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Tag: Brand Strategy

The Business of Transformation is Human

Posted on by Amber Johnson

How we feel matters. It determines—and has the power to transform—how we show up in the world and for each other, and in the end, the type of impact we create. We see it in our work with Emotive Brand clients all the time.

The most rewarding part of strategic writing and design is not spotting our work in the wild—perched on grocery store shelves, splashed across websites, or looming large on billboards. It’s having the opportunity to change how people think and feel about their work. You know, that thing they spend most of their limited time on earth doing.

At Emotive, we get to see clients’ faces brighten as we reframe what their company and brand stand for, to illuminate higher purpose and uncover deeper meaning.

When the strategy and creative are right, it’s clear–because sparks of transformation flicker before your eyes. Client teams light up with new ideas to shape all areas of the business. Their energy level and ambition rise. Too many leaders say emotion is intangible. We know it’s palpable.

How people feel matters more than ever, and can tank or propel the success of brands and businesses. Here are three reasons why.

Humans now face constant change and uncertainty.
The seismic jolt of the pandemic keeps reverberating, alongside a push to get people back into the office. There’s the specter of layoffs, political division, and the high cost of living. With technology, epitomized by AI, progressing faster than humans can adapt, upheaval is neverending.

“Change leaves people and organizations feeling confused, vulnerable, and fractured at a time when resilience, cohesion, and collaboration are necessary to perform at the highest levels.”

—Harvard Business Review

 

People are exhausted by constant change. So if you want to spearhead transformation, you have to give them something worth caring about, something they can feel and believe in.

People are fed up with corporate bullshit.
The scourge of shrinkflation. Greenwashing. Planned obsolescence. Employees’ and consumers’ tolerance for being deceived is depleting. That’s why the number of B Corps and Benefit Corporations keeps climbing, along with the popularity of de-influencers and the “right to repair” movement.

“During the challenging year of 2020, only 4.5% of B Corps failed, compared to 12.5% of American businesses overall.”

—Federal Reserve Board

 

Getting ahead of these issues, instead of waiting to be exposed and called out, is not just the right thing to do. By building trust and loyalty with employees and consumers, a proactive approach can save and sustain businesses.

Humans need more than products and paychecks.
Your brand or organization has a golden opportunity to lift people up at a time when all of us are fighting battles that wear us down. Like navigating education and healthcare systems that fall short, being squeezed as part of the sandwich generation, or needing purpose at work but struggling to afford soaring rents as a Gen Zer.

Retention, loyalty, and growth—the aims of transformation programs—are best served through genuine connection and alignment with how people feel and what they care about.

“The human emotions of people working at the centre of a transformation play a pivotal role in its success or failure.”

—EY and Oxford University report

 

At Emotive, we leverage emotion to transform brands and businesses in ways that contribute, even just a little bit, to a better world for people. No mere paycheck can compare.

Creating a Brand That Resonates: 3 Grammy-Worthy Lessons from Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.”

Posted on by Nick Ott

Is your brand telling a story for now or a story forever? Take a lesson from pop music and learn how to create a brand that lets your customers feel like they “can be someone.”

Imagine a slightly different 2024 Grammy Awards. In this one, there’s still a comeback performance from a reclusive 1980s star, but instead of Tracy Chapman singing “Fast Car” alongside Luke Combs, it’s Billy Ocean singing “Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car.” Can you picture Taylor Swift singing along rapturously to his lyric: “Lady driver, let me take the wheel”?

Probably not, but why? Both “Fast Car,” and “…Get into My Car” were released in 1988 and Ocean’s was the bigger single that year, number 15 on the year-end singles charts versus 76 for “Fast Car.” So, why was it Tracy on the stage in 2024 instead of Billy?

Emotional resonance
While Billy Ocean still has his fans (I’m one), his singles are largely characterized as novelty hits: bright, catchy, quick hits of dopamine. If “Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car,” were released today, we’d say it was written with engagement in mind. It could inspire a TikTok dance.

