible to avoid advertisements all together. I have found a lot of brands associated with marriage or children advertising at me. But I’m not engaged. I’m not pregnant. I have no children. I’m a 27-year-old single woman. I find the fact that these ads are wrongly targeted at me highly obnoxious and presumptuous.

However, I do see a lot of Facebook advertising for clothes and makeup that I actually am interested in. I’m pretty sure most of those are suggested because of my Google and browser history, which is kind of creepy, but also, kind of genius.”

Amy Muller
Business Owner and Tattoo Artist

“Any advertising that casts its net so broadly to target “millennials” isn’t doing the best it can to be relevant or targeted. My concerns, situation, and interests are very different to those of a high schooler. Gen X, boomers, and millennials are useful tools for describing large, fuzzy age cohorts, but aren’t a good focus for marketing. I often take millennial targeted advertising to include things like using memes, which can go horribly wrong very easily. Just look at brands that continued to use Pepe the Frog images in an effort to be fresh or relevant after that image had been coopted by white supremacists, not realizing what it had come to represent.”

Alex Gray
Director, Global Solutions Consulting

 

“I’m always looking at ads with a critical eye and asking myself: What are they really selling and how are they trying to get me to buy it? So it’s hard to think of an ad that I genuinely connect with or like.

A lot of advertising that targets millennials seems to sell a product by selling a feeling or experience. I’ve also noticed a lot of companies putting out ads that make it seem like they’re socio-politically conscious. While it’s great to see constructive ideas being promoted and normalized, it’s problematic that those very ideas are being aestheticized and commodified. Pepsi’s latest ad that aestheticizes activism and thus trivializes the struggle that many people face today is a clear example of that.”

Julia Kwon
Visual Artist

“I think millennial advertising has the potential to be more meaningful and more informative than any advertising before it. Take, for example, the Quip toothbrush whose ads constantly run on my social media feed. Quip’s ads are simple, visually pleasing, and easily digestible.”

Carolynn Langsdale
Psychologist

“I find that millennial advertising today is way too entrenched in social issues. Many advertisements disregard their actual product or value in order to appeal to people with a certain social view. I enjoy an advertisement that focuses on the actual product and the value it is going to add to my life, instead of a brand that aligns itself with a certain social view or popular way of thinking in order to appeal to people’s opinion of the company and how it’s run.”

Dominic Morbidelli
Associate at Transwestern

“I feel like most millennials, myself included, really loathe traditional ads – we don’t like being overtly sold to. I know it’s always about selling, but the minute it feels like a pitch, it’s a turnoff.”

Denise Christie
Marketing Communications Manager

“Brand loyalty is not as common as it once was. It can be difficult to entice us with new and upcoming products. Becoming the next “big” thing can be a trying venture when competition is high and your consumers are always looking to be trendy and time efficient. Also, thanks to social media and technology, we are more informed than ever and our generation has really high expectations.

Lately, I’ve felt like I just don’t connect with millennial advertising. The Mountain Dew Kickstarter commercial left me wondering what the point even was. It had no direct connection to my life.”

Michelle Cooley
Horse Trainer & Social Media Marketer

“As a millennial, I like advertising that’s a little illusive. I like the idea of selling a lifestyle. I like when brands give back to the community. I like brands that use models of all sizes, ages, nationalities, and attractiveness in their advertising. I like brands that support the same social & political views I do (or, that don’t make those views known).

Recently, one ad that has stuck out to me is the Secret commercials. The featured women look like every day women, obviously successful and intelligent. That’s what I want to see promoted more. That’s what I connect with.

The best experience of advertising I’ve had recently is the Super Bowl Lumber 84 commercial. It told a story, an important one, and made me start to build brand loyalty without knowing anything else about the brand or who they were.”

Megan Peterson
Charter Sales Analyst

“Many of us do not read the Sunday newspaper, collect paper coupons, or even shop at a mall. Marketing had to change in order to reach and resonate with us.

Now, I find myself watching sponsored videos on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. I follow influencers on different media platforms and keep my eye on products they use.

For example, for an upcoming trip, I came across some sponsored Instagram ads from Revolve clothing. It was crazy how spot-on they were. They totally fit the look and trip I wanted to have, so I made an order.”

Juhwi Kim
Media Analytics Research Analyst 

“I can no longer watch TV because I don’t have the patience to sit through ads. Instead, I stream my shows through HBO, Hulu, and Netflix.

Sponsored ads celebrities post on social media also upset me. I feel like I am being lied to. That these celebrities don’t actually believe in these products. It’s just all about money.”

Hana Fleek
Lab Manager, Mechatronics, Embedded Systems and Automation (MESA) Lab

“Millennials have grown up in a social media world where a lot of us feel the need to share our lives constantly. Successful brands today are creating content that provides an opportunity for us to become a part of their brand story.

Toms is a prime example. By making each purchase equal to a charitable donation, consumers feel as if their purchase has a purpose beyond just getting new shoes. I don’t want to support “evil corporations”. I want to feel like I’m making a difference. I want my purchases to go towards something good.”

