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Tag: Brand

The Role of Research to Develop Personas

Posted on by Chris Ames

New Year, New You

It’s January again, and as with every year, many people are seeking to better themselves. The blank slate of a new year is full of endless possibility. Brands are not immune to this pursuit of self-improvement either. Equipped with a renewed budget and a clear head from the holiday break, many businesses are wondering what’s the best way to save time and money, turn insight into action, and find a meaningful place in their customers’ life. If you’re not already, it’s time to unleash the power of personas.

Too often, brands are created, products are developed, and campaigns are launched seeking to be everything to everyone. Casting the widest net possible, brands target nameless, faceless users – defined loosely by obligatory data points that lack any meaningful context. And that’s a shame because it results in a ton of wasted energy being shot into the void.

Know Your Customer, Know Thyself

At their best, personas are like vividly illustrated dictionaries of your customers, based on a combination of real data and insights about your customer demographics, behaviors, motivations, goals, and any other information you find useful. In full color, they give you something to aim at, aspire to, and hold yourself accountable. Perhaps most importantly, personas remind brands that they are, in fact, making things for real people. They provide a beating heart for your products, messaging, and design.

If you know that your ideal customer is a 27-year-old business woman named Sage who has one child under five, regularly listens to podcasts, bikes to work, and primarily shops through subscription services, you’re much better suited to craft a resonate visual and verbal identity than if you launched a campaign broadly aimed at “millennials.”

Start with the Truth

When crafting personas, Daryl McCullough, CEO of Citizen Relations, believes the best place to start is with the truth. “Truth is not marketing speak or brand attributes,” he says. “Instead, it is the pure reason for a consumer or customer to care. Consumers today expect that a brand persona is honest, human, and true.”

Your brand truth is the backbone for all your experiments in messaging and targeting. It’s the focal point around which you can begin to ask questions, like what circumstances triggered your customer to start looking for a solution like yours? What results were they seeking? What risks were they avoiding? What were the barriers to purchase? What do they believe your competitors do better? What has been the impact of using your solution, at a business and personal level? How does using your solution make them feel?

Keep it Human

The folks over at New Kind have a very simple rubric for guiding personas. First, your personas must be built on research. Second, you should be able to count all your personas on one hand. And third, everyone in the company should be able to recall all your personas off the top of their head. It’s a great reminder that no matter how deep you go with your research, you still need to be able to condense and communicate it in a memorable way for your team. As you examine website and social media analytics, customer interviews, and market research, the end result needs to be translated into something human and actionable.

Types of Research

These days, we are blessed with a plethora of tools for getting to know our customers. We know what keywords they are using, what websites they visit before and after, their behavior on social, how they respond to ads, and what kind of content generates the most engagement. By comparing this to specific user data, such as gender, relationship status, and so on, brands are able to create a frighteningly accurate portrait of their audience.

Alongside data-driven tools, customer personas can be shaped by surveys, feedback, and one-on-one interviews.

Find Your Way With Empathy Mapping

Data collection is one thing, but the ability for a brand to truly step into the shoes of a customer – and sustain this perspective over a long period of time – is far more difficult. Brands are always in danger of losing touch with how people really think, speak, and feel. The relationship between people and brands is like that of locals and tourists. Appearing fluent in a foreign country takes rigorous, relentless practice, and locals are always going to be detecting invisible signals you can’t see.

Empathy mapping is a fantastic way to maintain long-term customer perspective, create a shared understanding of user needs, and aid in decision making. It can reveal also reveal less obvious insights, like obstacles in the customer journey and new opportunities for communication. Dave Gray, Founder of XPLANE, has created a very helpful empathy map canvas to improve customer experience, navigate organizational politics, design better work environments, and a host of other things.

Never Forget Your Sales Team

As we’ve discussed before, your sales team are the ones on the frontlines selling your products and services every day. If you don’t include them in the conversation, they are going to ignore your materials or create their own – which only leads to an inconsistent brand experience for your clients and customers.