“Fast Car,” on the other hand, has only grown in popularity, becoming a staple cover of artists spanning generations and genres, all of whom want to do what that song does uniquely well: connect emotionally with their audience. It communicates the eternal human desires for escape and rebirth—desires that are universal and enduring. It gives a voice to people with those desires. In this respect, Tracy Chapman is capable of speaking for them on an emotional level.

At Emotive Brand, we create brands that aspire to deliver the emotional resonance “Fast Car” delivers, and believe there are a few things that any company can learn by connecting the songwriting process to the brand-building process.

1. Consider the emotional needs of your customers (not just their material needs)
“Fast Car” is a song with a story: its protagonist is a woman stuck in a cycle of poverty and struggling to care for an alcoholic father. While many people can empathize with that, not everyone can see themselves in it. “Fast Car” feels universal because it tells us the emotional needs of its protagonist, not just her material ones: wanting to belong, wanting to “be someone.” Nearly everyone knows what that feels like, regardless of circumstance.

Brands should do this too, regardless of industry or offering, because one way or another, to some degree or another, every buying decision is an emotional one. No matter how rational or materialistic your customers may seem at the moment of decision, they are human beings with human needs, goals, and emotions. If your offering helps your customers cut costs or make a business process more efficient, perhaps your brand is helping them advance their career or gain the respect of their peers. As we’ve recently said to one client, “even CFOs have feelings.”

2. Make your story timeless
A good story can always grab attention, but to endure, it needs to resonate beyond the moment. Tracy Chapman’s own brand was that of an “activist” singer (her second single was “Talkin’ ‘bout a Revolution”). She could have written “protest songs”: straightforward stories about the specific political and social issues of her day, but songs like “Fast Car” offer a different perspective, framing social issues through the lens of perennial, emotional desires.

Similarly, while your product or service may be meeting a need that is very much of the now, your customers’ most important needs are their aspirations: longer term goals that are often both primal and enduring. You do your brand an enormous disservice if you don’t identify those aspirations and connect your offering to that distant horizon. If you make plain to your customers how you can help them reach their goals, your brand can truly resonate.

3. Share the spotlight
As we’ve seen, for most listeners of “Fast Car,” the song isn’t about Tracy Chapman, or even about an unnamed protagonist; it’s about them. Instead of putting the spotlight exclusively on the singer of the song, “Fast Car” lets listeners hear themselves within its lyrics and makes them the hero of a shared narrative.

There are few more important lessons for any brand to learn. Even with a truly revolutionary, world-shaking offering, a brand is almost always better off being an enabler of heroic change than the hero or heroine making that change. Iconic consumer brands (and iconic musicians) have understood this for decades, but many B2B brands still struggle with it.

Today, many brands are built like a Billy Ocean hit, with more hook than pull. Whether that means confusing their product with their brand, or hyper-focusing on the tangible benefits they offer at the expense of the needs of their audience, they tell a story exclusively about themselves, and one their customers can’t see themselves in. But if you can create a brand like “Fast Car,” tapping into near-universal desires for things like belonging and significance, you’ll forge emotional bonds with your audience that will endure beyond that first attention-grabbing moment.

Redefining What it Means to be a Tech Branding Agency

Posted on by Emotive Brand

This year pushed us to refine how we work with high-growth tech companies to deliver brand positioning that resonates—tight budgets, big expectations, and the ever-present need to differentiate forced us to deliver smarter and stronger. The lessons we learned didn’t just challenge us—they made us better.

They sharpened how we deliver impact, aligned us even closer with our clients, and the outcomes? They speak for themselves. Here’s what we learned about speed, emotion, simplicity, and alignment—and how those lessons are driving real sustainable growth.

The Speed Trap
Speed is non-negotiable these days. Clients demand it, and we’ve gotten pretty good at delivering—getting them what they need, in the way they need it, and at the level of quality we’re known for. But here’s the thing: speed only works when it’s a team effort, and that means getting stakeholder engagement from the start.

