Agile Agency Archives - Emotive Brand

A lot of branding firms talk about the importance of incorporating agility into their clients’ brands. The best brands have to stand for something distinct and meaningful – and at the same time, be ready to acknowledge what is happening out in the marketplace so they can adapt and adjust to maintain their edge.

There is less discussion about the process of branding and the need to imbue it with a degree of agility as well. Speed is a given – we’ve all been schooled on how clients no longer have time for long, drawn-out branding processes that will yield a new brand in the market within 12-18 months. But speed is not the same as agility. Agility means finding ways to utilize existing knowledge, assets, and insights to leapfrog into new territory.

Leading in Partnership

This notion comes at odds with how branding firms do things. Most branding firms have their “proprietary method,” often used to claim some sort of ascendancy or advantage over other firms. But in an effort to demonstrate expertise, there can be arrogance to lording one’s “method” over a client, especially if the method favors doing everything from scratch instead of looking for and accommodating existing intellectual capital. By ignoring the previous work a brand has cultivated, you may be sacrificing integrity for agility.

To truly imbue the branding process with agility, branding firms must exercise a degree of humility, respect for work that has been done, and a commitment to finding the foundational nuggets worth building upon. In a sense, this process is akin to inspecting a house before starting renovations – an architect worth his or her salt will identify the load-bearing walls and build upon and around them rather than tearing them down for no reason. This constitutes a stance that we call leading in partnership – taking the best of what exists and providing a path forward.

Bolstering a Strong Foundation

A client we worked with recently had conducted a tremendous amount of work identifying customer insights and pain points for each of the decision makers in all of the lines of business they sold to. Instead of recommending new research, either to validate these insights or uncover new ones, we took them as fairly gospel and used them as the foundation for building out their brand idea. When we brought back our thinking, clearly connected to the knowledge that they had uncovered, it was easier for our client to understand how we were laddering up to the brand idea. It validated the work they had done internally and made for a much easier sell-in. All in all, considerably more agile.

That is not to say that there isn’t room for additional validation of existing intellectual capital, especially if there is a suspicion that it may have been developed in an internal vacuum. But questioning what we believe to be true in an effort to reach a greater unknown can often be conducted in parallel path with brand execution, so that things keep moving forward. Again, agility.

Be an Agile Listener

Even for startups and small businesses without a robust legacy to build upon, we believe that approaching a project with a sense of humility will ultimately lead to a better partnership and increased agility. Branding firms should be able to say “So, you’re a startup – maybe you don’t know everything about your category yet, but you’ve created this idea and you possess enough strength of conviction to know that it is an idea worthy of the market. Let’s build something that feels like a natural extension of your brand.”

We will always have a rich library of proven methodologies to pull from, based on decades of expertise and hundreds of case studies. But if we’ve learned anything from our long-lasting relationships with clients, it’s that being an agile listener gets you much further than being the loudest person in the room.

To learn more about how your brand can adopt an agile workflow, contact Founding Partner Tracy Lloyd at [email protected].

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

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A little over nine years ago, Bella Banbury and I started Emotive Brand on a bit of a whim. Now, almost 10 years later, we have 20 people in our company. We’re recognized as a top agency in the strategy and branding world. CEOs of companies seek us out to achieve transformative shifts in their business. People hire us because they’ve been reading our content for years. Agencies around the world cite our content as smart and forward thinking. We didn’t expect all of this. We just started our agency and that was that.

The cobbler’s children DO have shoes

As we reach our double-digits, we’re turning the tables. It’s time for us to do some reflection and strategy work of our own. So we’re putting ourselves through the very methodology we use with our clients and we’re eager to see what shakes out. Our agency has become the client.

The first feeling I had was, “Holy shit. This is tough!” It’s hard to face the realities of change and the future. It’s hard to decide what you want, where you want to be, and how you will get there. I have more empathy for our clients right now than I ever have.