Jon Lawhead
Structural Project Engineer, 4STEL Engineering

“I find that hyper-targeted advertising can be too aggressive and feel overwhelming. I don’t like feeling like brands have a constant presence in my life. And often time it’s like no matter what I’m doing or where I am, they are there – whether I like it or not. I’m torn because sometimes what they throw at me is spot on, but at the same time, most of them just never leave me alone.”

Shannon McGuire
Analyst, M Powered Strategies

 “I really like the campaigns from Harry’s – the razor company. The brand conveys their brand story in a compelling way, making it simple and witty. On the other hand, the recent Pepsi ad that majorly backlashed totally missed the mark with millennials. I think they were actually attempting to connect with us by picking an issue they felt this generation really cared about. However, they did it in an inauthentic and inappropriate way. It was clear that they didn’t really care at all.”

Andrew Dewey
Associate Consultant, WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff

“Most recently, the ad for Pepsi that co-opted the BLM movement really missed the mark. In terms of appearing authentic, the Coca Cola ad that aired during Super Bowl 2017 was riveting because it blended individuals together without forcing a narrative.

A trend I’m not too comfortable with in millennial advertising is that personal data is becoming a commodity. I hope that in the future, advertisers can come up with other ways to target individuals and micro-communities.”

Nathan Lacy
Environmental Permitting Assistant, Kinder Morgan

Here are our top-line findings from these millennials.

  1. Our generation articulates a general distrust for millennial advertising. Many millennials feel wary of the lines crossed collecting personal data. Others feel many brands are just in it for the money. Most question brands authenticity when it comes to targeting millennials. So it seems winning over millennials requires brand behaviors that will help foster trust and articulate authenticity above all else.
  2. Millennials want to hear from brands that fit perfectly to our personal image, style, and needs, integrating seamlessly into our lives without feeling like we are being advertised at. Pushy, aggressive advertising doesn’t resonate well. Instead, we prefer content and experiences that add something meaningful to our every day. That’s why brands that tell compelling stories and bring consumers along on the journey (often digitally) are winning with many millennials.
  3. Many feel that “millennial advertising” casts too wide of a net. We want to be seen as unique individuals and not be lumped into such a big group. That’s why fit and personalization are really important to millennials today. When a brand resonates with something we feel is unique about us as an individual, it already has a leg up against other brands.
  4. When millennials feel as if a brand genuinely stands for something good, they are more likely to spend money and dedicate more time engaging with it. Having a purpose beyond profit isn’t an advantage, but a requirement for millennials today. But authenticity is key. When brands try to latch on to ideas just because they think millennials will connect with them, many notice the inauthenticity. And that does not bode well for those brands.

We understand that we have only polled a small group of millennials. Please add to our discussion. Comment your thoughts about millennials advertising, and keep posted for more Meaningful Millennial posts to come.

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

Does Brand Strategy Translate Into Advertising?

Posted on by Paige Lansing Valle

Brand Strategy is the Foundation for Advertising

One of the misconceptions about brand strategy and advertising is that they are disconnected. As a result, many brands create ads that are off-strategy because they don’t use their brand strategy as a guide. But brand strategy is the foundation for advertising.

At Emotive Brand, the most rewarding part of developing a brand strategy with clients is when we see the strategy come to life. A B2B brand strategy inspires powerful website messaging. An employer brand turns into a rock solid manifesto. A B2C brand strategy translates into a compelling advertisement campaign.

In the end, strategy gives businesses the infrastructure it needs to be successful with internal and external marketing. But successfully turning a strategy into an outward facing campaign isn’t easy. It takes gumption, and not all organizations are agile enough to quickly translate and execute their new brand strategy. In order to succeed, you have to be savvy, confident, and agile as a brand. And, you have to committed to your strategy.

Magoosh: A Case Study

When Magoosh, a longtime client, approached us about helping produce a HULU commercial, we didn’t hesitate. Magoosh is a model client. They not only developed a powerful brand strategy, but have stuck to it with great success. As a result, their business has had tremendous growth this year, solidifying their already strong reputation and foothold with the competition.

The goals of the commercial were straightforward: drive brand awareness forward and test HULU as an advertising platform. However, developing concept and creative for a commercial is not usually a quick process. Filming and editing can be laborious, and Magoosh had a very quick turnaround deadline. They wanted to roll-out the commercial in time to capture their peak sales season: about a month away. The real and apparent challenge was time.

That’s where the importance of a solid brand strategy became paramount. Because Magoosh had a very clear idea of its target audience, its key messages, its look and feel, voice, and story, the impossible deadline wasn’t nearly as daunting as it might normally be. In fact, having these strategic elements in place already was key to their future success.

Staying True to the Brand

 Advertisements that have the foundation of a strong strategy help the brand ring true at every touchpoint. To stay true to the brand and develop a story that felt authentic, we didn’t have to look far for talent. Magoosh had a team of spirited, confident, positive (and good looking) people on deck who were more than willing to help.