What I’ve learned is this: you can’t wheel in your CEO at the end and expect them to be on board with your new brand positioning and strategy. If they’re part of the decision, they need to go on the journey with us. When that happens, speed isn’t just fast—it’s transformative. You get that unanimous, “Yes, let’s launch this” kind of moment, where the team is aligned and energized. And that alignment often leads to bigger budgets, more opportunities, and an even greater impact.

The irony? Speed doesn’t mean less input—it means more. It requires buy-in, collaboration, and executive involvement at every stage. When that’s in place, speed becomes a strategy for not just delivering fast but for delivering bold, game-changing brand transformation.

Mergers and Acquisitions is an Emotional Journey
M&A is often framed as a numbers game—valuations, synergies, integrations. But what I’ve learned is that mergers aren’t just strategic—they’re deeply emotional. You’re asking people to let go of what they know, trust new teams, and find their place in a completely reimagined structure and company culture.

Here’s the truth: getting the product architecture right is where it starts. It’s not just a technical exercise—it’s about helping people see how their work fits into something bigger. Driving internal engagement takes empathy, emotional intelligence, and a lot of patience. When leaders and teams go on that journey together, you can move past the fear and resistance that derail so many mergers and acquisitions.

When the product and brand architecture is clear, everything else—company culture, brand positioning, and go-to-market strategy—starts to align. But if you skip this step, the whole thing falls apart. The real work of M&A isn’t just building a unified company—it’s building trust in what comes next.

Emotion as a Strategic Catalyst
For years, emotion was dismissed as soft or secondary to logic. But this year, I saw that narrative change. Leaders are finally recognizing that emotion isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s a strategic force that drives brand growth, brand loyalty, and product innovation.

In B2B especially, emotion plays a critical role. It’s what builds trust, inspires confidence, and creates the kind of connection that sets your brand apart. Decisions in this space carry personal and professional risk—people don’t just want rational benefits, they need to feel like they’re making the right choice.

What I’ve learned is that emotion isn’t optional anymore. It’s how you differentiate in a crowded market. It’s how you connect with your team and customers on a deeper level. And it’s how you transform your brand from something people notice into something they believe in.

Great Work Comes From Great Partnerships
I’ve always believed trust is the foundation of great work, but this year reinforced just how important it is. The best projects weren’t just about deliverables—they were about partnerships built on trust and mutual respect.

When leaders let us in—when they trust us to challenge their thinking on brand strategy and positioning and push them toward their biggest ambitions to achieve sustainable growth—that’s when the magic happens. These partnerships didn’t end when the project wrapped—they stayed connected. They came back to us for advice, shared their wins, and asked for guidance on new challenges.

The takeaway? The best work happens when you stop treating the relationship as transactional. It’s not just about the results you deliver—it’s about the trust you build along the way.

The Hard Truth About Simplicity
Everyone says they want simplicity. Clients want clear brand positioning, differentiated product positioning, cohesive product and brand architecture, and straightforward brand narratives. But here’s the hard truth: simplicity isn’t hard because it’s complex—it’s hard because it means letting go.

Letting go of old narratives. Letting go of the way things have always been sold. Letting go of the familiar and embracing something new. That’s emotional—there’s fear in leaving behind what feels safe, even when it’s not working anymore.

But when you push through that resistance, simplicity becomes transformational. It sharpens your story, aligns your team, and makes your brand or platform truly customer-centric. Simplicity isn’t a shortcut—it’s a leap of faith. And when you take it, the impact is undeniable.

The hardest work isn’t about strategic frameworks or deliverables—it’s about getting to the heart of what matters. Simplifying complexity, building trust, and leaning into emotion aren’t easy, but they’re where real transformation happens.

It’s been a year

This year brought challenges and clarity. For that, I’m grateful—grateful to our team, our clients, and mostly to my ride-or-die, business partner, and best friend for navigating it all with me. She just knows how to make shit happen.

