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Tag: Brand Strategy

How to Attack and Other Strategy Lessons from the World of Cycling

Posted on by Chris Ames

As a project manager at Emotive Brand, Shelby Tramel is known for two things. First, she brings clarity and expertise to every project she touches. And second, she often comes into the studio dressed head-to-toe in Lycra cycling gear, clutching some homemade drink that looks more like cement than a smoothie. We all knew she was a fierce competitor, but it wasn’t until recently that we learned just how elite she is. (Though it does explain why she often eats two or three breakfasts.)

We sat down with Shelby to discuss her athleticism, future goals, and how lessons from cycling can be applied to the world of brand strategy.

When did you start cycling?

It all started in May of 2015. That was the month of my very first race. I was living in New York City at the time, and my friend asked me to join in. I knew how to handle a bike, how to pedal, how to turn a corner. But as far as riding in a tight, competitive pack, that was definitely new to me.

Naturally, the race didn’t go as planned. I got dropped from the pack, got lapped, but I kept riding anyway. I almost had an asthma attack, but strangely, I didn’t find it discouraging. Even as my heart was beating out of my chest, I remember admiring all of the strong women around me. I didn’t quit, but I ended up getting a Did Not Finish (DNF) because I had to get pulled from the race.

When did you arrive to the West Coast?

About a month later, I moved here in June of 2015. I spent a few months riding around and meeting people. They say that riding in NorCal makes you stronger because the geography is much more difficult, and they’re right. The racers here are known to be among the strongest in the country.

At what point did you notice you were making significant progress?

In 2016, just around mid-season, I started winning everything as a category four racer. For the uninitiated, the ranking is 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and professional. To advance, you need to acquire a certain amount of points, which are earned through placing, winning, etc. The fact that I was winning at that level allowed me to quickly upgrade out of that “Beginner’s beginner” to “Alright, this is someone with potential.” After coming in first at Tulsa Tough, I had that oh shit moment of thinking, “I’m becoming an elite racer.”

Are you a naturally competitive person?

Surprisingly, no. I’m not really a competitive person. I’m not prideful, I don’t have a huge ego. In racing, it’s more an internal battle as opposed to beating other people. I’m always wanting to prove to myself that I’m capable and strong. It’s a constant internal dialogue.

Cycling is 90% mental. You have to act a lot on instinct. There are a lot of racers who think too much, who over analyze, and it ends up backfiring on them. I try not to think in races. I let my body react and use my instinct.

What are your goals this year?

I want to upgrade to a category one racer. I’m aiming to be one of the best elite women racers in NorCal. And I’m striving to get pro-level experience that gives me a taste of what that lifestyle is like.

Your specialty is criterium racing, which consists of racing several laps around a closed circuit. Why is this your favorite?

My background is as a gymnast, and I think the strength you acquire in the gym lends itself to this kind of racing. It’s a short, punchy, fast, and high-power race. Also, I think it’s the most strategic kind of racing.

With crit, you ideally have teammates. There’s one dedicated person, called a sprinter, who is going to make a mad dash at the end. However, throughout the race, other teammates have jobs to help you. There are attackers, people who quickly separate from the pack to try to initiate a chase. It’s a strategic way to tire out the pack. When it comes to strategy, it’s always better to work as a team.

In the final lap, you form what’s called a lead out. Everyone lines up behind each other with the sprinter at the very back, which is typically my role. The person in front pushes as long and hard as they can, then pulls off for the next person in line. One by one, they pull that sprinter to the very end so they can conserve energy and burst to victory.

It seems like a lot of these tactics translate into your life at work. Do you feel there’s a crossover between cycling and brand strategy?

Absolutely. In racing, the strongest person hardly ever wins. The person that wins the race is the person that can react, develop a strategy, follow through, and know which moves are worth going with.

Someone might attack, you have to look at the person and evaluate, “Are they actually going to get away? Is it worth the energy?” I’m not the strongest person out there, but I race very efficiently. I know how to conserve energy, strategize, read the field, and make it count.

All of those skills translate to brand strategy and project management. With both, you have to stay composed while also making critical decisions. You can’t waste people’s time – or your own. And perhaps most importantly, you have to be able to follow your instinct. If you play by the rulebook all the time, you’re not going to win. Usually, you start off with a strategy, but things change mid-race, mid-project, mid-proposal. You must be able to adapt to succeed in the end.

