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Tag: Authenticity

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 in 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.

Embracing Authenticity

Posted on by Sarah Herold

Authenticity Is In

“If you’re willing to tell me about the bad, then I will trust you when you tell me the good.”

In an increasingly staged, contrived, and media-saturated world, people are seeking meaning and authenticity in every facet of their lives. From the employers they work for to the businesses they buy from and the brands they support.

Authentic Business

Globalization and technology have created a new level of consumer awareness. According to a 2014 survey by Cohn & Wolfe, when consumers rated more than 1,600 brands on authenticity, the three key attributes listed were: “reliability,” “respectfulness,” and “reality.”

The study found that consumers consider a brand authentic when the company consistently delivers on what it promises and interacts with their customers with transparency and integrity.

People are no longer willing to just buy into a logo. People want to “buy into a set of values” and be part of a brand that aligns with their beliefs. As a result, authenticity-seeking consumers are paying closer and closer attention to not only the ethical and environmental costs of doing business with a company, but also how a brand treats and relates to its customers and employees.

Harnessing the Power of Authenticity

  1. Commit to purpose: An authentic brand should be defined by its purpose and the promise it makes to its customers – not just what it sells. If a company chooses to be true to their purpose day in and out, it can truly build an authentic brand. A brand should invest time and money in the projects and capabilities that drive its purpose — not constantly reacting to the market or chasing any opportunity that comes its way. A clear and firm sense of purpose is the compass that helps a brand navigate choices and progress toward authenticity.
  1. Be genuine: An authentic brand shows its real self. It doesn’t say one thing in public and behave another way in private. If a business describes their beliefs and doesn’t have an accompanying story, policy, or program to back up it up, then those words become meaningless. And a brand shouldn’t hide its mistakes or imperfections out of fear of looking weak. Showing vulnerability builds loyalty and trust among customers and employees. Authenticity means no longer trying to present a perfect façade.
  1. Lead with the heart: An authentic brand doesn’t just lead with the mind. It engages customers and employees on an emotional level. Just recently, Akagi Nyugyo, a Japanese ice cream company, made a 60-second commercial where executives and employees bowed in apology for raising the price of one of its popular frozen treats by 9 cents. The commercial went viral and their sales jumped by 10% in the month following the increase. Although this kind of national apology is rare in business, communicating with empathy and directness is critical to success and authenticity.
  1. Invite people in: The best way to be an authentic brand is to invite customers and employees in. By letting them help own and shape the brand’s future, these people feel like they are truly a part of the brand. An authentic brand embraces their community and leads the rallying cry to doing something worthwhile in the world. Authenticity requires connecting with people and motivating them to pursue common objectives.

Authenticity is a winning strategy. An open, trustworthy, and transparent business attracts customers who will stand behind the brand’s purpose. When you embrace the authenticity of your brand, everyone wins.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco based agency.