These people truly believed in the brand, and as a result, pulling together a cast of employees and real Magoosh students who could speak to the product was easy. Online test prep really does change the lives of the people who use it. For some this means making dream schools realities. For others it means exceeding score expectations or overcoming personal challenges. Because of the nature of the brand, positive testimonials were abundant. And featuring people who believe in the brand helped make the commercial that much more compelling. Their energy and passion was tangible.

The Best Advertising Connects People to People

It’s no question that human brands are winning. In an age of increasing digitization and consumers who see hundreds of ads a day, brands have to truly connect with the people who matter to their business. People will always seek brands that help them succeed. Brands that help to enrich or improve lives have the strongest and most powerful stories to tell. For Magoosh, creating a compelling ad meant connecting ‘Magooshers’ (as we nicknamed their staff and customers) to the people they help. The ad’s story used ‘Magooshers’ to speak directly to the needs of customers – flexibility, convenience, and results – in an emotive way, bringing the heart of their brand to life.

Consistency is King

Even amidst the common challenge of time, translating a brand strategy into advertising should be seamless if all the pieces (voice, look and feel, messaging) are in place. And developing an ad that connects people to people is made easier when the product really does impact people’s lives in a powerful way. The trick is to tell an authentic and compelling story that rings true across all points of engagement. Advertising is never a one-off. So develop an advertising campaign that pushes the strategy across multiple touch points. The message will become stronger. Awareness will heighten and your modes of measuring traction will increase. With a solid brand strategy in place, your advertising campaign is ready to roll.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy agency.

 

Agile Brands Break Through

Posted on by Paige Lansing Valle

Agile Brands are the New Norm

More than ever before, people expect brands to evolve around their needs, anticipate their desires, and cater to the ways they want to connect with the world. The expectation to keep up with market innovations and business trends translates into a demand for agile brands. Customer behavior is always shifting, and values are changing faster than most companies can keep up with. Consequently, people dismiss brand communications that are behind the consumer curve. For businesses, this mean it’s often hard to keep up. Fittingly, Wired calls this an ear of “Digital Darwinism”: a time when “technology and society are evolving faster than businesses can naturally adapt.”

Struggling to Adjust

The need for speed is an inherent challenge for many businesses. Others are dismissing the need to adapt altogether: stuck in a business-as-usual pattern, putting money towards investments that may not even be aligned to the shifting landscape, and as a result, stunting their evolution as a business. It’s no question that it’s becoming harder and harder to be relevant, let alone stay relevant.

Take advertising as an example. We’ve heard all the recent buzz surrounding the question: is advertising dead? Advertising isn’t dead, but advertising, as we knew it has most definitely changed. Because people today understand the tactics of communicating, discovering, sharing, and experiencing advertisements, consumers are often the ones ahead of the innovation curve, quickly dismissive of the old ways ads used to reach them. As a result, advertisers are trying all kinds of new tactics to connect with savvy consumers. And if they can’t move quickly enough to adjust to consumer’s new needs, they’ll end up fading into the clutter. The business risks losing money, time and resources on an irrelevant campaign.

Marketing teams face similar obstacles. This new era presents many challenges for businesses looking to exceed expectations and stay ahead of the consumer curve. Consumer expectations for how a brand communicates at every touchpoint – from a newsletter, to a digital ad, or in-store experience – have heightened. Markets are changing, consumer behavior is progressing, and smart businesses are focused on how to stay ahead of shifts. The ones that truly compete are able to anticipate how to adapt. In this new era of connectivity, the expectations for brand communications are high, and agile brands need the right kind of approach that enables it to adapt, shift, and gain respect and loyalty from consumers.

A Need for Speed

Staying ahead and quickly reacting to shifts is hard work and can be a drain on internal resources if your business is always in reactionary mode. Creating cutting-edge, vision-driven and transformational communications that are truly ahead of the curve stems from a strong and agile brand strategy. With external support, you’ll be able to move faster and more strategically to pinpoint what audiences matter to your brand, why they matter, how your brand can reach them today, tomorrow, and years up the line. A strong brand isn’t enough to break through. You need an agile, flexible, and strong brand to sustain business growth and relevancy.

Just as people are demanding more from brands, businesses are demanding more from agencies. And successful agencies are adapting to those needs – adopting faster, more efficient models for doing business. The objectives of brand strategy have evolved, and with it, agencies must also evolve.

A partner that is nimble and agile is critical to bringing your brand up to speed. By helping your brand meet the needs and expectations of your target audience today, you’ll be in a stronger position to anticipate the needs of the target audience for tomorrow. Staying relevant requires agility, speed, and a focused mastery of the industry.

Fast Forward

We know that many brands need a new, more agile approach to address the changing dynamics of markets and businesses. To meet those needs, we’ve developed Fast Forward for agile brands. Our approach offers a set of strategy development frameworks, tools, and practices designed to empower learning, gain superior return on capital, and accelerate implementation. Learn more how we can Fast Forward your business, build an agile brand that sits ahead of the curve, and transform your business.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.