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Tag: Brand Behavior

Is Your Brand Working to Positive or Negative Energy?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Strategies for addressing the energy of your business in good times and bad:

We came across this interesting insight by John P. Kotter in his post entitled “To Create Healthy Urgency, Focus on a Big Opportunity” on the Harvard Business Review blog.

“There are two basic kinds of energy in organizations.

  1. Energy triggered by a big opportunity, can create momentum in the right direction and sustain it over time.
  2. Energy based on fear or anxiety, might overcome complacency for a time, but it does not build any momentum or maintain it. Instead it can create a panic, with all the obvious negative consequences — stressing people out and eventually draining an organization of the very energy leaders wanted to generate.”

Many of our clients are burdened by problems and issues that are holding their business and brand back. Declining sales, unclear vision, an under performing workforce, lack of differentiation in the marketplace, the list goes on and on.

Continue reading “Is Your Brand Working to Positive or Negative Energy?”

Is Your B2B Brand Talking to the Wall?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

We believe B2B brand owners need to rethink how their brand behaves in the marketplace.

While we appreciate the humor of Hugh MacLeod’s cartoon, we actually think some brands talk in a way that leaves people feeling numb.

This is especially true of B2B brands which seem to think that business buyers are robots, that it is dangerous to have a personality and that buzzwords and cliches are poetry.

Perhaps the reason why so many B2B brands are so unadverturous is because they haven’t yet realized the value of connecting meaningfully with the people to whom they are selling (you know, those people often referred to as “business decision makers” and “influencers”).

We’re not saying that industy-specific terminology shouldn’t be used. We’re simply saying that the voice of communications should ideally convey not only the “what” and “how” of your offering, but also resonate on the “why” of it all. While doing this, language and imagery can be used to evoke relevant emotions that elevate the message.

By introducing and centering communications and actions around the “why” of your brand, your brand becomes more personally relevant to the people you’re trying to influence. By consistently evoking a set of feelings, your brand become more emotionally important to them.

As a result, they remember more about what you say to them because your message truly matters to them. These meaningful memories pay dividends when these people go to give advice or make decisions about your brand’s products or services.

The emotive branding process helps brands capture a compelling “why” about themselves and to identify the ideal emotions to evoke. The process culminates in helpful tools the people behind the brand can use to enhance the way the brand reaches out to people.

Don’t talk to the wall. Talk to the minds and hearts of people. 

Emotive Brand is a B2B brand strategy firm.

Cartoon by Hugh MacLeod.

Employer Branding on a Global Scale

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Employer branding has gained more attention recently, however creating an employer brand that is meaningful and scales globally is no easy feat.

“A company has a reputation in the market for its products and what it sells,” said Jason Seiden, Co-Founder and CEO of Brand Amper.  “But companies also have a reputation as employers.”

In today’s world, most every business needs to attract and retain top talent. An employer brand strategy explains why anyone would want to join or work at your company. And your employer brand can be one of the most valuable assets of your company, if you build it meaningfully.

In order to create a meaningful  employer brand, it is important to answer some critical questions:

  • How do you create a powerful employer brand when your staff is spread across the country, or around the world?
  • How do you make your brand understood and appreciated by people from different cultures?
  • How do you encourage a common intent, attitude, and behavior among people working in far-off locations?

Rethink your brand’s “why.”

Start by rethinking how your brand can be more personally relevant and emotionally important to your employees. One way is to adopt a powerful employer  value proposition (EVP) or brand promise. A people-centric, emotional-laden, and meaningful purpose helps your people understand what your brand represents and why it matters. A promise is a high-order thought designed to evoke common human emotions. The promise can readily cross cultural boundaries because the common emotions it evokes applies to everyone alike.

Express your “why” in human terms.

To translate your brand’s promise, move it from its C-Suite orientation to a strategy delivered in a human language. The strategy should focus on making the desired outcomes of the brand far more meaningful to each individual employee on a personal level, given their responsibilities and specific job function within the company.

Show employees how they can help.

Finally, show your employees how they can help your brand achieve its brand promise. Show them how the brand should ideally behave and how they should behave when representing the brand. Create a more unified brand culture – and, hence, a more unified global brand presence – by encouraging and rewarding meaningful brand behavior.

Global organization = global brand power.

As the new behavior of your employees drives communications and interactions in a meaningful way, your local customers and prospects start to better understand and appreciate your brand’s meaningful intent. They start seeing your brand as more unique, more appealing, and more desirable.

Employer Branding. It all starts with a big idea.

This big idea should be designed to be “viral” in nature. As individual employees around the world choose to behave in a more meaningful way, the idea catches us quickly and gains momentum with ease.

