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Tag: Brand Strategy

Give People Meaningful Reasons to Innovate

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

We often come back to the Fast Company blog post by Seth Kahan, a change specialist and author of, “Getting Innovation Right”, published in 2013. Many of our clients are looking for help creating a brand strategy and developing corporate values that will help create a culture of innovation.

Seth presents three practical secrets for the innovative leader. We were particularly struck by his second secret:

Secret #2. Articulate the Way Forward

People rely on their leaders to craft a vision of the future that makes sense and can guide their everyday decisions. Most of the leaders I have met improvise this activity and many do it badly. And yet articulating a rousing vision of the future isn’t difficult. It can be your secret super-power, if you just master these three tactics:

Continue reading “Give People Meaningful Reasons to Innovate”

Brand Persona: Know Your Audience, Know Yourself

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Do you know your target audience?

We mean, not just whom you need to reach, but what they need, want, and feel? Do you know what makes them anxious, alarmed, or scared? Do you have any idea what they think? What fires them up?

What they’ve tried before and liked, or completely failed? What makes them assured, calm, trusting, or confident and bold?

Hmmm. Maybe you don’t know your target audience. At least not well enough to connect on a meaningful level.

We recently read an enlightening blog post from Paul Graham, one of the founders of Y Combinator, the renowned start-up incubator. In the post, Graham detailed 13 tips for start-ups. Things like:

  1. Pick good cofounders
  2. Launch fast,
  3. Let your idea evolve
  4. Understand your users, and
  5. Don’t get demoralized.

At the conclusion of his piece, Graham grew contemplative and wondered, if he could tell a start-up CEO just one of the thirteen tips, which would it be.

His answer: #4. Understand your users.

At Emotive Brand, our brand strategy is geared toward making your brand matter to people. In order to do that, we need to understand who these “people” are. That’s why we start our brand strategy process by understanding them thoroughly, through our proprietary Persona Mapping Workshop.

So, who really is your audience?

What if you have multiple customers in different categories or different job functions?  How does the Brand speak to people important to your brand, no matter who they are or what they do? At the brand level, your brand should be able to connect emotionally and meaningfully across the board.

At Emotive Brand, we aim to bring our clients into meaningful dialog with the people that most matter. At every touchpoint. One of the foundational tools is our Persona Mapping Workshop. To gain an accurate picture of your targets, we bring in top people from your company, from different departments and levels. And we put them to work. Together. The focus of this workshop is prioritizing your target audiences, working hard to we understand their needs and desires so the brand can connect more meaningfully with them.

When we’re done, we have accurate, deep, emotive portraits of the people you’re trying so hard to influence. We have an agreed model of their needs, wants, influences and pain points. The resulting persona maps make it clear to your organization precisely who your brand needs to talk to. And just as important, what to say to them.

To learn more about how persona mapping brings your customers into focus so your brand can have emotional impact on the people who matter, give us a ring.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Should Your Business Embrace a Purpose-led Brand Strategy?

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

Purpose-led

The notion of purpose-led  does more than make brands appealing to people – it makes money for the businesses that embrace the concept. So claims the chairman of Deloitte, an active evangelist for the “squishy business attribute” called purpose.

Why invest in a woolly, emotional, and squishy idea like purpose? Won’t it be hard to get everyone in my organization and all my customers to understand and embrace it? What is it really beyond a set of words? What value does brand strategy deliver?

These are the questions I often confront as a proponent of empathy, purpose, and emotion. It’s the question of the never-relenting ROI monster, “What’s in it for me?”

Well, here’s the answer, from no one less than the chairman of the world’s largest audit, tax, and consulting firm, Deloitte.

Majority of employees and executives sense lack of purpose and meaningful impact

In a past interview with Bruce Rogers, Forbes’s Chief Insights Officer, Punit Renjen put it simply: “Our research reveals the need for organizations to cultivate and foster a culture of purpose.”

Deloitte’s research has revealed that 91% of respondents who said their company has a strong sense of purpose, also has a history of strong financial performance. Yet, 68% of employees and 66% of executives believe businesses do not do enough to create a sense of purpose and deliver meaningful impact on all stakeholders.

