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Tag: Brand Behavior

Emotional and Meaningful Brand Connections Matter Right Now

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

The Time for Emotion and Meaning Is Now

Battling the arduous winds of COVID-19 will take more than a shift in your communications. It will require a real change in behavior. Right now, people are experiencing a whole slew of complex and contradictory emotions. Some of these feelings are ephemeral and are changing every day; others like uncertainty are staying around for the time being. So to truly connect with people where they are, you have to speak their emotional language. That’s why having your brand behave in a more emotionally charged way and putting the focus on building truly meaningful experiences is what really matters right now.

At Emotive Brand, we’ve built our methodology on our belief in the power of emotion. Our methodology has never proved more important or relevant than now. Emotive brands forge emotional and meaningful brand connections by caring deeply about people and aligning their actions and communications to the deep-rooted human needs, desires, and aspirations of all those important to the brand.

We see the keystones of such connections as empathy, compassion, and mindfulness. In our seminal white paper, “Transforming your brand,” we introduce these key drivers of thinking in this way:

“Emotive brand strategies use empathy to better understand and address the needs, values, interests and aspirations of people, both within and outside of your business. As such, we take your brand’s positive attributes and match them against what we know about the ideas and ideals that people care about, connect to, and that can change their behavior. We also encourage our clients to adopt new behaviors that are more empathetic toward both their employees and customers, and to use the insights they gain to identify ways to make their workplace and offerings more personally relevant and emotionally important in the moment.”

Why Empathy?

Empathy is being able to vicariously experience how another experiences something. It’s not actually having the same experience, but rather allowing yourself to see the world from another’s perspective. For example, you don’t have to be blind to understand what life is like without the key sense of sight. Empathy is an innate trait (children are naturally empathetic), and simply needs to be sourced from within. We take an empathetic view of your audiences and then assess how your brand addresses their deepest needs. The results are sometimes unexpected, but always gratifying to our clients, and cultivating empathy is especially essential in navigating uncertain times like these.

Why Compassion?

Compassion is putting the insights you gain through empathy into practice in a helpful way. This is the essence of problem-solving. You come to understand another’s needs and then redesign products, experiences, and communications accordingly. This means greater creativity, innovation, and a continually broadening perspective. We turn to our compassionate nature to translate the unique intersection between your brand and basic human needs into actionable practices that bring the resulting meaning to life.

Why Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the practice of being more aware of the surrounding world and more alive to its inherent possibilities. It is about having a broader perspective and a universal respect for others. It is recognizing that more unites us than separates us. It is about being humble, feeling connected, harnessing and using energy in new and more gratifying ways. When you employ a mindful attitude in everything you do, you enable a mutually-beneficial balance between your tangible business needs and the intangible meaning that will help your brand thrive in a COVID-19 world and beyond.

Every brand strategy we develop embraces the practices of empathy, compassion, and mindfulness. Through this we are better able to match your brand’s attributes with what truly matters to people today on deep and meaningful levels. At the same time, the brand behaviors we develop aim to promote these factors on both leadership and organizational levels.

Making Meaning A Way Of Doing Business

Organizations and leaders are often overwhelmed by circumstances and respond by turning inward both as individuals and on an organizational level. A state of mindfulness enables organizations and leaders to rise above the immediate situation and to turn outward to others on a deeper and more personal level.

Brand behavior that promotes an empathetic, compassionate, and mindful culture helps ensure that your brand will evolve into the most meaningful state possible. As a foundation for your brand culture, these vital traits also make sure that your brand’s meaningful way of being is sustainable and enduring.

As brands seek to confront the challenges of this new world, it’s only natural that they turn to meaning. But it is important to remember that it’s one thing to claim meaning, and quite another to continuously create meaning both within and outside your brand organization. When empathy, compassion, and mindfulness inform the organization, drive its decision-making, and shape its vision, meaning goes beyond being a buzzword and becomes a way of doing business.