If cycling at this level has taught me anything, it’s the importance of balance. For me, balance is being able to be successful in my athletic career and business career. Everyone has their outlet, but for me, there’s no better way to start the day than being at the top of Grizzly Peak and seeing the sunrise. It’s a moment of calm that can’t be beaten.

As you continue to advance through the ranks, is there any advice you wish you could give to that younger version of yourself in NYC?

Just have fun. There are very few people who start off good from the get-go. It took a lot of time and hard work to get to where I’m at – and I had a very quick ascent compared to other people! I don’t take that for granted. Not being good bothered me, it lit a fire beneath me. Still, it never stopped being fun.

It’s the same with work. Keep things fun. It’s very important to rest and take breaks, but also align yourself with a support system that sees the value in what you do. When you work somewhere that encourages personal development, you’re going to work harder, have a fresh perspective, and set new goals for the future.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design firm based in San Francisco.

Brand Strategy Trends: What These Shifts Mean for Businesses and Brands

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Looking Back, Looking Forward: 2018 B2B Brand Strategy Trends

Any new year brings up the opportunity to reflect on the year that’s been – and what’s to come. As Emotive Brand’s Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, I talk to individuals in different roles, at companies of every size and maturity. I am truly lucky – it puts me on the frontline as B2B brand strategy trends develop in real time.

Here are some of the most interesting trends I observed in 2017 and what’s on my mind as we move into 2018:

1. Messaging That Can Flex

Whether it’s short attention spans or Twitter’s influence, our clients are asking for a new type of messaging. For years, traditional product marketing and brand-level messaging fit in the same schematic box: target audiences, pain points, proof points, key messages, etc. But priorities shift. Now, clients want a brand story in 10 words, 50 words, 100 words, 500 words – and also in a long-format narrative. It’s all about stretching and articulating the brand story while keeping it on strategy, whether in a tweet, on a website, or in a proposal. Businesses want messaging that can flex to all platforms, moments, and media, and still stay on brand.

2. To Create a New Category or Not? Proceed With Caution

In 2017, many clients came to us and said, “We’re creating a new category. Help us define it.” A new category is one path to differentiation. The thing is, few companies have the budget, business strategy, or team to do it properly – and they have no idea what developing a new category entails. In most cases, category creation is the wrong strategy. But we want to cure what ails you so, first, we listen. Then we help clients dig into the real problems that plague the business, look for better ways to address those issues, and then move their business forward.

3. Embracing the Non-Linear

Project timelines compressed this year. Some agencies might see this reality as a total bummer. I don’t. Shorter cycles pushed us to find more agile ways to solve our clients’ most pressing business problems. It’s made us fast. We’ve developed a strong arsenal of tools, frameworks, and workshops that we apply to every business and brand issue. I admit, most of the work we did last year seemed out of sequence compared to our normal brand strategy methodology. But throughout the process, we learned we are great problem solvers. When we deliver a smart solution and solve pressing business problems – quickly – clients come back. And that’s a good business model.

4. Sales-Led Positioning Strategy

More and more, our positioning projects include our clients’ sales leadership teams. It makes sense – when you make a change in positioning, you almost always impact the sales strategy. We’ve created value propositions and messaging for subscription sales, sales kickoff presentations, and training materials, and everything needed for solution selling. We don’t just focus on marketing deliverables. Good positioning aligns marketing and sales and drives sales enablement within sales organizations. These projects produce measurable, and almost immediate, ROI and provide great case examples of our work. It’s a win-win for everyone!

5. Greater Investment in Research

We’ve seen an uptick in tech companies who are willing to pay for research  – and we’re helping them get the information they need. Companies recognize the value in conducting research to benchmark the sentiment of both internal and external audiences before they launch a positioning project. Research helps set the bar. Then, once the positioning work is done, further research helps businesses test both the effectiveness and the efficacy of the brand in meaningful and tangible ways, year after year.

6. Architecture and Taxonomy

Clients are asking us to help build their brand architecture and taxonomy projects. Heavy M&A activity is likely one reason they need this kind of help. Both at the brand and product level, clients want simplification. Well-defined, meaningful brands and product offerings drive customer understanding, accelerate the sales cycle, and create customer loyalty.