Walking the talk with a $300 million investment to bring mission and purpose to life for Deloitte’s customers and employees

Punit practices what he preaches, and has invested $300 million to ensure his own firm’s mission and purpose is clearly understood by its customers and its nearly 60,000 employees in the U.S. “It’s not just words on a piece of paper,” said Punit.

“My goal is to change the conversation about what makes companies succeed,” Punit continues. And certainly the mission is good for Deloitte and serves to position the firm as a thought leader in how businesses operate best in today’s complicated, global economy. But perhaps more importantly, as Punit states frankly, “it just feels good.”

From squishy idea to profitable business practice

I believe in the concept of purpose when it recognizes, through an empathetic attitude, the needs, values, interests, and aspirations of people. Not a bunch of corporate mumbo-jumbo, but a clear, heartfelt, and human statement of purpose.

Brands need to create a reason for being that resonates deeply with everyone from the C-suite to the night guard; from the close-in, long-term customer to the distant prospect; and from the most loyal employee to the hungry-for-meaning young recruit.

Oh, and there’s one more thing

Brands need to seriously invest time and money to transform the purpose concept into an active driver of personal ambition, behavior, and gratification. In other words, to do what it takes to create a culture of purpose that goes beyond “just words on a piece of paper”. That is, a culture that creates meaningful impact each and every day. It’s not easy to do, but the rewards are there for the brands that want to stand above the rest. We have authored a white paper entitled The Meaningful Workplace which you might enjoy.

Is it time to kick-start your brand strategy and embrace these ideas? Click here  to see what clients have worked with Emotive Brand to implement purpose-led brand strategies.

A Brand’s Purpose is Not a Tagline!

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

Once again drawing from our white paper, “Transforming your brand into an emotive brand“, we explore another of the key drivers of our thinking, “Purpose Beyond Profit”.

Here’s how we recap this idea in our paper:

As an emotive brand, your brand lives to a promise that embodies a purpose that goes well beyond profit. As such, you use your brand’s promise to establish and reinforce the higher-ground connection that customers and employees find emotionally meaningful. By thinking beyond profit, you reveal your commitment to connecting with people in truly significant ways.

Look beyond profit and thrive 

For decades, enterprises have had “mission” statements, “vision” statements, and  “values”. Check almost any corporate website and you’ll find these “drivers” of the business buried deep down and many clicks away from the surface.

Despite having taken on these important steps to say what their business is all about, there’s often a big difference between what they intend, and the effect they have. The fact is, these tools of business have rarely gained much traction outside of the C-suite.

A “purpose” is a more powerful and effective tool because it engages in a way that matters to a wide range of people across an organization. It is not dry, administrative, and full of corporate jargon. It doesn’t set a goal that feels irrelevant outside the C-suite. Rather it is an idea that touches upon a quest for meaning and purpose that  is universal in appeal, while at the same time relevant to the business.

Continue reading “A Brand’s Purpose is Not a Tagline!”

A Brand Strategy that Focuses on “Truths”

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

In our latest white paper we list five fundamental principles that drive our efforts to help your brand thrive in the 21st century. Here, we explore one of our drivers: “truth, authenticity, and credibility.”Here’s an explanatory extract from the white paper:

“Emotive brand strategies are built out of what is already true about your brand. As such, the new purpose and behaviors we propose are authentic to what your brand is, and are welcomed by customers and employees as credible offerings from your brand.”

Continue reading “A Brand Strategy that Focuses on “Truths””

Where Does Brand End and Reputation Begin?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Confusing Branding Terms

It seems so many ” branding terms ” are being rendered meaningless these days and we tend to blur the difference between them. We use specific words in a broader context than originally intended. Often, we use words as umbrellas to bring together a multitude of ideas. But, among us, we’re not consistent in the way these words are used.

As a result, if you ask three business people what a particular word means, you’ll get no fewer than five answers.

Take these two words as examples: “Brand” and “Reputation”

What does each mean? What are the differences between them? Where does one end, and the other begin? Why is it important to understand what makes them different from each other.

To quote from our paper, “The Path to a Brand’s Meaningful Reputation:”

“For many, there is no distinct line between the meaning of a brand and its reputation. However, by intentionally creating a line between the two, at a point where one can presume one ends and the other begins, one starts to see clearly how a brand drives its reputation.”

To us, there is a big difference between the two words.

“Brand” is the things you can control (e.g. your identity, products, services, and behavior).