Download White Paper

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency in Oakland, California.

Image by Alen Pavlovic

Making Everyone a Brand Champion

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Developing brand champions is critical

Good brand strategies don’t stop at defining why the brand matters. They go further to define the attitudes and behaviors that will define the brand experience in ways that truly matter.

Behavior is best defined on two levels: brand and workplace.

Brand behavior

Brand behavior focuses on the tangible and controllable aspects of your brand. These include the brand’s visual identity and it’s voice in marketing and advertising. Brand behavior identifies the shifts that will generate the feelings with which the brand seeks to be associated. Coupled with new messages that blend the brand’s promise with its key benefits, your brand presence will start to be seen in new, more appealing, and better differentiated ways.

Workplace behavior

Workplace behavior addresses the way leadership, management, and staff can all shift what they do, and how they do it, to better fulfill the brand’s promise. These shifts focus on the role of people who either shape (by designing customer interactions), or who actively create customer experiences (by making a presentation, doing a demonstration, etc). The ideas within the workplace behavior show how they can make the brand’s promise come true, while at the same time evoke the brand’s feelings within every brand experience.

Making everyone a brand champion

Good brand behavior is extremely practical. It helps those specifically involved in managing and promoting the brand to ensure a coherent brand presence. It also helps everyone else in the business see the role they can play in the helping the brand succeed by fulfilling on its promise.

Brand behavior is also an invaluable tool when dealing with outside vendors, including PR and advertising agencies. While brand behavior does not proscribe PR or advertising executions, it does provide these important partners with a strong sense of what makes the brand matter, what they can do to help make the brand promise come true, and how they can evoke the brand’s feelings within the executions they create and manage.

Brand behavior is much more than a set of rules

Brand behavior is helpful advice and guidance, not a set of strict rules or harsh dictates. It recognizes that the brand needs to be able to remain current, and to react to emerging trends and opportunities. It also needs to establish its presence in an increasing number of places.

As such, good brand behavior invites individuals within the organization, and outside vendors, to explore a constant stream of rich and relevant ways to convey the brand’s truths, engage people in the brand’s promise, and change the way people feel about the brand.

All together now

By aligning internal leadership, management and staff, as well as external vendors, brand behavior plays a vital role in shaping brand experiences that are consistently meaningful to customers and prospects. It helps make your promise come true. It helps you create a unique emotional aura around your brand that makes it more appealing and gratifying. Most importantly, it draws more people closer to your brand, so prospects are more likely to try it, customers are more likely to be more loyal, and your brand is more likely to thrive now and in the future.

It’s never been more important to matter as a brand. You take the first steps when you identify what’s most rationally and emotionally valuable about your offering, and embody that in a single brand promise. Your brand thrives when you couple that promise with brand and workplace behavior that’s designed to make it all come true. As shifts in behavior take place, more and more customers and prospects see the truth of your promise, realize its benefits for themselves, and respond in kind.

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IMG credit: http://www.markcypher.com/dusseldorf/dusseldorf.php

Stop Worrying About Getting Attention and Start Paying Attention

Posted on by Chris Ames

The most valuable currency in the world is the fact you’re reading this right now. Your attention is like a scarce mineral and companies will blast mountains with dynamite for the tiniest trace element of it.

It’s safe to say we live in the attention economy. In exchange for everything being “free,” we have transitioned from being customers to the product. The phrase “time is money” has always rung true, but never before has it been so monetized or measured.

As a result, naturally, brands desperately want to know one thing above all else: how do we get attention? How do we differentiate, go viral, get the most number of eyes on us? While you can’t fault brands for thinking this way, it’s entirely the wrong approach. In fact, it only contributes to a negative feedback loop.