Integrating Company Cultures After a Merger or Acquisition

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

High M&A Activity

Mergers and acquisitions are at an all time high, with $4.7 trillion of global deals signed last year according to a recent M&A report by KMPG.

And although the payoff of a successful M&A is great, these are high risk deals. It’s not just about the financial gains. Reputations are on the line. Stakeholders observe nervously. And in order to ensure the expected return on investment is delivered, a great deal of planning around integrating company culture must go into the preparation.

Cultural Integration Issues

After an acquisition, the merger is a difficult undertaking – and often controversial. Employees may feel confused or unsure about what the future holds. And uncertainty can undercut the upsides of the deal.

When there’s a lack of communication, an incongruent cultural fit, or a poor integration plan, many mergers fail to positively impact the business – not delivering on the expected ROI. In fact, research has shown that around 70% of M&A fail to deliver their anticipated benefits because of “cultural issues.”

Because most M&A have financial, operational, or positioning motivations as the driver, many organizations fail to recognize culture as an influence that can derail the deal. And neglecting how a merger will affect your people can lead to many problems down the road.

Integrating Company Cultures Is Key to the Success of Your M&A

1. Communicate Early and Often

When people on the inside feel as though they are left in the dark, they are unlikely to jump on board with change. Transparency is key here. When your people come along on the journey and see and understand the vision for the future, they are more likely to support the integration effort.

In order to ensure internal buy-in, you need people to feel confident in the decision to merge companies. You also need them to feel secure in their job and valued in their position. You need employees on both sides of the merger to get on board with the change. Keeping everyone in the loop about the change ahead is an important first step.

2. Examine Cultural Differences

In order to establish common ground, you have to recognize and address gaps. Define each culture and map them next to each other. Where are they not aligned? Determining differences is key to figuring out what shifts need to be made and where you might run into problems. Be clear and direct about disparities so you can tackle them head on.

3. Define Your New Culture and Develop a Cultural Integration Plan

A company’s culture is made up of the values, beliefs, and behaviors that are shared among all people within your organization. Oftentimes, culture is something that is difficult to pin down and, as a result, leaders may steer away from clearly defining their culture.

However, it’s very important to define the culture you are trying to build. Leaders should be aligned and clear so they can succinctly articulate the new organization’s aspiration for the future and then behave accordingly.

So it’s important to put in place the measures and incentives that will fuel the behaviors that will then drive your culture. Dedicate the resources needed to create tools for facilitating cultural integration, measurement, and management.

4. Celebrate Change

In the end, cultural integration is about both sides adapting and celebrating the new culture that is born from the merger. This is a time of coming together and taking the best that both organizations have to offer. It’s an opportunity for growth—to get aligned, adopt new thinking, strengthen your culture, and move your business forward.

It’s a Process and Brand Strategy Can Help

Oftentimes, M&As require an investment in brand strategy to really ensure the expected ROI is delivered by employees. Don’t expect the cultural integration to happen overnight.

Dedicating the time and resources to developing and articulating your new brand will help enable both cultures to understand the opportunities of the merger. And creating a newly developed employer brand after a merger will help everyone get on board and aligned with the new brand and the future of an integrated culture.

With the right investment and focus on employees and culture, all employees will meaningfully embrace the changes required during the merger and, as a result, your business will thrive moving forward.

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

The Real Cost of Brand Transformation

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Oftentimes, branding is seen as just another expense. Another project that needs budgeting. Another to-do to check off the list. Additionally, a brand’s visual identity and its implementation are often seen the same way—but they shouldn’t be.

Branding is only costly to a company if the company doesn’t fully tap into the brand’s value. Likewise, if you leave your brand’s visual identity to flounder in a presentation deck, it remains an untapped value. Understanding the value of your brand and what its visual identity means is key to shifting the conversation from a business cost to its transformative value.