To view our latest employer branding project, click here

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Brand Moments Matter More than You Think

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

There are many “tangible” brand moments that are under direct control of a brand (the lobby people enter,  the ad campaign they see, the packaging on the product they open, etc.) However there are also many “intangible” moments that play an important part in defining the success of a brand.

These are moments when employees of the brand interact with other employees, customers, partners, suppliers, distributor, investors, community leaders, and so on.

Behind every great brand, there are great people talking with important people.

When a brand seeks to move toward greater meaning, it must take every one of its staff along with it.

This is easier said than done as has been evident from the many brands with great advertising but-less-than gratifying customer service experiences.

The goal of emotive branding is to bring the brand’s promise to an understandable and actionable level.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” (Maya Angelou).

By focusing on simple human emotions – feelings people experience themselves every day – we help clients provide a language and practice that is easily communicated to, and internalized by, their staff.

This approach makes the difference between giving people the mission to be “the best, which often sounds “meaningless” to them, versus asking them to make others feel good about themselves and their choices, which always sounds “meaningful” to them.

A true, credible, believable and organic process

Most important, a brand’s effort to make their intangible brand moments meaningful must be an organic process.

It cannot boil down to presentation decks and posters on the wall.

It must come from a true, credible and believable intent on your brand’s part.

It needs to be part of the brand strategy.

For additional reading on emotive branding, you may enjoy Brand Behavior Drives Business Results.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy firm.

The Importance of Brand Behavior in the Trust Economy

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

The Trust Economy

It’s no secret that we are living through a revolution in the delivery of products and services. Driven by the internet’s uncanny ability to match sellers and buyers, people all over the world are engaging in direct commerce with other individuals, brokered by branded platforms.

Some people call it the sharing economy, collaborative consumption, on-demand services, or the peer-to-peer economy. Since all models depend on trusting that a virtual stranger will do what he or she promises, let’s call it the trust economy.

The trust economy is transforming sectors like travel, car sharing, microfinance, microventure funding, staffing, and music and video streaming. PwC estimates that global revenues from these trust economy sectors will rise from $15 billion today to $335 billion in the next ten years.

Nearly half of American adults are familiar with the sharing/trust economy, and PwC reports that the more familiar they are, the more excited they become.

But 69% will not trust sharing companies unless recommended by someone they already trust. 64% of consumers say that peer regulation is more important than government regulation. And Nielsen reports that 92% of consumers trust word-of-mouth recommendations above all other forms of advertising.

The key for brands in this new economy is trust.

It’s not just about people trusting other people, peer to peer. It’s about people trusting a brand. And if a company invests in developing a meaningful brand strategy that helps employees understand how to behave, the brand’s behavior will lead to people developing feelings of trust in the brand. There’s only one way for a brand to get into a relationship of trust with a customer. You have to earn it.

Trust is earned by doing what you say you’ll do. By consistently and conspicuously living up to what your brand promises at each and every brand interaction. Every time.

The formula for the trust economy is easy enough: Brand + Behavior = Trust. When thousands of consumers are being served by thousands of virtual strangers, trust in the brand is the only thing that makes the new economy work.

For more information on how brand behaior can drive business results, please download our paper:

Download White Paper

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Brand Strategy Without Brand Behavior = A Car Without an Engine

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

Brand strategy is step one. Defining the shifts to the brand required to live the new brand strategy is step two. We call that brand behavior.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that brands need to run deep if they are to prevail in today’s world. This is because modern brands need to compete with not only each other, but also with an overwhelming number of ideas, considerations, and issues that flood the minds and hearts of the people important to any brand’s success.

Continue reading “Brand Strategy Without Brand Behavior = A Car Without an Engine”

Beyond Identity: Achieving a Presence That Matters

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

A new product or service is ready to be launched.

A logo, a set of colors and a design look and feel are decided.

A brand guidelines PDF is published.

And, for many people, a brand has been established.

Continue reading “Beyond Identity: Achieving a Presence That Matters”

What Does Purpose Look and Feel Like for Your Brand

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

Sometimes It’s Not What You Add To A Brand, But What You Take Out

We were reminded of the story of the sculptor who was asked how he managed to fashion a beautiful elephant out of a piece of granite.

He replied, “By chipping away all the pieces that didn’t look like an elephant”.

What elements of your brand strategy “don’t look (or feel) like your brand”?

Continue reading “What Does Purpose Look and Feel Like for Your Brand”

For Brands, Being Human Is The New Black. And…

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

Fast Company recently featured a story about IDEO’s Elle Luna’s talk to the Design Fair at which she declared: “Today, brands are becoming more and more like humans. They’re taking on more and more human-like traits.”

Continue reading “For Brands, Being Human Is The New Black. And…”