The truth is, if you think you deserve a piece of people’s valuable time, you need to stop worrying about getting attention and start paying attention. The answer is not jam-packing a podcast with as many ads as possible like an overstuffed doll. It is not those creepy targeted ads that follow you from page to page like a stalker. The answer is and always has been about paying close attention to what people want, need, desire, or lack—and solving those problems in ways that are quick, easy, delightful, or unexpected.

There are many ways to pay attention. Some brands take an inward look, examining the nuances of their industry to innovate within their space. Others look outward, examining the world around them and thoughtfully responding to what they observe. Either way, the following examples demonstrate that the best way to grow is keeping your gaze off the follower count and on the big picture.

Brands That Capture Attention by Looking Inward

Trader Joe’s is a $10 billion supermarket chain that’s biggest form of advertising is a thin newspaper that looks like something you might wrap fish with. Yet, they have built a devoted cult of fans through a unique line of constantly updated products, relentlessly friendly staff, and an unrivaled customer-service ethos. It positions itself as a “neighborhood grocery store” and as such, pays incredibly close attention to what people are interested in. You don’t come to Trader Joe’s to get everything on your list, you come to get your favorites and discover new obsessions. If they were aiming to get the most attention possible, they would carry trash bags, Ziploc bags, and fifteen kinds of toilet paper. Instead, they eschew trying to be everything to everyone and pick their spots carefully.

Spotify is a music streaming service, but like all companies in 2019, they really are a data company. They have an amazing track record of paying close attention to that data, drawing hyper-specific insights and doing incredible things with them. Spotify Wrapped curates all your favorite music into a year-end compilation with stats about your unique listening habits. Their billboards are famous for their humor and exactitude. For example, the “Listen Like You Used To” campaign contrasts the way today’s 40s-50s crowd enjoyed music back in their youth versus the comfortably bland realities of today. Research shows that people’s musical tastes as teenagers largely set their preferences into adulthood. Meaning, if you enjoyed that Spice Girls CD in 1996, you’re probably still going to find it’s a banger in 2019. Spotify listens to its customers so they can listen to what they love.

As a food and entertainment magazine, Bon Appetit has basically been doing the same thing since its first publication in 1956. They come up with recipes, offer recommendations, and write reviews. They haven’t changed their formula, but by paying attention to the exact format people want that content in, they have gone from a food magazine to a digital content empire. Their videos generated 1.3 billion views across all social media platforms last year, and with the addition of a new streaming video service, that number is only expected to grow. It’s not about reinventing the wheel, it’s about honing your craft and discovering the perfect conditions for that wheel to gain the most traction.

Brands That Capture Attention by Looking Outward

“The President stole your land,” declared Patagonia, in response to Trump’s reduction of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments.

“Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything,” said Nike, in response to the suspension of Colin Kaepernick and the larger issue of police brutality.

“Is this the best a man can get?” posed Gillette, in response to the #MeToo movement and toxic masculinity.

“If someone asked you to describe yourself, what would you say?” asked Dove, in response to negative self-talk and unattainable beauty standards.

These brands (and many others) are experts at tapping into the national conversation by paying attention to the things that keep us up at night. They take risks, not just because they have the guts, but because they know taking a stand on social issues pays off. According to the 2018 Edelman Earned Brand report, 64% of consumers worldwide are “belief-driven buyers.” That controversial Nike campaign? It just won an Emmy. From Everlane’s radical price transparency to Lush’s sustainability ethics, there are infinite ways for your brand to authentically enter a larger discourse.

What high-level questions can your brand start asking? Where can you genuinely put a stake in the ground? How can you use your product as a vehicle for meaningful change?

Thank You for Your Attention

We need to start treating attention as the precious resource that it is. Whether by looking inward or outward, the best brands are those that make us feel the time we invest is time well spent. Because the hard truth is: we’re never getting that time back.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency in Oakland, California.

Unrealized Business Value? Build It With Brand

Posted on by Carol Emert

Unrealized Business Value

If you’re feeling thwarted by business value that’s falling short of its potential, the answer may well lie in your brand. It’s true that brand lives under marketing, not finance. But a sharp, well-aimed brand strategy can address critical business results from lagging market capitalization to margins.

