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

Hello!

Tag: Authenticity

When Your Values Aren’t Really Values

Posted on by Chris Ames

Beware of Generic Values

In the inboxes and Slack channels at Emotive Brand, there is a video that often gets shared before we embark on a brand video. It’s called “This Is a Generic Brand Video, by Dissolve,” and it’s a hilarious satire of when you try to make your brand stand for everything, it ends up standing for nothing. “Equality, innovation, honesty, and advancement,” the narrator says, in a salt-of-the-earth grumble, “are all words we chose from a list.”

Company values not only shape the external identity of your organization, they act as an internal compass for your current and prospective employees. When done properly, values can be the engine of a thriving work culture, attracting and retaining top talent. On the other hand, when a list of generic, vaguely positive words are selected from a hat, your culture greatly suffers.

If Everyone Is Innovating, No One Is

A research group at MIT conducted a survey of more than 1,000 firms in the Great Places to Work database. Eighty-five percent of the S&P 500 companies have a section—sometimes even two—dedicated to what they call “corporate culture.” Above all else, the most common value is innovation (mentioned by 80% of them), followed by integrity and respect (70%).

“When we try to correlate the frequency and prominence of these values to measures of short and long-term performance,” the study says, “we fail to find any significant correlation. Thus, advertised values do not seem to be very important, possibly because it is easy to claim them, so everybody does.”

So, what does this all add up to? In short, there are two types of values for a company: universal and particular. Both are important in building a thriving company culture, but in terms of what you advertise and how you use these tools, the approaches differ widely.

The Universal and the Particular

Universal values are the table stakes to get a prospective employee in the door. Is there really anyone that doesn’t want to work at a place that values equality, respect, honesty, teamwork, or innovation? How you deliver and bring these values to life is incredibly important, but it’s something that can be elaborated on in an employee handbook, workshop, or leadership training.

At the end of the day, the only place that universal values really need to live is in the actions of your people. Your website is some of the most valuable real estate for your brand. Writing the word “INNOVATION” in all caps is not going to persuade a senior engineer to apply for a job. Do you know what will? Your technology portfolio.

In contrast, particular values are the principles that could only be held by your company. They should be written in a tone and manner that feels authentic to who you are. Here’s how Brian Chesky, Founder and CEO of Airbnb, explained it in a lecture at Stanford.

“Integrity, honesty — those aren’t core values. Those are values that everyone should have. But there has to be like three, five, six things that are unique to you. And you can probably think about this in your own life. What is different about you, that every single other person, if you could only tell them three or four things, that you would want them to know about you?”

So, let’s look at Airbnb and see if it passes the test. Here is the first value from their career page:

Be a Host. Care for others and make them feel like they belong. Encourage others to participate to their fullest. Listen, communicate openly, and set clear expectations.

First of all, notice the language. Being a host, of course, is integral to Airbnb’s platform. It embodies a sense of empathy while, most importantly, being particular to the company. It’s not that no other company in the world could value these things—caring, belonging, encouraging others—it’s that no other company in the world could have written it exactly this way. Think of how easy it would have been for them to just write the word integrity. Instead, they drilled down into the emotive core of their service and discovered something real.

Core Values Act as a Lighthouse

That’s the beautiful thing about well-written, emotive values. Once they are set, they act as a lighthouse for recruiting like-minded people. As Jim Collins writes, “you cannot ‘set’ organizational values, you can only discover them. Executives often ask me, ‘How do we get people to share our core values?’ You don’t. Instead, the task is to find people who are already predisposed to sharing your core values. You must attract and then retain these people and let those who aren’t predisposed to sharing your core values go elsewhere.”

So, next time you sit down to write or refresh your company’s values, please resist the urge to paint with broad strokes. Ask yourself, what do we truly believe in? What do we do better than anyone else? What are the real, grounded ways that we are impacting the world? What changes are we looking to make and how do we want to get there? Paradoxically, the more specific you get, the wider net you’ll cast. Or as James Joyce put it, “In the particular is contained the universal.”

If you’re looking to make your brand values act as a guiding light for recruiting and retaining top talent, contact Founding Partner Tracy Lloyd at [email protected].

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

Enabler Brands Are Inspiring, Too!

Posted on by Chris Ames

Disruptor vs. Enabler Brands

These days, disruptor brands get all the attention. Companies like Airbnb, Netflix, and Uber have each skyrocketed into popularity by rattling the industries they came from. We get it. There’s something inherently inciting, even American, about the idea of taking down the big guys with your off-kilter vision of the future. It’s easy to root for.