7. Focus on Internal Audiences

One of the most exciting trends I’ve seen this past year is growing investment in projects geared towards internal audiences, an area we think companies have neglected. We’re being asked to create employer brand strategies and employee communications campaigns, facilitate shifts in corporate and brand strategy, and share employee benefits offerings in unique ways. We are seeing momentum here – and we like it. Brands are built from the inside out, and those that are investing internally, in their employees, will reap the rewards of their work.

Keep posted for more of our thoughts about B2B brand strategy, 2018 trends, and what they mean for businesses and brands today.

Emotive Brand is a B2B brand strategy and design agency.

 

How to Help Your Startup Thrive Internally

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Finding for the right strategies to help your startup thrive

It’s an all too familiar startup sight. Your technical co-founder and engineering teams have their eyes glued to screens of scrolling code as their fingers fly across keyboards and music blasts through their earbuds. They are driving hard toward the launch date or new product release, losing themselves in their work and consuming Red Bull like there’s no tomorrow.

Nikos Moraitakis, Founder & CEO of WorkableHR.com, sets the following as one of ten helpful tasks non-technical co-founders should undertake:

“Nurture good spirit, keep everyone intellectually stimulated. Your technical co-founder may spend long stretches of time focused on some particular technical detail or problem. This focus is good from a development standpoint, but takes his mind off the big picture for a while. You need to engage him, and let him participate in the intellectual conversation about what it is we’re building as a whole – not burden him with the work of execution on “everything else”, but enriching his big picture with knowledge and contemplation about it. There is a joyful and highly motivating emotion that comes from the sense that your vision is coming all together, customer development is progressing, investors are interested, numbers can be achieved, feedback is positive, market is missing what you’re building, etc.”

We agree wholeheartedly. A time-out from the day-to-day pressures can remind hardworking team members of why they are doing what they do, renew their energies around doing the work needed to complete the product, and focus their attention on creating a quality product.

Toward a product that matters.

At the same time, as a non-technical partner, you need not only the energy and endurance of your technical co-founder and team, but also the ability to keep them focused in ways that push them to create a product that matters right out of the gate.

That is, a product that not only works, but helps people lead better lives in some way (e.g. more productive, healthier, more enriching, etc.).

Mattering is the great differentiator today. People who are looking to create more meaning in their lives are being more discerning about the products they buy, whom they buy from, and the places they work. When you strike a chord of meaning, your product and business earns the admiration, respect, and support of people looking to do things that matter.

Three ideas to change the conversation

1.  Going beyond the vision.

Just as the dev team is knee-deep in coding, you are busy keeping on top of everything else that is needed to ensure a successful launch.

Most think the driving force of a startup is its vision. However, many startup “visions” are technology-centric, emotionally neutral, and lacking in meaning. They tend to be very internally focused and bereft of perspective. They are often generic in intent, written in corporate-speak, and hard to relate to on a human level.

So, step one in creating meaningfully refreshing conversations with startup dev teams is to go beyond your vision and to adopt a Purpose Beyond Profit. This is a statement that elevates your startup’s reason for being – its “why”- and the way it will matter to people both rationally and emotionally.

Going one step further, when using this statement as a platform, consider how your startup should make its employees, customers, and partners feel when they deal with your company and its product, your advertising and promotion, your website, your sales and investor presentations, your customer support team, etc.

2.  Now it’s time for a workplace conversation that matters.

With a solid Purpose Beyond Profit and a set of feelings to focus upon, you are able to construct a break for your dev team that brings these two factors to life.

Start by leading a conversation on what it means to matter in today’s world – the value of getting people (including themselves) to have specific feelings – and what all this means vis-à-vis the product you have in development. Then, follow up with whatever “good news” you can share about the market opportunity, the investor interest, the team’s progress, any feedback you’ve gotten, etc.

By letting your team feel the “joyful and highly motivating emotion” that comes from doing work that truly matters to themselves, to the company, and to the world, you help them deliver a product that matters right out of the gate. As Nikos put it, “Nurture good spirit, keep everyone intellectually stimulated.”