At Emotive Brand, we believe that brand isn’t just about what you say. It’s also about how you behave, how you serve each of your audiences, and, fundamentally, what you believe. That means your brand strategy is a foundation you can use to build value holistically, across your organization.

Here are three ways brand can build measurable business value:

Market Capitalization

Apple shares were trading below $1 when Steve Jobs rejoined the company in 1997. Today Apple has the highest market cap of any enterprise, clocking in around $867 billion, or $187 per share. Its brand value is the highest too – $184 billion, according to Interbrand.

To put that into perspective, Apple’s brand value is worth more than the entire book value of Coco-Cola Co., according to this tally.

One of the first things Jobs did upon rejoining Apple was to redefine the Apple brand and articulate it to the world.

In a staff meeting revealing the Think Different campaign, when Jobs had been back at Apple just a few weeks, he gave a talk that brilliantly explains the value of putting brand first.

This might be the most inspiring explanation of the power of brand we’ve seen, so do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing. Here are some key points:

“To me, marketing is about belief…. [and] the things Apple believed at its core are the same things Apple really stands for today…. Apple’s about something more than [making boxes…. Our] core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better… And those people that are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that actually do.”

Jobs’ clarity about his brand and its audience of passionate individuals helped guide Apple’s innovation and success. Those in turn have helped create the mega-brand value and world-leading market capitalization that Apple enjoys today.

Margin

Apple is also sitting on some $267 billion in cash, according to its latest quarterly earnings report. That illustrates another way brand can help build business value: profitability.

The gross profit margin on the iPhone X is reportedly 64%, up a healthy 5 percentage points from the 59% margin on its immediate predecessor, the iPhone 8. Overall, Apple’s corporate gross profit stands at a whopping 38%.

Of course, many factors impact corporate margins. But it’s clear that Apple’s brand appeal heightens its ability not only to charge a premium, but to launch new products that its fans line up to buy.

Recruiting

Brand appeal has just as much power in recruiting as it does in sales – if not more. It’s not lost on any job hunter how much a gold-plated brand stands out on a resume.

Of course, hiring the right people is essential to the success of any business, but a strong brand also has a direct impact on costs.

LinkedIn reports that a strong employer brand yields 50% more qualified applicants and reduces both hiring time and costs by half. Three quarters of job seekers say they consider the brand before applying.

A strong employer brand even correlates to a higher retention rate. That both saves recruiting and training costs and contributes to higher workforce productivity.

You can learn more by downloading our white paper, How Emotive Brands Drive Business Results.

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

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.

Brand Behavior Matters for Transforming your Business

Posted on by Paige Lansing Valle

To Transform Your Brand, Transform Your Brand Behavior

In the end, brand behavior is what drives results. No matter how smart and inspired your brand strategy may be, it’s just strategy. And oftentimes, it’s just not enough. In fact, we’ve seen many brand strategies fall short because they failed to move beyond brand identity and communications, and didn’t provide the guidelines, tools, and processes needed to actually bring the brand’s defining attributes to life through meaningful behavior and action.

Brand behavior is all about how your brand reaches out to people and how they respond back to you. In reality, people never experience brand strategies. Instead, they experience brand moments. These brand moments are what bring the strategy alive. So if you want to transform your brand and reap the benefits of this transformation, you have to focus on these brand moments. By honing in on how your brand behaves at every touchpoint, brand behavior is what will ultimately take your brand strategy further than the “brand deck.” The goal of brand behavior is two-fold: make customers more satisfied and loyal, while creating an aligned, ambitious, and meaningful workplace that behaves in line with your brand.

