Overlay
Let's talk
Emotive Brand
Get in touch: [email protected] 510-496-8888

Hello!

Tag: Brand Strategy

Is it Time for Your Business to Embrace the Purpose Economy?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

According to Aaron Hurst, we’ve moved from the Information Economy to the Purpose Economy. He states that this is a natural evolution, which is taking us from the first levels of human organization, the hoe-and-plow Agrarian Economy, through the smokestacks of the Industrial Economy, to the data farms of the Information Economy, and now to the human-centric Purpose Economy. Each of these economies been built on top of the proceeding, and represent evolutions more than revolutions.

In his book, Hurst states:

“When I say purpose, I mean more than serving others and the planet. Service is certainly at the core, but in speaking with hundreds of professionals and reading thousands of essays, I’ve discovered that there are two other key sources of purpose people seek: a sense of community and the opportunity for self-expression and personal growth. In other words, they pursue personal, social, and societal purpose.”

Continue reading “Is it Time for Your Business to Embrace the Purpose Economy?”

How Global Enterprise Tech Companies Can Re-brand

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

In the San Francisco Bay Area, it’s impossible to escape the blinding pace of technology. Ideas, innovations, and companies emerge like skyrockets, lighting up the sky and sometimes the world. We’re used to the speed because we live here, and because many of our clients are start-ups. We build meaningful brands to guide their stratospheric growth.

Then there are companies that have been around for a while. Venerable tech brands that have stood the test of time. Some dating back to the days when Silicon Valley was populated not by software geeks on corporate campuses, but by apricot and prune orchards.

Rethinking and recalibrating brand strategy can be scary for an established brand. But adapting to shifting trends, while remaining true to the heritage that got you there in the first place, is essential for any brand that needs to maintain a connection to all the people that matter to the brand.

Here’s how brand strategy can help an established tech company refresh or re-brand.

Change is not a sign of weakness

When a brand has been successful over a long period of time, it’s a sign that it’s been doing something right. And it’s a sign of strength, not weakness, when the leadership team realizes it’s time to change with the times and alter long-standing behavior to address the reality of today. An authentic brand that knows its strengths is a in a great position to stay up to date and compete with current rivals, while gaining the most from its heritage.

Brand behavior drives brand health

Some companies are held back from greatness by the “this is how we’ve always done things” syndrome. Leadership teams who recognize these indicators often turn to brand strategy to figure out how to reconnect with customers in meaningful ways and how to reenergize company behavior to deliver on the promise. Great leaders live the brand promise personally and lead by example. But it’s not always easy. It takes guts for a CEO to change direction and adopt a new way of thinking and acting. It takes even more guts to enlist the entire workforce to follow.

Employees are involved. So involve them early.

Most people are resistant to change. So when a brand needs to change with the times, it’s a good idea to pave the way by including people from all levels of your team. When they’re invested in creating the strategy, they’re prepped to handle the changes needed to roll it out. This is doubly true for companies with employees who’ve been around for a while. They might have very good ideas to help the company evolve. So ask them for input and meaningfully socialize with them once the work is done.

An old-fashioned practice turns out to be very modern

Giving customers what they want is what successful businesses have always done. Sometimes venerable brands need to freshly rediscover what people want. When your team knows what your customers want, need, think, and feel, your brand can make a more emotionally meaningful, stronger connection to people in a way that meets their expectations. It’s called empathy. A new-sounding name for a very old fashioned fundamental of people businesses.

Venerable brands often have a huge advantage over newer brands because they’ve already forged strong connections and already mean something to people. Like all brands, a venerable brand needs to speak in a consistent voice and behave in a consistent way to deliver on both the rational and that emotional connection. Brands like this, that evoke emotions, don’t just feel better, they perform better. No matter how old they are.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy company in the San Francisco Bay Area that’s only eight years old. But our experience spans decades with fresh strategic thinking for brands that want to stay meaningful, and stick around.

Save

The Value of Hiring a Brand Strategy Firm

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

When might you need a brand strategy firm? 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.

What drives your need to change?

There are many reasons why a company would need to change what it’s doing. Maybe competition and disruption are inhibiting the growth potential of your business. Attached to this, your business may be having a difficult time creating growth through innovation.   Continue reading “The Value of Hiring a Brand Strategy Firm”

The Importance of Brand Behavior in the Trust Economy

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

The Trust Economy

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

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

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

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

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

The key for brands in this new economy is trust.

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

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

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

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

Download White Paper

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Why a Startup Should Invest in the Brand Quickly

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Why we believe founders need to rethink their investment in their startup brand

There’s the startup rush. That undeniable startup rush. That adrenaline flow that starts the moment you have an idea worth sharing. An idea that you’re willing to ask perfect strangers to fund. It’s a rush when someone says yes, and another rush when that first check shows up. The one that rents the homely first office and gets you going.