3.  Matter inside and out.

Finally, use your new Purpose Beyond Profit and set of feelings to guide how you bring your product to investors, partners, and customers. Help people outside the firm see your product as one that comes from a company that aims to do well by doing good through an emotionally meaningful Purpose Beyond Profit. Strive to be a company that stands out not only for what its products do, but also for the way the company makes people feel. Be a company that people are proud to be associated with and support because it does stuff that truly matters.

Learn more on how to help your startup thrive by making your brand matter.

The Meaningful Workplace explains how this change effects the dynamic between businesses and employees.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency that works with high-growth startups.

Why Hire a Brand Strategy Agency?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Your business is an intricate machine that leverages people and processes to generate profits. Until now, your way of doing this has been satisfactory to both you and your shareholders. But obviously there is something in the wind telling you that some changes are needed. This has you thinking about how to best deal with this situation, and to determine what partners, if any, you need to make these necessary changes.

Continue reading “Why Hire a Brand Strategy Agency?”

What Brands Need to Do Right to Nail Their Digital Strategy

Posted on by Chris Ames

Emotive Brand Experts #5: Michael Beavers

Continuing our Emotive Brand Experts series, we’re interviewing past and present Emotive Brand clients to discover what they do better than anybody else – and how that expertise can be used to embolden your brand today.

Michael Beavers is a Silicon Valley-based digital strategist who works with leading technology enterprises, consumer brands, and startups. A veteran from both sides of the client and agency relationship, he’s worked with Google, Yahoo!, Intel, and many others.

***

How do you define digital strategy?

Digital strategy describes the intersection of business strategy, insights about the human beings who interact with your company, and the systems through which they do so – then translating those insights into design and engineering implications. Your brand is represented online through a wide variety of channels. But there’s a big difference between delivering a brand message and thoughtfully delivering services and information that make the claims of a brand true. The services you create through every interaction with your customer are how your brand is perceived against the claims or characteristics of your brand.

Where do you begin as a digital strategist?

Regardless of the size of a project, I begin with inquiries about everything I can about a company. What do they do? For whom? Why?

I like to sit down with various stakeholders and examine what they do, why they do it, what digital things they depend on: websites, digital campaigns, ads, enterprise software, emails, everything. I also try to understand the company’s mix of enterprise software and IT environments that enable all of these tactics.

Often the digital goals expressed by my client need to be shaped further or altered beyond their original form. Then I shape both into something everyone can agree to before we put our goals and assumptions to the real test with customers.

How have you seen digital strategy change over time?

Gosh, what hasn’t changed? Devices are constantly changing, and not just the way we code for them. Technology is a scaffold for human behavior. What’s interesting is that human behavior changes that scaffolding, but the opposite is also true. Companies have a responsibility to make claims about their brands, back them up with great human and technology-enabled interactions that should never manipulate customers, but respect and shape how they behave with your company.

The early days of the commercial Internet were about experimentation and the organizational stuff companies have to offer. There was a middle phase where a lot of companies take a more manipulative view of consumers, which everyone sees through. I’m encouraged, however, as I see more companies view themselves as complimenting who they are and what’s great about themselves through software and services delivered through UIs across all devices. Everyone is now a software company, and some are acting like it.

What are some common missteps you see in the field?

Most of the time when a company is funding a web project with a marketing team, they think too narrowly about the user experience and what web teams rely on to inform that experience. Take any website from any global brand. Is it enough to organize the company’s information logically and push a beautiful design to production as quickly as possible? Maybe…but probably not.

What’s logical to internal stakeholders is the result of years of living inside of a company’s culture, its operations, and its organization. If that’s the basis of your user experience, you may simply be exposing your org chart and dysfunction. That’s not good enough.

A great strategy reflects the company’s goals and challenges but leans heavily on insights about customers and their worlds and contexts under which they experience your company. From a digital perspective, that’s what “brand” is.

The best way to inform your brand is through studying customers and users with minimized bias. When web teams at companies understand the value of research, the differences in customer satisfaction and brand perception is significant.

My very favorite question during strategy formation is, “How do we know?”

How do you discover that? Through personas?

Oftentimes, yes. Personas can be very helpful, but there are bad anti-personas out there, chiefly from marketers understanding personas to be assumptive bio-sketches of who they imagine their customers to be.