Workplace Behavior

Because behavior is learned and often mimicked, people from childhood onwards depend on elders, role models, and/or authority figures to show them the “right” way to behave. And patterns of behavior operate the same way within a workplace. They trickle down. This means workplace behavior is self-propagating, infectious, and often indicative of the culture of an organization. In fact, if your brand isn’t living up to its potential, the cause may very well be workplace behavior does not pay off why your brand matters. When you add meaning to workplace behavior, you add meaning to the brand.

No Small Task

Modifying behavior internally is key to shifting your brand externally. But aligning behavior to reflect your brand is never easy. Old, rooted, and integrated patterns of behavior become second nature and breaking out of these patterns can’t be done overnight. It’s easy to get stuck in a cycle of off-strategy behaviors, especially in the midst of a business shift. Because change is more easily said than done, it requires true courage and hard work.

Shortcuts never work. Leaders can’t just ask employees to change behaviors that they aren’t modeling themselves. And just a few “behavior champions” won’t be enough to transform your businesses. Everyone plays a role in transforming a brand (no matter how large or established the business). If behaviors don’t fit – even on an individual basis – your business will be slowed down.

When done right, workplace behavior can be transformative for you business, shifting the way people think, feel, and act with respect to your brand – and making your brand matter more.

  1. Address shifts head-on. The importance of workplace behavior can easily be brushed under the rug, misunderstood, or lost in translation. Shifts must be communicated, outlined, and demonstrated clearly from the onset. At larger companies this is especially important. It’s easy for someone who has been working for your business for 40 years to have a different understanding of the shift then your new hire. Take the time to be clear. Good communication goes a long way.
  2. Model behavior from the top down. Leaders lead by example. Demonstrating how behaviors connect to what your brand is all about is much more compelling than just telling people how to act. By behaving thoughtfully, you will discover why these behavior shifts really matter, what the challenges are, and how to overcome them as a community. This understanding will foster more successful teamwork, productivity, and help everyone move forward
  3. Show empathy, respect, and trust. Empathetic businesses are smart businesses. Try to see your business through your employees’ eyes. Through this shift in perspective, it’s easier to identify the behavior shifts that are necessary to make the brand promise relevant and powerful to everyone. Show respect for everyone’s role. Strategic shifts change how people approach and do their jobs, and these transitions can prove difficult for many. Empower your employees to make the necessary behavior adjustments.
  4. Make people feel like they matter. Recognize and reward meaningful behavior. When people feel like what they do and how they do it really does matter, they are more likely to embody the new behavior because they see first-hand how it makes a difference. The best way to get employees to behave in line with your brand is by demonstrating their individual value to the business – showing each individual how the brand can help them grow both professional and personally.
  5. Build a roadmap. In larger companies, employees often feel out of touch with where the company is headed. What’s it going to be like in 5 years? What are the goals? How can each individual help? Building a roadmap is a great way to make people part of the shift towards success. Show employees where the business could go if everyone gets on board and behaves meaningfully each and every day.

Meaningful workplace behavior will positively affect the way your brand is perceived both inside and outside the business. When people see those behind the brand behaving in a way that truly reflects who you are, what you do, and why you matter, they feel more connected and appreciative of what the brand stands for. Workplace behavior can help your brand matter more to everyone.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy firm. 

Top Brand Strategy Firm Shares Thoughts on Brand Purpose

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

A brand strategy firm perspective

There’s been a lot of buzz lately around brand purpose – a concept that San Francisco’s Brand Strategy Firm, Emotive Brand has championed from our very beginning. Unfortunately, with buzz, comes confusion. It’s easy to get lost in the vernacular and repetitions and lose the answers to the key questions at hand. Tracy Lloyd, founding partner and Chief Strategy Officer of Emotive Brand, offers some clarity, opinions, and answers to questions surrounding the concept of purpose-led brands.