But here’s the thing about trailblazers — if everyone blazes their own unique trail, customers are faced with a dizzying network of singular (and often incompatible) solutions. In the course of one day, a person might bounce back and forth between ten different technologies, all of which claim to take the hassle and complexity out of life. I want to find a photo, but I’m not sure if it’s on my phone, my external hard drive, or one of my various clouds. Have you seen that popular new show? It’s exclusively on one of the streaming networks — but not the one you have. 

Don’t Downplay the Power of Unification

More and more, we believe there’s a strong case to be made for the power of enabler brands. The ability to bring everything together in a way that’s secure, contextual, and delightful is nothing short of a magic trick in this ever-shifting technological landscape.

In our work in the B2B sector, too often we see enabler brands limit the inspirational nature of their work. Whether it’s customer case studies, presentation decks, or collateral design, enabler brands can sing with the same sparkling brilliance as B2C disruptors.

While every company has its own unique challenges, here are some general thoughts on how enabler brands can elevate their impact.

Hone in on the results of the technology, not the technology itself.

Granted, your technology needs to be world-class and should always have a technical click-through for the nitty-gritty. But at the highest level, people are more interested in what new worlds you’re opening for them. That’s your role: to engineer what’s possible. Think of Dropbox’s recent redesign. They went from just a place to store your files to a living workspace that brings teams and ideas together.

How does this look in practice? Look at the imagery in your decks. What are people seeing? Is it moments of authentic human connection that wouldn’t be possible without your radiant technology? Or is it computer generated graphics and stock photography? During the next big conference, which one do you think will unite your team more?

Productivity is its own kind of delight.

Most enterprise tools aim to improve productivity. That might mean managing information, storing data, tracking issues, sharing updates, whatever you need to get the job done. But just because something is functional, that doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful. Look at Slack. They have taken something often regarded as a chore — communicating with your co-workers — and made it, dare I say, fun? On their design blog, they discuss the importance of bringing humanity into the product. By putting people (not features) first, they have built a brand people love to experience.

Building a community is more rewarding than growing users.

As Scott Cooper writes on his blog, “The Changing Role of Brands,” enabler brands have the unique opportunity to empower the communities behind the technology. “Look at your audience with new eyes, in terms of community,” says Cooper. “Listen for the ideas that they believe in deeply or identify with. Let go of any preconceptions about your roles as a marketer and the relationship your brand has with people. Now ask yourself: how you can contribute meaningfully?”

When building your customer success stories, ask yourself what communities are truly benefiting from your technology? How can you champion their voices? There’s nothing inherently emotive about a 3-D printer, but whether it’s creating prosthetic limbs or affordable housing, people are using them in inspirational and innovative ways every day.

The biggest mistake you can make is thinking these efforts are somehow separate from the real work of your technology. If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times: people make decisions with their hearts. Investing in the human aspects of your brand is not fluff: it’s a holistic way to equip your sales team with better tools, attract and retain top talent, and foster a healthier, more productive culture. Instead of giving your team something to work on, you give them something to work toward.

So, enablers, remember this. Disruptors will always hog the spotlight, but sometimes nothing is more exciting than being given the right environment to thrive.

Resonant Experiences and Authentic Stories: What Does Brand Journalism Mean in a World of Sponsored Content?

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Brand Journalism

As a Writer at Emotive Brand, Chris Ames comes to EB with a creative background in fiction, journalism, illustration, and bookselling. When approaching storytelling for companies, he strives to eschew some of the pitfalls of traditional branding – stale scripts, hired actors, stock photography – and instead employ a journalistic technique to create a more resonant, human experience.

In this post, he offers his thoughts on the power and inherent risks of authentic storytelling in the brave new world of sponsored content.

What is “brand journalism” exactly and why do you feel like it’s important?

Over the last decade, newspapers and legacy media outlets have been completely transformed by the new digital landscape, leaving many journalists, photo editors, and reporters out of work. A lot of what brands are currently seeking – authenticity, beautiful visuals, a cohesive narrative – are what photojournalists have been doing forever.

Often, the answer to a company’s branding problem can be found with that on-the-ground journalism style: going out into the field, connecting with real people to uncover real insights, making human connections, and finding a way to share those meaningful experiences with others.

Why do you think more brands aren’t adopting brand journalism as a style?

When you’re working with a real person, you can’t guarantee the results – but to me, authenticity is always worth the risk. If I write you a script, you know exactly what you’re going to get. Even the most loyal, on-brand customer could hypothetically throw you a curveball. Still, in embracing that unpredictability, the payoff is impactful and emotional storytelling with real world results.

So what makes a story authentic to you?