Personas were originally an advent for software design. But they’re useful for marketing and messaging, so it is common to place a “target segmentation” lens on personas for messaging. This has deleterious effects on how qualitative research is funded and how protocols get designed. Those outputs are rarely suitable for designing great digital experiences.

When informed with real observed data, personas are powerful informers of a digital experience. You can convey messaging in any number of ways, but above everything, you must give people something to do that is in line with their tasks and contexts.

This is the difference between marketing with digital “stuff” and marketing software or UI-led service delivery, which make brand claims real.

It is important for brands to update the axiom of customers always being right: the customer is always right to do what they do, so we should understand what it is that would help them believe in us as a company.

What are the biggest changes you’ve seen over the years?

I think the biggest change is unfolding before our eyes today in our national politics; specifically, the interdependencies of social media, ad networks, monetizing news content, and foreign operatives exploiting things that we all depend on to stay informed and go through our days.

The distribution of content and opinion through news and personal social channels has never been this intertwined. Because makers of the commercial could not foresee foreign interference, the Gutenberg press of our age has gone awry.

It breaks my heart to see but I’m also encouraged by what I see in the design and engineering community. Discussions about signaling meaning and trust, design and engineering ethics, and consumer awareness of security have never been greater. So that’s the new current situation and context for all digital strategy.

A company trying to sell more stuff to the right people has to understand how to be authentic. It must align its values to those of its customers, and make it real through trustworthy commercial interface products.

Brands must also now deal with the proliferation of the marketing technology stack. It encompasses everything: hosting, content automation, marketing automation, CRM suites, analytics, social media, and case management.

The implication is that marketers have a lot more to manage now. The complexity and scale of marketing has increased exponentially, and customers interacting with your digital experiences bring heightened skepticism and service expectation. Staying on top of those skills is really challenging. That’s why it’s often helpful to have expert outsiders, people willing to gently bust the silos and mixed contexts that hinder great customer experience.

What advice would you give to fellow digital strategists?

The best advice I can give is to stay curious and have fun with this stuff. Try to dig into as many tactics for understanding as you can but don’t over-index on any one skill. It will be different tomorrow anyway. Be at least categorically familiar with various web technologies, marketing automation, analytics, and how to read and interpret how they report insights you can use to form your strategy.

Know yourself. Are you a T-shaped professional and embrace your natural curiosities? Are you comfortable exposing your areas of ignorance to understand them better?

Do you think in both short and long-term frames? You may already be a great digital strategist, even if you don’t have an engineering or design background.

Spend time figuring out those worlds. Designers and engineers are ultimately the people who you serve through your strategy. Your communication should be an organized vessel of clear insights and objectives. Their work is what makes the brand real for customers. They need your help.

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

Is an Agile Strategy the Right Approach for Brand Strategy?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Dynamic Times Require Agile Strategy

We have seen a large rise of requests for our proprietary agile strategy methodology for brand strategy. More than ever, sudden market changes, disruptive business models, rapid-paced technology, and ever-evolving competition demand agility. As customers change, new competition enters and new categories emerge, so businesses must be able to flex and adapt with the times.

Without Agility, Less Impact

Agility is becoming more and more of an expectation. And being agile doesn’t mean being hasty or impulsive. In fact, it’s the opposite. Agile strategy should help businesses and brands make better, smarter decisions faster and enable teams to get to the heart of key business problems, prioritize goals, and stay true to their purpose.

High-growth companies who aren’t able to move fast and work in sprints face potential complications. Projects that get stalled lose impact. Slow deliberation leads to decision-paralysis and can deter leaders who simply need to put a stake in the ground and stick to it. And doing incremental parts of a strategy, over a long period of time, can render that strategy irrelevant by the time it’s actually brought to life. Agile strategy is all about quickly getting to the heart of the problem at hand, and creating smart, efficient, maximum-impact solutions.

Accelerating into Brand Strategy

High-growth companies need new ways to adapt their business, product, culture, and brand with an agile approach to brand strategy.