Along this journey, I’ll be sharing some thoughts with you. We’ll no doubt glean new insights about ourselves, but also learn things that we want our clients to know, too. Here’s where I’m at 2 months in.

Change is hard

Until someone asks you to question some fundamental things about your business, you don’t know what ‘hard’ really means. I get it now. The rational brain wants to analyze. Look at the numbers. Understand the trends. For me, this is the easy part. The numbers don’t lie and it’s important to take the time to really understand what they are saying. So I naturally thought this was the end. I was ready to start making the change.

But even when the facts tell a very clear story, your emotions can stand in the way of change. Yes, I am talking about fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It’s easy to focus on the rational needs for change. I didn’t realize the major role emotions play in any change process. It’s human nature. If I felt this way, our clients for sure must feel the same way.

We talk a lot about empathy at Emotive Brand. This process we are undergoing is opening my eyes to what it takes to have the courage to initiate changes in your business. I see now that we also need to help our clients get through the emotional hurdles to change. We need to give them the time and the emotional support they need to evolve their business and themselves.

Being agile is not as easy as it appears

Our clients’ timelines are shrinking. They need their projects completed faster than seems reasonable. So we’ve adapted. We’ve created a methodology that is agile. We work in sprints. We’ve realized we can develop strategy and branding at a pace we never thought possible – and still deliver smart work. But, what is always interesting, is that when we hear our clients say “fast”, intentions don’t always equal reality. Working quickly isn’t just a challenge for us, it’s really difficult for our clients too. They struggle to meet their own high-pressured deadlines. In the end, it’s difficult for some of them to keep pace with our agency and our ability to move quickly.

So it was pretty funny when, during our first sprint on our own internal project, we ourselves got in the way of delivering on our own “agile” project. The second lesson learned: moving fast is hard. More than twice, we put our own strategy project on hold to focus on our clients’ strategy projects. It begs the question: “How do we help our clients do their job, meet their own business deadlines, and move their strategy project forward?”

We’ve created a process to help our clients understand the time they need to devote to work with us, from meetings and workshops, to rounds of review and circulating deliverables internally for approval. When we develop a project plan, we always ask our clients about major events in their world that may impact our work together. We know we can enable clients to move at the speed they want. It just takes time – devoted time. Wish we had taken our own advice on this one. Without a solid project plan in place, almost everything can stop it in its tracks.

Building alignment is personal

We know firsthand change is hard. And moving fast is not always easy. But how do we manage these speed bumps and, at the same time, align a leadership team around the difficult shifts that transformation requires? Iteration. Putting the cycles in. We’ll go backward and forward as much as is needed to build consensus. We work to ensure everyone feels that their voices were heard to reach agreement and, ultimately, alignment.

How? We’ve developed frameworks that surface up gaps in alignment and facilitate discussions to hammer things out. This allows us to appeal to individual personalities and ensure people are truly honest with their feelings and opinions. We’ve excelled at doing this with our clients. In fact, we’ve built our reputation and agency on this activity.

But, again, it was much harder to do for ourselves. While tools and frameworks help facilitate available options and reinforce smart strategy, they don’t take into account the human side. People process things differently and at different speeds. They require different ways to evaluate options and opportunities. Sometimes their role in the organization can create blind spots. And people in different roles can easily view things through a siloed lens.

Only when we acknowledge these lenses and map personal roles back up the organization’s overall needs can we facilitate the group and reach full alignment. Without the alignment of a leadership team, there’s nothing. No moving forward. No change. And no successful transformation.

Strategy and branding moving forward

As we look to evolve our own agency, I’ll keep you updated on our progress. I’ll share what I learn and how that affects the experience, tools, and processes we use in the future with our clients. What we do for our clients is hard work. But now we know firsthand what the struggles our clients endure feel like. And I’m trying to use this experience to do better, be better, and deliver better on behalf of our clients.

Stay tuned.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco strategy and branding agency.

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Tag: Agile Agency

Embracing an Agile Workflow to Yield an Agile Brand