Symbol of Change

Before the introduction of the visual identity, the rebrand is just words on a page, insights explained, or a strategy outlined. People can’t visually see their brand in action. It hasn’t come to life. That’s why the visual identity is one of the most exciting phases of the brand strategy process. It’s the first time business leaders really get to see the strategy come to life, and it’s oftentimes exhilarating, empowering, and transformative for them.

This is where the visual identity becomes a symbol of change. It represents what’s to come for the organization. It shows how the brand will flourish in the future. It demonstrates growth potential, transformation, and exciting possibilities. It emotes the brand’s promise. Executives can finally visualize where their brand is headed, and this new frontier is intoxicating to watch unfold.

In a successful visual identity presentation, everyone in the presentation is on their feet. The room is filled with excitement and ideas are flowing. Everyone is imagining the look and feel in real-time.

The Cost

The difficulty is that before this stage, leaders often can’t fathom their budget because they haven’t seen their brand come alive yet. This is why it’s important to prepare them for this moment early on. Help them understand that a visual identity might change everything, and that advanced planning is needed to support the upcoming shifts of this wake-up call that’s right around the corner.

Approaches like a phased roll-out or touch-point conversation might help prepare them for discussions about what aspects of their brand might hold the most impact. What are the most important elements to implement first? What’s the sign of change for the media? What’s the most transformative aspect internally? This kind of prioritization will help them get ready for what’s to come.

More Value

The value of branding will transform your business. It will touch every aspect of your organization and, through the visual identity, everyone will be able to see a part of themselves in it. So, it’s critical that the brand—and visual identity—be valued from the start.

Plan for cost, but focus on value.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

For more reading on our point of view on branding, check out this post.

Brand Narrative is a Necessary Part of Brand Strategy

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Here we explore the brand narrative as a key element of brand strategy, by explaining what constitutes a brand narrative, demonstrating how it supports the overall brand strategy, and showing the brand scenarios which call for a strong brand narrative.

Continue reading “Brand Narrative is a Necessary Part of Brand Strategy”

Emotive Brand and Emotive Branding: Our Origin Story

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Brands for the Better

The idea of emotive branding—and the creation of our agency, Emotive Brand—flowed from our desire to make a positive difference in the way people and brands interacted with each other. These were our goals:

  • Bridge the gap between commerce and civility.
  • Create brands that people appreciate, respect, and actively seek out.
  • Help employees of brands feel better about their jobs.
  • Make partners and suppliers vie for the opportunity to work with our clients.
  • See communities welcome our clients’ brands with open arms.

As a result of all of this goodwill, our clients’ brands would thrive and prosper.

Realizing the Value of Meaning Something More

We came to those goals through two major realizations:

First, as consumers ourselves, we noticed that only a handful of brands really went out of their way to mean anything to us. When they did make a connection, wow, it was love! We’d go out of our way to interact and engage these brands. We even felt disappointed when we had to settle for something less. We’d get excited when other people started talking about these brands and chimed in with our most recent, “I can top that!” story. These brands had come to mean something to us because they had a clear reason for being and made us feel something good time and time again.

On the other hand, zillions of brands never really hit our emotional radar. These brands meant almost nothing to us–even though we’ve heard about them or even bought and used dozens of the brands regularly.  

A Problem in the “Brand Decks”

Second, as brand experts, we saw firsthand why so many brands fell flat–lackluster and bland–in the minds of customers. As designers, copywriters, and strategists, we work on virtually every aspect of communication from identity to websites to advertising to point-of-sale to employee recruitment and beyond. Behind each piece of work, there’s always a brief, and often attached to the brief is a two-hundred some page PDF titled “About the Brand.”

Reading through many of these so-called “brand decks,” we quickly recognized a problem. In fact, the “brand decks” were the problem.

Traditional brand thinking results from business people from branding agencies talking to business people within client organizations. The language they use is full of industry jargon, client-speak, and solely rational thinking. Everything is expounded upon, nothing is simplified, and little is made human. And after several rounds of review, the final documents show the scars of compromise.