An Agile Approach to Brand Strategy

1. A Sprint Mindset

Framing brand strategy as a sprint allows a business to be more agile and able to effectively flex and adapt. There is great value in condensing what normally would occur over weeks or months into a single day or series of days. A sprint structure demands that everyone really focus and give their full attention. It allows people to really dive in and not be distracted.  Even if the strategy occurs over a longer period of time and takes multiple sprints, developing a sprint mindset can help people be more dedicated, focused, and productive.

2. Flexibility

Digital disruption and the fast pace of markets today requires a brand strategy that can flow and flex with change. An agile brand can’t be thought of as a logo or image – because it isn’t. It’s a system. It’s a way of living for your business and should be felt, understood, and brought to life by every member of the team. In order to be able to intelligently and powerfully adapt and flex, the strategy must have a clear, directed brand purpose that allows for flexibility without losing clarity.

3. Collaboration

Agile brand strategy hinges on collaboration. And this often requires a mindset shift. People have to hold confidence in the idea that working together helps create better solutions faster. It requires being open, listening to new perspectives, taking outside advice, and coming together to be more imaginative, innovative, and creative in order to help your brand and business stand out in a competitive landscape.

Fast Forward

Last year, our agency honed in on how to solve our clients’ more pressing business challenges via an agile approach. We developed the Fast Forward program to empower learning and accelerate implementation – a much better approach for high-growth companies.

We also embraced the practice of working in sprints, both strategically and creatively. We found it encouraged a higher level of collaboration with our clients and enabled us to meet the many demands of leadership teams managing high-growth companies. We believe sustainable growth depends on this type of agile brand strategy. High-growth companies looking to succeed in 2017 will have to evaluate and learn to embrace agility, or face irrelevancy.

Visit our case studies to see how we put Fast Forward to work.

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

Your Startup’s Growth Strategy Starts with Brand Strategy

Posted on by Carol Emert

You’re running a startup. When should you invest in brand strategy?

Put another way, when do you need to grow? When do you need to acquire new customers, build your culture and recruit the right people?

For a startup whose primary job is growth, brand strategy can be a critical tool. So the answer to the question about when you need brand strategy is: Not at the very beginning, but probably earlier than you think.

We recently branded a stealth-mode software startup whose CEO is a highly successful serial entrepreneur. He has worked with Emotive Brand several times. This time, he brought us in earlier than ever, because he has seen how brand strategy can power growth.

When his startup leaves stealth mode and launches into growth mode, as it is poised to do, it will be powered by the right customer insights, the right value proposition and the right messaging to succeed.

Too Early v. Too Late

That doesn’t mean you need brand strategy on Day One. Startups are right to get their products built and tested before worrying about anything else. If you don’t have a viable product, you have nothing to grow a brand or a company on. So early on, tunnel vision is good.

The next stage, the growth stage, is where brand strategy can have meaningful impact. Brand strategy can power your growth strategy by identifying who your best customers are and clarifying what you do better than anyone else to address the pain points they face every day.

Brand strategy defines your company’s unique brand experience, the voice with which you will speak to the marketplace and the messaging that will get you leads with the right people.

If your brand isn’t clear, your growth strategy will have a tough time defining both long-term goals and the short-term tactics for getting there.

Avoid Stalling Growth Before It Starts

We worked with a startup client a couple of years ago in exactly this position. The company had a great team and top-notch venture backing. It enjoyed a successful run with its initial friends-and-family customer set – but when the time came to implement its growth strategy, it hit a wall.

The company was trying to build its business with a tech-heavy product story rather than directly addressing the challenges it solved for its customers. Its venture firm sent the startup to us.

Three months after engaging Emotive Brand, the startup was ready to relaunch with a fresh story – and quickly started hitting its goals. The same startup has engaged us on a number of projects since, to keep its story relevant amid shifts in its competitive landscape.

As your startup prepares for growth mode, your team will be growing too. Brand strategy that clarifies who you are and what you believe can help internally as well as externally, helping you recruit the right people and build a strong internal culture.

Whether your startup is poised to grow internally, externally or both, brand strategy can make your growth strategy smarter, clearer and more successful.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy firm working with high-growth B2B companies.

Disruptive Technology: Paving Cow Paths or Breaking New Ground?

Posted on by Dann Wilkens

What is disruptive? Is it the company that reinvents a category, or the one that creates an entirely new category? In the case of cities, London’s road system was based on paving ancient pathways, while Washington D.C.’s grid was laid out in advance of breaking ground. Both are great cities today, but their structures came from entirely different ways of thinking.