1. What does it mean to be a purpose-led brand?

A purpose-led brand is a brand that is driven by a shared ambition, goal, or reason for being. Being a truly purpose-led brand means so much more than marketing your company’s purpose. I think many leaders have the ambition to be purpose-led, but are unwilling to do what it takes behaviorally to live their purpose. Purpose is something that people can identify with, internalize, and put into action for themselves. Purpose-led companies go beyond the obvious drivers of generating profit and creating shareholder value, and try to connect with people in authentic and emotionally meaningful ways. In 2016, I’m seeing a trend and stronger conviction in the idea that there is room for purpose AND profit, and I imagine we will see more and more leaders move toward this belief as they manage their business. Those leaders who are truly guided by their purpose will see their business gain the benefits of both purpose and profit.

2. How can brand purpose differentiate your business?

Purpose is what people are looking for in their day to day lives. So brands that lead with purpose have a real opportunity to connect with people in ways that matter. Be it to recruit top talent to an organization or to encourage people to choose your brand over another, purpose is becoming a deciding factor in our decision-making. We want to buy into something that makes us feel good. Something that makes us feel like we are a part of something larger than ourselves — larger than a single and fleeting purchase or a uninspired job that pays the bills. Purpose differentiates businesses because it connects ideas, people, activities, causes, and products that make lives matter in new and compelling ways.

3. How do you find your purpose?

I believe purpose finds you. And it is the one thing that drives people to build something that can change lives. Purpose is what drives you. For business owners, it might be the “why” that explains their decision to leave a previous job and create something new – something they believe in, are inspired by daily, something they feel could change the world. Your purpose is what attracts people to help you build it, and people to buy it. It is the common denominator of belief and this sets the foundation for other to be willing to work toward your shared ambition. When you lead with purpose, you can develop incredibly energized followers who share your beliefs.

4. Why should companies be thinking about purpose in the workplace?

There is no doubt in my mind that leading with purpose is what enables a thriving corporate culture. It is what will attract the right employees to you, keep the right employees with you, and more meaningfully engage employees in ways that will help both them and your business thrive. Workplaces automatically become more meaningful when employees share in the purpose of what the company is about.

To take this one step further and drive even more alignment and meaning in the workplace, outline the behavior shifts that employees and departments should work toward to support the purpose. This provides the opportunity for them to understand how their roles matter in the larger scheme of delivering on that purpose. When companies take this step, great things can happen: to the culture, to the bottom line, to how people feel about you internally and externally. A shared and embraced goal creates an aligned and engaged workplace.

5. Are purpose-led brands just the marketing buzzword of 2016?

I don’t think so. We’ve created a proprietary methodology and have been building a practice around purpose-led brands for the past 10 years. I believe purpose-led will become the defacto standard at some point. The world is changing, and people are looking for more meaning in their lives. We built Emotive Brand on this premise. And as time goes on, I think the value proposition, that, people want to work for, buy from, and engage with purpose-led brands, will be the most important way for brands to meaningfully connect with people today and in the future — which will create a win-win for everyone.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy firm.

The Power of Saying Thank You

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

’Tis the Season for Thank You

The Thanksgiving season is the perfect time to not only reflect on what we’re thankful for, but also, to consider the power of saying ‘thank you’. For businesses, it’s a time to think about how to show appreciation for employees, customers, partners, and stakeholders alike.

Caught Up in Business

For many reasons, ‘thank you’ isn’t said enough. It’s easy to get wrapped up in daily business obstacles, work dynamics, or simply, an overloaded email box. It’s natural to get sucked into our own business-as-usual worlds. But as a result, many people find themselves obsessing over what they could have more of – more time off, more money, more time in a day. Because of this, we often forget to be grateful for what we do have – and to reach out to the people who we really are thankful for.

Always Say Thank You

In our work, when we reach out to people and articulate the specific impact they have made on a project, it goes a long way. Being able to communicate thanks back and forth makes for a more trusting and respectful relationship – on both ends.