And what do these documents lack? The brand’s meaning as defined by its reason for being (why it does what it does) and how the brand wants people to feel (how the brand connects emotionally with customers). Brand decks, on the whole, left out what matters most to us as consumers and businesses and what we admire most in the great brands out there.

So we asked the question: What if meaning was the entry point into brand thinking rather than an appendage at the end? And that, folks, is how Emotive Brand was born.

Learn more about our methodology emotive branding, how our approach challenges convention, and why emotive branding is a next generation brand strategy.

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

Eight Questions to Evaluate the Strength of Your Brand

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Do you ever wonder about the strength of your brand? And its impact on your business? Do you monitor it and measure it? Do you evaluate it like you do for your business? If you wanted to know how it’s doing, would you even know what questions to ask? We’ve put together a quick diagnostic test to help CEOs assess when it’s time to for a strategic brand check-up.

Eight Questions to Ask Yourself to Evaluate the Strength of Your Brand

  1. Does your company have a purpose that your employees live up to every day? Is it meaningfully activated in your corporate strategy, inspiring how your business behaves, driving your brand, and most importantly, emotionally resonating with your employees?
  2. Does your brand have a distinctive brand positioning that sets it apart from competitors?
  3. Have you defined the right category for your brand that is right for today and tomorrow?
  4. Do your brand and product messaging cut through the clutter and resonate with your target audiences beyond just features and benefits?
  5. Does your company have a corporate narrative that tells your story to all your target audiences in a clear, compelling way? Is it still aligned to the business strategy and vision for the future? Is everyone in the company able to tell the same story?
  6. Does your company deliver on a clear and compelling brand promise to customers, employees, shareholders, and the world that they experience in a meaningful way?
  7. Does your company communicate in a characteristic brand voice that’s consistently applied by your people at all levels?
  8. Does your company have a visual brand identity with clear guidelines for consistent use at every touchpoint?

If you answered no to any of these questions, your brand might need a check-up.

It doesn’t hurt to check the strength of your brand, but it could hurt if you don’t.

For more information on how to evaluate the strength of your brand and understand its impact on your business, check out Fast Forward, an agile way to address your brand at the intersection of your business strategy, marketing efforts, and sales.

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

Navigating the New Norm: Fast Forward for Efficient Growth and Strategic Stability

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

We work and compete in a fast-moving world, driven by an accelerating pace of technological and social change. The markets we compete in shift quickly, competition intensifies, and expectations rise. Flux is the new normal. This increases the pressure to enhance efficiency, sharpen competitiveness, and improve profitability—all at the speed your business demands.

As a brand strategy firm, we understand that many of our clients, especially those operating in crowded, in-flux categories, need a much more agile approach to address the changing dynamics reshaping their markets and business. To meet these needs, we developed Fast Forward. Fast Forward is a six-week process that focuses on the challenges your brand, team, and business face, prioritizes them, and gives you the tools to address them.

Fast Forward is an agile set of strategy development frameworks, tools, and practices designed to empower learning, gain superior return on capital, and accelerate implementation. It’s a more flexible process for overcoming the barriers to successful, timely activation of strategy. Fast Forward does exactly what its name suggests: moves your business forward, and moves it fast.

Your Fast Forward engagement is completely customized to your situation. The deliverables are defined by the challenges and opportunities you face and the strategic outputs you prioritize as most important. The speed and power of Fast Forward stems from its format and focus. Below is an outline of what we tackle each week to gain momentum and drive impact.

Weeks 1-2: Immersion and Audit
We embark on a comprehensive week of intelligence gathering and analysis. We dive deep into your brand, business, and industry, fully immersing ourselves to gain insights and understanding.

We’ll assess your current positioning to distinguish your brand from key competitors, interview stakeholders to gain a deeper understanding of what is and isn’t working, identify white space opportunities for you to own in market, evaluate your latest brand and product messaging, and present a comprehensive audit of our discoveries.