The same is true of companies and brands.

Innovation is swirling around the financial sector today with companies reinventing ways to buy, sell, get paid, lend or borrow money, and finance companies. But for the most part, they are bringing their new thinking and technology to incrementally improve existing mechanisms. Even virtual currency is a new take on an old idea.

The practice of medicine is as old as civilization, but ongoing innovations in pharmaceuticals, medical technology, and data mining are enabling new predictive insights and treatment options that did not exist before.

Cloud services that leverage the connective tissue of the Internet are replacing old-school paper and obsolete digital records in every industry, speeding the availability and quality of information. Is this disruptive enough to stand out?

How can you stand out?

Of the roughly 6.3 million patents filed in the U.S. between 1999 and 2013 (2,481,795 granted), 53% were in computer technology, digital communication, telecommunications, semiconductors, electrical machinery, medical technology, pharmaceuticals, chemistry, biotechnology, and measurement sectors.

But 47% were in a category called “other.” So innovation is everywhere.

With that many innovations pouring out each year, how can a company differentiate its technology enough to stand out? Brand strategy can help.

Brand strategy and branding can help

Brand strategy is a process that helps business people identify what’s important about a new technology, product, or service. Why it matters, who stands to benefit from it, and who might stand in its way.

Brand strategy, especially emotive branding techniques, also defines how to communicate the most important facts about a new concept to people in a way that connects on a deeper, more emotionally meaningful level. It helps companies scale and grow product lines, penetrate new markets, and spread globally.

No matter what you’re inventing or reinventing, brand strategy can put it into a meaningful context that people can understand and identify with. It works for incremental advances in existing categories – paving the cow paths – and for brand-new ideas that don’t fit into a conventional category.

See how we’ve helped many disruptive technologies launch, grow, and thrive.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency

 

Brand Differentiation: Where Do You Even Start?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Brand Differentiation

In B2B marketing, creating brand differentiation is a critical output of all marketers whether you are managing a B2B or B2C brand.

When your brand is truly and meaningfully differentiated, it works as a magnet to attract new customers and employees, as a glue that keeps people loyal, and as a warm glow that means people always come back for more. So how do you differentiate your brand?

The problem for most brands is that they have yet to find a distinct place in the whirlwind of modern commerce. These brands are being buffeted by the winds of change and the waves of disruption. Every day they go further astray, lost in the vast “Sea of Commodity”.

And what do they find, if they actively seek out a point of brand differentiation that is based only on what they do and how they do it? Often, they don’t find an inch of difference between what they do and what their competitors do. They find themselves speaking the same language as everyone else. They use the same visual language. And realize that they market themselves in a carbon copy fashion.

Start with “Why”

The modern answer to the brand differentiation quandary lies in the question, “Why?”. As Simon Sinek puts it,

“People don’t buy ‘what’ you do, they buy ‘why’ you do it”.

This is increasingly true and with little wonder. Think for a moment how difficult it is from your brand’s perspective. Now, think about how difficult it is from your customer’s perspective.

All of us are inundated with marketing hype and claims. Not only in your category, but in every aspect of our lives. Our natural response is to turn off as much of the noise as we can. We do this by applying filters. Brands work as filters when they help us latch onto something important and meaningful. Once that connection is made, we can then forget about the rest.

But if your widgets are the same as the next guy’s, it’s going to take something truly significant to become the most trusted and respected widget seller.

How do you define your “Why”?

The answer is to explore and define your brand’s “why”. Deep in what you do and how you do it, lies a number of truths about your intentions and outcomes.  These positive character attributes can fuel the thinking that will lead your brand toward meaningful (and profitable) differentiation.

By giving your brand a “North Star” to aim for, you elevate the spirit, ambition, and drive of your brand and everyone connected to it. A purposeful brand promise is the best way to forge your brand’s North Star. When well crafted, and built through the principles of empathy, purpose and feelings, a promise allows everyone vital to the brand’s success to see the ideal it sets as their own and enables them to be an active part of it.