And at the end of the day, business relies on strong relationships. In any good relationship, we believe appreciation and admiration should be the norm. Even if it comes in the form of a casual note or a simple person-to-person interaction. Giving thanks, in our view, never has to be extravagant. When it’s genuine, it always rings true, and the work becomes stronger and more gratifying for everyone involved.

On top of that, mutual respect fosters the strong teamwork, innovation, and creativity needed to drive things forward. That’s why it’s important for people not only to give praise, but to be open to receiving praise. For some, this is difficult. It’s easy to toss a compliment off. But really listening and appreciating a ‘thank you’ communicates to your team or partner that you are listening and that you recognize that they appreciate you. It helps everyone do their job better in the future, knowing what people really appreciated in the past.

We believe being able to both give and receive thanks says a lot about how empathetic, genuine, trustworthy, and respectful the people who represent your brand and business are. This behavior, like any other, shines from the inside out.

Brands that Say Thank You

Many brands today are working on ways to better thank the people who matter to them – from being extra responsive on Twitter, sending personalized letters in the mail, matching a donation, offering free classes around birthdays, or integrating extra rewards programs. Brands in a genuinely thankful spirit show greater levels of engagement, loyalty, and brand love.

Saying ‘thank you’ can’t be a strategy. It has to be authentic and meaningful, and the motives of businesses who say ‘thank you’ in inauthentic ways are easily seen through by smart consumers, partners, and employees today. Brands that say ‘thank you’ in the right way come from a genuine and authentic place. They make sure their ‘thank you’ is personal and sincere.

We’re Thankful For…

There is much power in saying thank you, and this year we are thankful for so much. For our clients from which we learn new things each day. For our team who inspires each other and drives one another forward. For our wonderful neighborhood of Oakland. We are thankful for the challenges of 2016 and the successes. We are thankful for what 2017 will bring and the opportunity to continue to work hard for what we care about.

So take the time to say “thank you” this holiday, and each day after. We believe these two words can go a long way.

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

 

Six Steps to Improving Brand Behavior

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

On Your Best Brand Behavior

Whether it’s B2B or B2C, brands need to be on their best behavior at all times. There’s nowhere to hide in this digital world when a brand misbehaves. A poor customer service experience, an offensive remark from a CEO, a bad workplace reputation, a lack of transparency, or lies, are types of brand behavior that create a lasting (and widespread) impression.

When business suffers, often, a business can trace it back to a misstep in the brand’s behavior. And though it’s easy to revamp the website or roll-out workplace training as a quick fix, the real challenge is making a shift in brand behavior across the board, starting on the inside with the way employees approach their work and each other.

Time for change

Identifying and aligning around a strong brand promise is critical as your brand evaluates its behavior against its aspirations. But even when there’s a guiding light for how the brand ‘should’ behave across all touchpoints, there may still be a disconnect. When people aren’t living up to the promise, it’s important to make a plan to truly affect how people think and feel about your brand.

Easier said than done

Pointing at one aspect of the brand and expecting results doesn’t cut it. Even so, companies spend billions of dollars on training programs as an obvious ‘fix’ for brand behavior. HBR notes that in the US alone $160 billion are spent on training programs that don’t work. Bad behavior persists without evidence that these programs enhance organizational performance.

Blaming it on external factors isn’t the answer either. It’s not the customers’ fault if the brand isn’t living up to its promise. If the market changes or competition creeps in and customers don’t respondlike they used to, the brand needs to adjust its behavior. A comprehensive approach that looks at behavior inside and outside the business is necessary to truly ignite change.

Creating and Sustaining Change

When the writing is on the wall that the brand’s behavior is negatively affecting its performance, there are six things that will make a significant impact:

1. Solicit an external perspective.

Brand behavior change comes from within, but it’s nearly impossible for top-down change to ignite from the inside. The recent HBR story on leadership training notes that ‘HR managers and others find it difficult or impossible to confront senior leaders and their teams with an uncomfortable truth’ that the policies, procedures and everyday behavior of an organization’s top management are responsible for the brand’s poor behavior. And they are. Using an outside agency to help identify the shifts the brand needs to make in its behavior and develop a clear strategy will ignite the behavior change in a much more productive way than is possible if internal leadership is tasked with the job.