Authenticity is very tricky, and it’s almost defined by what it’s not. There are little tells, like trying to use stock photography and hired actors to establish a hypothetical brand presence. I find that journalists are incredibly sensitive not only in how to tell a story, but in considering who gets to tell it.

Nowadays, brands – regardless of their positioning – feel the need to weigh in on every social event to stay relevant. You end up with a massive soda company somehow justifying the need to comment on the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s not enough to tell a good story, that story must be aligned with the story of your brand.

So what’s the difference between a story and a sponsored story?

For me, the key is to accept the fact that money and art have a long, fraught relationship, and if you’re transparent with your motivations, there’s no reason why a story cannot be both branded and compelling. Most readers have a fantastic BS detector, and nothing is worse than emotionally connecting with a story only to have the rug pulled out from under you and discover it was a ploy to sell you something.

It’s complicated: ads are something we block, but stories are something we seek. The sweet spot is finding a way to make the brand the vehicle by which the human story is told. If you operate with a good moral backbone, there’s a way to say something true to a brand that’s also true to the bizarre and wonderful experience of being a person in the world.

How does your creative background influence your approach to brand writing?

All my favorite books are ones that don’t exactly look like books: stories told in fragments, in lists, in the form of a multiple-choice answer sheet. If you’re a brand right now, especially in the era of social media where language is so elastic, I’d just say don’t be afraid to experiment. Get weird, take risks, mess things up. And if you’re out of ideas, nothing beats authenticity.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency.

 

Authentic Brands Just Feel Right: Inject Purpose and Feeling

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Everyone’s Claiming Authenticity

Where are all the authentic brands? In today’s world, where curation is everywhere, vacuous claims are made left and right by brands, and people are inundated with meaningless media content, authenticity is a hard feeling to come by. You can’t visit a website or see an ad where you don’t see brands declaring that they are, in fact, “the most genuine and the most trustworthy.”

The problem is, with so many choices and so much available content, people see right through brand claims that don’t ring true. And because declarations of “authenticity” don’t always ring true, the whole concept has lost some meaning and gained some skepticism. 

But Authenticity Still Matters

Finding the authenticity in a brand and making it resonate true at every touchpoint is still one of the most important things a brand today can do. It might be more difficult, but it is also more critical. It requires getting to those important nuggets of brand truth so that a brand can consistently deliver on promises and interact at with integrity at every touch point. Authentic brands lead with purpose and are emotive in nature.

Authenticity that Feels Right

At Emotive Brand, we help create brands that just feel right – helping them evoke very specific positive feelings in the right ways, with the right people, at every brand touchpoint. At the heart of this, is finding the authenticity in a brand.

Recently, we’ve been working with a very successful, 2nd generation family business entrenched in the coffee world where empty claims of “authenticity” are everywhere. Tired with competitor’s meaningless assertions, they looked to us to help articulate authenticity in a different and meaningful way.

Like we do in any client engagement, we dove into their business and kicked the tires of their brand. We conducted a discourse analysis and a competitive audit and we got to know the landscape of the industry. We met the family who started the business over 35 years ago, toured the facility, observed the ways the employees interacted with each other and the family, learned about their innovative processes, unique and supportive farming relationships, and every step along the supply chain that brings their coffee to life.

You could tell right away, this family operated its business in a way that we’ve never seen before, and it inspired us. Seeing the innate warmth and friendliness of their family flow into their entire way of business helped us unearth an important brand truth: this company was a family that did business like a family, in every way. And this was different from the norm. They treated everyone like family: their employees, their farmers, their retailers, everyone.

This insight alone allowed us to realize the emotional impact the brand had to evoke the story it had to tell, and how it had to tell it. The work of our team became all about finding a new way to express its authenticity in a way that was not boastful, but authentic to who they are and how they behave. They are authentic because that’s always been the only option– it’s just who they are and how they’ve always done business.

The Ah-Ha Moments of Authentic Brands

Uncovering meaningful brand truths and gain an understanding of what will really connect with people and ring genuine is key to any brand looking to create significant experiences today. And when you get to those authentic truths that sit at the heart of any brand and you share them with the people close to the business, they just feel right.

Nothing beats the feeling of being able to reimagine a brand in a fresh and authentic way. It’s an ah-ha moment for everyone in the room. You’ve identified something that just feels so true. That stands out. This help gets the entire organization excited about the new trajectory of the brand and confident that this is a story they can tell and really stand behind – proud and tall. And that’s what authenticity is really about.

Click here to read a case study for another authentic brand and client that needed a new way to think about what made them truly unique.

Emotive Brand transforms the way brands reach out to people, and how people respond back to brands.

Authentic brands interested in learning how to transform your brand into a more authentic, meaningful and emotive brand? Download our white paper.