When this brand promise is translated into new forms of behavior, both for the brand as an entity, and for the people in the workplace, amazing and differentiated things start to happen. In the effort to fulfill on the brand’s promise, a new mood and spirit drives business relationships, product development, marketing campaigns, customer service, etc.

  • Senior management makes more aligned and purposeful decisions.
  • Managers create more productive and gratifying work situations.
  • Product designers stretch their skills and imagination.
  • Marketing teams build consistent brand experiences and stronger messaging.
  • Customer service teams work with greater empathy and compassion.

All these changes push your brand in the direction of its brand promise. As a result, your brand, business, and culture will thrive.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

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San Francisco Branding Agency, Shares CEO Perspective on the Industry

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

San Francisco branding agency shares POV

As co-founder and CEO of Emotive Brand, a San Francisco branding agency, Bella is committed to the Agency promise of helping to transform brands and making the greatest impact possible through our work.

Bella works to maintain the highest standard of client services and delivers strategic solutions that meaningfully connect brands with people. We sat down with Bella to get the latest on what’s happening at Emotive Brand and her perspectives on brand strategy globally. In the following, she gives her insight on daily challenges, high-paced growth, and how to inspire and sustain meaningful business in the midst of it all.

Emotive Brand has created a new offering – Fast Forward – designed for high-growth startup clients that need to make strategic shifts to quickly address product, industry, competition, alignment, and other issues.

How does EB help companies move FAST?

Developing brand strategy can be a long and expensive engagement. People get frustrated with the amount of time it takes to reap the benefits. Our new Fast Forward offering is about delivering a quick win. It’s great for a company that needs lots of work, but can’t prioritize what is needed most or what will make the most impact fastest. Fast Forward allows us to engage in an intense, immersive phase of work. Together, we help our clients identify what their priorities should be in real-time and then create a deliverable during our working session with them. It’s like instant gratification. This agile approach also creates the opportunity to get to know each other and provides a real feel for our process and what working together on a larger project would look like. Clients see the value of what a more robust process would be because they’ve experienced the accelerated impact of a Fast Forward. This is often just what a team needs in order to gain internal alignment around the level of investment needed to continue to move forward.

As a branding agency, why are you always recruiting?

We’re in growth-mode right now at EB. We’re constantly looking for where the talent is as we expand our team. And talent is much more mobile than it ever was before. People aren’t looking for a job for life. They want rich experiences that they can fill up on and then move on to new ones. People want to be constantly learning. They don’t want to be doing the same thing again and again. I think that’s one of the benefits of working at an agency. The work is always changing. But there’s a trend in the Bay Area where a lot of creative talent is moving in-house and out of agencies. This means it’s more competitive than ever to find and grab those great people.

In terms of client services, how do you build and maintain meaningful client relationships?

At EB, we recognize that people buy from people. And clients, quite simply, want to deal with people – people who understand them and are empathetic to their problems, needs, and emotions. They want people who listen. At the end of the day, we are people and we strive to engage with people as people and not just clients or business partners. We understand what it means to juggle the challenges of a corporate environment, of reporting to a Board, of satisfying different stakeholders, and of managing office politics. We understand what it means to take risks and that it can seem scary. We know how hard it can be to stand behind something different. It’s not easy to be a client and we recognize that.

What are the latest and greatest EB successes in your mind?

As a brand strategy firm, we continue to lead the conversation about what it means to be a purpose-led company and how brand strategy can support that. When companies seek us out for that kind of work it feels good. The types of companies that we work for in the B2B, technology, and professional services recognize that being purpose-led can give them an edge. I’m proud that we continue to pioneer the thinking around purpose-led brands. And our clients keep coming back for more. We hold valuable, long-standing relationships and our work continues to grow.

In your opinion, what are the main challenges facing brand strategy today?

Time. Time is the biggest challenge. Everyone wants to move really quickly, but doing great work takes time. However, if you take too much time, things move on. The industry you’re in moves forward without you. It’s about finding a balance between moving too fast and being too slow. You can’t cut all the corners. As an agency, we have to find the balance of dedicating the right amount of time to our work and building flexibility into our process. We take the time where it is needed most and look to move quickly though areas that need less time. It is the same for our own brand. We are growing as an agency and it’s important that we continue to invest in our own brand and behaviors. We have to practice what we preach and that does take dedication, hard work, and practice.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.