2. Start at the top.

With an external team involved, begin by working with senior leaders to define the values and strategic direction the brand will follow. Then, identify the change in your leadership team’s behavior and commit to making shifts that align to the strategic direction. The brand’s promise should serve as the guiding light in identifying the type of behavior necessary to change. Aligning leadership behavior to the brand promise ensures that the rest of the organization has an example for their own behavior shifts, and subsequently the brand’s external behavior is well positioned to follow-suit.

3. Examine and redesign roles and responsibilities:

This must happen at all levels of the organization to reflect the brand’s promise and motivate change. Ensuring that the brand has the infrastructure in place to support its promise is critical. A brand positioned around its excellent customer service, for example, needs to have the team and people in place to execute.

4. Evaluate day-to-day behaviors:

Evaluating day-to-day behaviors outside of job descriptions helps people identify the individual things they can do to better represent the brand. At the end of the day, a brand’s behavior is reflected in the small things that it does. And, more often than not, the people behind the brand are responsible for every small touchpoint the brand makes with its audience. Establishing internal behavior expectations beyond job descriptions ensures the brand can live up to its promise and create a reputation that people come to associate as integral to the brand itself.

5. Measure change:

Measuring change for individual performance and organizational KPIs. Setting new expectations for behavior is one thing. Holding the people behind the brand responsible for the new behavior is another. Not only should individuals be held accountable, the business should too. Gauge the behavior change with established metrics on a recurring basis to ensure it lasts.

6. Adjust and adapt:

It’s important to constantly adjust and adapt your systems and procedures to sustain new behavior. Set a timeline for change and commit to reevaluating what’s working and what’s not in a designated time period. There’s always room for improvement.

If the brand needs to shift the way it behaves in order to improve its reputation, following these six steps will help ensure the change in behavior is widespread and lasting. When done right, it can have a positive impact on employee engagement, sales, people’s perception of your brand, and your business.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy agency

 

Purpose Drives Financial And Competitive Advantages – Deloitte

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Purpose-Driven Companies

Deloitte is the world’s largest audit, tax, and consulting firm. They have done extensive research on purpose-driven companies and the role of purpose in them. And according to their report, companies at which people agree there’s a “strong sense of purpose” perform significantly better than those that don’t.

Specifically, these purpose-driven companies have:

• Excellent financial performance
• Distinct and differentiated brands
• Strong workplace cultures
• Highly satisfied customers

Three Drivers to purpose-based performance improvements:

1. Create a Purposeful Culture

Invest in making your purpose a mainstream and actionable idea across your workplace. So work on aligning everyone to your purposeful ambition by making it relevant on an individual level. Show employees how they will benefit from helping make your purposeful ambition a reality.

2. Exude a Purposeful Presence

In order to succeed, ensure that every level of management and staff is included in the process of training and engagement around your purpose. So don’t only talk the talk, walk the talk. Make sure to acknowledge, celebrate, and reward the purposeful behaviors of individuals, teams, and departments. Shift your brand and marketing messages to better reflect your purposeful ambition.

3. Adopt More Purposeful Behavior

In order to change the way your brand and its people interact internally, and with the outside world, make sure every interaction reflects and amplifies your purposeful ambition. By examine processes, policies, and procedures and amending as needed purpose will drive your business.

People Connect to Purpose

Purpose isn’t simply a “nice to have” business attribute. Purpose-driven companies positively impact virtually every measure of success. Why? People connect to purpose and they change the way they think, feel, and act when they embrace a purpose that truly matters to them.

For additional reading on driving business through purpose, read Pathway To Sustained Growth

Check out some of the companies driven by purpose we have had the pleasure of doing work with.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy firm.

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