“Reputation” is something people control through their perceptions of what you offer, how you do business, and why you matter to them (if at all).

When viewed in this light, it becomes easier to see how important your brand is in shaping the reputation of your business.

Working from the platform of what your business does, and how it does it, people put you into a “good reputation for X” box within their hearts and minds.

If you truly matter to someone, your business is the only one in that box, and gets chosen every time.

If, on the other hand, your behavior doesn’t strike an appropriate give and take between what your business does and what people are seeking, that box can be very crowded.

And, as others in that box work to enhance their reputations by making their business matter more to people, your offering loses more and more appeal.

Others rise above you, because they better match what they do – and how they do it – to the needs, beliefs, interests, and aspirations of people who want to create more meaning in their lives.

These people gravitate to businesses and brands that help them do things better, achieve more, and live more fulfilling lives.

They seek to align themselves with businesses that have a clear and appealing purpose beyond profit.

They appreciate when businesses deal with them in ways that make them feel that they are valued, that the company is a caring one, and that doing business with the company is a smart and respectable choice.

Curious about brand strategy and your brand’s reputation? Download: Where does your brand end and your reputation begin?

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

What it Means to be a Meaningfully Different Brand

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Youngme Moon teaches business at Harvard and is the author of “Different – Escaping The Competitive Herd“.

In her closing she points to three characteristics of the brands of tomorrow – as they are driven to differentiate in order to succeed.

Here we summarize:

  1. “They will offer something that is hard to come by…restraint will be the new desire; whisper can be the new shout; there will always be a place for brands offering something that is hard to come by.”
     
  2. “They will reflect a commitment to a big idea…which is to say they won’t just be different in a litle way, they’ll be different in a big way; I would say the brands of tomorrow will be the ones that embrace this, even as they take that sharp left down the unpaved road.” 
     
  3. “They will be intensely human…which is to say they wil be conceived by individuals who are acutely sensitive to the complexities of the human spirit.”

In her book, Ms Moon is focused on the role of marketing and marketers. But the meaningfully different brand won’t (and can’t) come out of the marketing department. 

Continue reading “What it Means to be a Meaningfully Different Brand”

Why All the Talk About Purpose and Brand Strategy?

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

A HBR blog post by Graham Kenny details the difference between the increasingly popular idea of purpose and the traditional corporate drivers of vision, mission, and values.

His conclusion echoes our beliefs about the role and impact of a company purpose:

“If you’re crafting a purpose statement, my advice is this: To inspire your staff to do good work for you, find a way to express the organization’s impact on the lives of customers, clients, students, patients — whomever you’re trying to serve. Make them feel it.”

Mr. Kenny’s closing statement, “make them feel it”, goes to the heart of what it is to be meaningful as a company or brand. Meaningful ideas take the impact that you have on people beyond the cognitive level. Meaning goes much deeper by touching our universal, innate, and deeply-held aspiration to do good and worthy things in our lives.

Purpose changes the way people think, feel, and act

The feelings that flow from meaningful connections are profound, yet they often operate below the surface of consciousness. As such, people may not be readily able to talk about these feelings, but there’s no question that meaning resonates within us all, and has the power to change the way we think, feel, and act.

A strong and compelling purpose helps employees better understand, work to, and feel personally accountable for the company’s vision, mission, and values. Think of purpose as the energy that will make those elements work more efficiently.

Purpose leads to significant business outcomes

Energizing your workplace through purpose has further benefits:

– Purpose-led leaders and managers work with greater passion and in a more aligned and coordinated fashion.

– Engaged and motivated employees work with greater levels of collaboration, self-initiative, and innovation.

– Customer relationships prosper from more energized and purposeful interactions with the brand and its people.

– Sales, marketing, and advertising becomes more effective as they align more to the many outcomes that flow from the brand as it actively pursues its purpose.

What does this have to do with your brand strategy?

Why forego the beneficial energy that a purpose can bring to your company or brand? Why miss this opportunity to matter more to your employees? Why not use a purpose to elevate your brand above the competition by focusing on meaningful outcomes?

Purposeless is no longer an option for brands seeking to thrive and prevail.

For more information about how to transform your brand for the 21st century, please download our white paper.

Download White Paper

Download White Paper

 Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.