After that it gets harder.

The technology component of the idea might be easy for you. After all, it’s what you were trained to do. But for many startup founders, the hard part is figuring out the people part. It might come as a surprise that people do not always obey the laws of physics. That’s why brands were invented.

So how do you create a startup brand to wrap around your technological tour de force so actual humans can relate to it? Why should a supremely motivated, completely obsessed, workaholic driven, possibly undernourished startup CEO invest time, effort, and money to develop a brand with a purpose that has a deep, emotive core?

Investing in your brand can help in these 6 ways

  1. Differentiate or die

You’re in a crowded ecosystem. You have 100+ competitors in your Lumascape. You need a more distinctive position than: “We’re disrupting X” or “We’re like, you know, the Uber of Y.” A meaningful positioning can help everyone understand why YOU matter and why they should care. Differentiation is key to survival as a startup, so you need to get this right.

  1. Help them love you

In today’s hyper-competitive world, emotion is the secret sauce of many of the world’s most successful brands. It can help your brand become more appealing, differentiated, and loved once you recognize its power. Developing positioning and messaging that mixes both the rational and the emotional aspects of your brand will win both the hearts and minds of those people you are trying to capture.

  1. Get everyone on the same page

Nothing slows down an enterprise more than a workforce that is working at cross-purposes, who is unmotivated, and who are unclear about what the strategy is. You need to align the leadership team and employees around one solid reason for being, a strong positioning, and consistent messaging built on a solid foundation of brand purpose and company values. When a company is truly aligned, and working toward the same purpose, it can truly achieve anything.

  1. Exit on your terms

Every startup has an exit strategy. Aligning your brand strategy to your business strategy can really help you get there faster. Too many founders try to keep this under wraps when developing a brand strategy and the brand strategy is built to support the wrong strategy. Trust your agency to help you achieve your goals and objectives, share your exit strategy, and let them help you create the right brand strategy to help you get there.

  1. Behavior drives results

Extraordinary things happen when an organization embraces a purposeful brand strategy. It drives new attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors across your team. It evolves your marketing, communications, and advertising. It inspires new product development. It makes your workplace more productive. It changes how people experience your brand. The last piece is behavior. It’s both difficult and simple: When companies adapt their behavior to live up to the brand promise, people notice. And that’s exactly the result you want.

  1. Invest once

You don’t want to do it twice, so you want to do it right the first time. It’s true that many people, especially in software, are used to fixing errors on the fly. Software is relatively easy to repair. Reputation isn’t. Reputations are earned through consistent behavior over time. So it’s advisable to get your brand aligned early so it will stand the test of time.

At Emotive Brand, we usher newly created entities into the branded world for the first time. We straighten out brands that have fallen out of step with the pace of the industry. We reinvent brands that wake up one morning merged with another company’s brand.

Don’t wait too long to discover the true, authentic purpose of your startup brand, and define why it matters to the people that matter to your business. It will be well worth your time.

If you are interested in our agile marketing approach for high-growth companies, please visit some of our case studies and see how we’ve helped drive growth, developed strong messaging and positioning, and differentiated even the most crowded ecosystems.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

How Brand Strategy Can Meaningfully Improve Product Design

Posted on by Dann Wilkens

We’ve noticed a product trend, especially with technology companies. Products can suffer growing pains if they are conceived, gestated, and born into the world without the guiding hand of the brand. On the flipside, brand strategy can have an enormously reassuring influence on the design of a product. In fact, our brand strategies exert positive influences on the product designs of most of our clients, in direct and indirect ways.

Here’s how.

Empathy

Brand strategy always starts with a thorough study of target audiences, which means understanding what makes them tick. Their needs, expectations, pains, and joys. When a brand really gets their user base and Continue reading “How Brand Strategy Can Meaningfully Improve Product Design”

Your Business Problems Might Have a Brand Strategy Solution

Posted on by Dann Wilkens

When you spend a lot of time working with people in the C-suite, you’re exposed to C-sized business problems. Those larger strategic issues that can’t be solved by the CEO alone, or by existing resources. When changes in your industry push you to shift business strategy, it’s a sign that your brand strategy needs to shift in a synchronized way to reposition for success.

Example: We’ve surveyed C-level executives about the number one desire they have for their brand strategy. Know what they want? Differentiation. A competitive advantage. A defensible position. Differentiation is tough. When your competitors are howling like wolves at the door, how can you stand out from the pack? If your company plays a supporting role in a complex ecosystem, how can you stand out from the crowd? Brand strategy can help.