Week 3: Workshop
Based on our findings from the immersion and audit, we develop, explore, and workshop new ideas to enhance your positioning and messaging, ensuring alignment with internal teams.

Weeks 4-6: Develop, Refine, and Deliver
During the final phase of Fast Forward, we focus on producing your bespoke deliverables that will provide the highest possible value and impact on your organization. Below are just a few examples of deliverables you can choose from after we’ve aligned on the key challenges you are facing:

  • Implement your augmented positioning and messaging through website landing pages that stand out and move the needle
  • Refresh your sales deck to amplify the impact of your elevated story
  • Craft a narrative to align and empower cross-functional teams with a unifying vision and strategy to harmonize your efforts

At the end of the six-week engagement, your team will hit the ground running with renewed strategic clarity and the agreed upon market-ready strategic elements to achieve the transformations essential to creating durable value and returns.

This is a schematic that represents the different phases of our Fast Forward offering including the align & refine (immersion), diagnose & define (workshop), and develop & explore (deliver) phases

The interior of the diagram represents the iterative process of our Fast Forward offering.

The goal of Fast Forward goes beyond just solving problems; it identifies new strengths with the potential to accelerate your performance by generating new levels of coherence and coordination among your activities, resources, and people. All too often we’ve seen that the 30,000-foot views of strategy do not succeed without successful on-the-ground execution. Such execution requires the commitment and belief of leaders and implementers.

Fast Forward involves your team throughout the process to ensure alignment and gives you a new cohesive approach to strategy and implementation. Is it time to Fast Forward your business? Are you looking to make an immediate impact?

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and creative agency that unlocks the power of emotion to propel brands, cultures, and businesses forward. We are a remote-first agency with a footprint in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Three Key Advantages of a Strong Brand Strategy

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Active Brand Management

A brand strategy can take what people know and believe about your business to new levels. Active brand management takes a valuable asset that may now be largely underused and turns it into a powerful competitive weapon.

Regardless of how sophisticated your current approach to branding is, your business has a “brand” today, though you may have acquired it by default. Simply by being active in the marketplace, your business will have accrued a reputation, a level of fame, and a degree of notoriety (for better or worse) with your customers, and within your industry.

A strong brand strategy will take all that value and put it to work in new ways. It will elevate the importance and relevance of what is already known and believed about your business. It can also add many new reasons, both rational and emotional, that will create stronger bonds with customers and make your business more attractive to prospects. Finally, a well-constructed brand strategy can be used to unite and motivate your employees.

When your business has a focused brand strategy, all its working pieces generate more preference, loyalty, and appeal for your offering and greater profits to your bottom line.

Three Key Advantages of a Strong Brand Strategy

1. Greater Appeal and Differentiation

Your brand serves as a magnet, drawing prospects to your offerings. Buyers see more difference between your offering and those of your competitors and act in your favor. Your brand stands out in an engaging way in the “me-also” world of your industry and beats back your competitors.

2. Improved Loyalty and Customer Retention

Your brand works as a glue, binding customers to your brand so they stay with you, grow with you, and tell others about your brand. It helps you identify your best customers and to direct special efforts against them. There’s far greater ROI in keeping an existing customer than recruiting a new one, and a strong brand idea can optimize your marketing budget.

3. Employee Engagement and Alignment

Your brand works as a North Star that your employees follow. As a result, employees feel more engaged, work harder for your brand’s success, and become great ambassadors for your brand. And when recruits feel the energy of your brand, and see the results your workplace generates, they are more likely to join your business.

Today’s most successful leaders embrace brand strategy as part of their overall business strategy. By setting concrete brand goals, and developing strategies and tactics to achieve them, they have seen their brands grow and prosper.

Arm your business strategy with a stronger brand. Develop a brand strategy that takes everything you do today to a new level. Then use your brand to win.

Learn more about the power of a strong brand strategy and brand differentiation. Download our white paper, Transforming Your Brand.

 Download White Paper

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

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