Continue reading “Your Business Problems Might Have a Brand Strategy Solution”

Does your Business need an Updated Brand Narrative?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Does your brand need a Brand Narrative?

Your brand does if it faces any of these situations:

  • Differentiation: Does your brand have a sober, unexciting, or blurry identity in an increasingly competitive and perhaps commoditized market? Are you able to cut through the clutter in ways that matter?
  • Growth: Is it getting harder to increase market share, drive sales, and improve profit? Are new markets and products growing quickly enough?
  • Talent: Is it getting increasingly difficult for your brand to recruit the talent you need? Is your top talent leaving? Are competitor’s hiring the talent you hoped to hire?
  • Engagement: Are your employees aligned and heading in the same direction? Is your brand being held back with issues around collaboration, innovation, and loyalty?
  • Complexity: Is your business growing rapidly in both size and scope? Have you just acquired a new company? Do you have disparate product lines and target audiences? Are your brand and workplace behaviors inconsistent and counter-productive?

Of course, a strong Brand Narrative will also help your brand even if it’s operating from a position of strength. Successful brands can further establish their preeminence, forge far stronger and harder to break bonds with both customers, prospects, and employees, and increase the perceived distance between themselves and their near competitors.

A good Brand Narrative adds a bright North Star to your brand strategy. It helps you create brand experiences that change the way people feel about your brand, based on the emotional rewards of your brand promise and the way you strive to make people feel in every interaction.

To learn more about the Emotive Branding Methodology, please download the paper below:

Download White Paper

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Meaningful Brands Keep Promises

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

Meaningful Brands are not so easy to come by

Is your brand strategy working as hard as it could be? Or is it being held back by these all-too-common corporate traits: myopia, narrow-mindedness, and self-centeredness? Does your brand strategy focus only on the “what” and “how” of your offering? Does it mostly talk to senior management in the cryptic language only MBAs understand?

If so, your brand isn’t hitting the right notes in today’s marketplace. Today’s most innovative and successful brands are built upon a different premise. They seek to forge meaningful connections with people, not solely through products or marketing claims, but through the added idea of purpose-beyond-profit. As such, they build their brand strategies out from the greater world in which they operate, not from the deep, dark corners of the C-suite.

Continue reading “Meaningful Brands Keep Promises”

Getting Employees to Live Company Values

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

“People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou.

The goal of employee engagement is to drive employee attitudes, behavior, morality, and ethics in such a way as to improve their productivity, morale, satisfaction, and usefulness within the organization.

However, many companies have struggled with converting their proclaimed values into compelling, work-changing experiences for their employees that reach through to their brand strategy.

Often, the problems have been that the values are typically expressed with meaning-neutral (if not meaningless) corporate-speak, or that the values aren’t of a first-order nature. That is, they don’t touch on what truly constitutes the “good” for people inside and outside the organization.

Getting employees to live company values

As such, employees simply haven’t been able to internalize the values. If asked, they may be able to repeat the values verbatim, but their recitation will not be heartfelt. Furthermore, too often their conscious knowledge of the values does not lead to the desired changes in attitudes, behavior, morality, and ethics.

There is a way businesses can get employees to live the company’s values. Ironically, it is by never using the word “values.” Rather, it is by bringing people to the company’s values through feelings.

This is a new way of engaging employees in corporate values. It doesn’t ask employees to buy into potentially bland statements crafted in corporate-speak. Instead, it prompts employees to think about how they want themselves, and others, to be left feeling by the business.

To make this work, the business determines a set of higher-order feelings based on their ambition. These feelings are selected based on their ability to help propel employees in their pursuit of the ambition and their ability to serve as an employee-friendly way of deploying values through employee engagement initiatives.

Engagement built around feelings

The business then engages its employees around these feelings, using them to shape, change, improve, and make more consistent, the employee’s attitudes, behavior, morality, and ethics as it drives them forward toward the ambition.

For example, employees can be engaged in a process by which they explore how the business can better make them feel the selected feelings through changes and additions to the company policies and procedures.

At the same time, employees can affect change within by questioning how they, and the policies and procedures they control, can be changed or added to in order to make their superiors, peers, and reports more likely to feel the desired feelings.

By focusing on feelings rather than traditional value statements, a business instantly forges a fresh and new emotional connection with its employees. By using feelings as the platform by which it instills its values, businesses discover a better way to engage their employees and to get them to internalize both the business’ ambition (purpose) and its feelings (values).

This excerpt is the fifth in a series from our white paper titled The Meaningful Workplace.

Download White Paper

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

To read more about employee engagement activities: Meaningful Workplace: Getting Employees to Respond Positively

Photo credit.