There are dozens of way to strengthen your brand, but money spent on better understanding your audience will never be money wasted. To learn more about how your brand can make 2019 the year of the persona, contact Founding Partner Tracy Lloyd at [email protected].

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

The Pros and Cons of Launching a New Category

Posted on by Chris Ames

What’s Old Is New Again

People have been drinking coffee, listening to music, and shopping for groceries forever. But if you peered into the modern household, chances are these common operations would look completely foreign to someone ten years ago. One might load a coffee pod while streaming an album from their phone, then ask their voice assistant to add something to their online cart.

This is the brave new world of brand category creation, and it’s something that we’ve written about extensively. The reason we spend so many words on this topic is that it’s absolutely paramount to sustained, long-term growth.

Build Upon a Frame of Reference

As a quick refresher, a brand’s frame of reference is the foundation of its positioning. Think of it as the set of hurdles a brand must be able to leap to be considered a legitimate player. People need a frame of reference in order to understand and approach your offering. As UC Berkeley Professor George Lakoff explains, “framing provides a mental structure that shapes the way we see the world. If a strongly held frame doesn’t fit the facts, the facts will be ignored.”

So, while coffee pods and streaming services are technically new, it’s still just coffee and music: two beautiful, sturdy frames of reference to build upon. That’s the delicate art of launching a new category. It’s not that you’re trying to invent something completely from scratch, but rather building a new path to a known, beloved experience. Asking your customer to take an imaginative leap is a dangerous thing. You want to make sure that they land on something comfortable.

The Pros

When done right, the rewards are huge. Harvard Business Review examined Fortune’s list of the 100 fastest-growing U.S. companies from 2009 to 2011 and found that the 13 companies that were instrumental in creating their categories accounted for 53% of the incremental revenue growth and 74% of incremental market capitalization growth over those three years.

“The message is clear,” says Eddie Yoon, “category creators experience much faster growth and receive much higher valuations from investors than companies bringing only incremental innovations to market.”

The Cons

When done wrong, of course, the backlash is swift and unrelenting. You might remember Bodega, a glorified vending machine that positioned itself as “reinventing the Mom and Pop store.” Silicon Valley is infamous for touting so-called innovations that, more often than not, are only techy-twists on an existing category. This combination of hubris and mislabeling will immediately turn-off your customer.

If launching a new category is so treacherous, why take the risk? Wouldn’t it be better to just give people what they already want? The issue is, what people want – and the medium in which they prefer it – is always changing. As Al Ries writes, “a brand is the tip of an iceberg. How big and how deep the iceberg is will determine how powerful the brand is. The bottom of the iceberg is the category. If it melts, the brand will melt, too.”

Trying to Hit a Moving Target

Look at Kodak. What’s a Kodak? Why only the world’s best film-photography brand. Unfortunately for Kodak, the film photography iceberg has steadily melted ever year – and with it, Kodak’s brand awareness, influence, and stock price. It’s not that people have stopped taking pictures, so why wasn’t Kodak able to make the digital jump? They stayed relentlessly focused on brand instead of observing how the category was shifting.

Competing against other brands and giving people what they want now is a short-term play. Competing against the category you’re in and giving people what they’ll need for tomorrow is how you achieve sustained, long-term growth.

Take Citrix, a legacy software company founded in 1989. For decades, they have provided innovations like desktop virtualization and cloud computing. And for decades, that was enough to differentiate them. Cut to 2018, when everyone and their mother has a SaaS offering, and that is no longer the case. So, how did they respond? By leaning into the new brand category of “digital workspace” – a unified app that brings together the best of all their existing and future technologies.

Not only that, but they are doing the hard work that launching a new category entails: being consistent with messaging, generating competition, popularizing, tapping into early adopters, and educating customers.

Launching a new category isn’t for every brand, but if your product or offering is misunderstood, your competition is stifling your ability to grow, or your category has fallen out of favor, it’s time to consider a shift in strategy. In this fickle business, there’s no such thing as being permanently safe. Great brands are like sharks – you have to keep moving forward if you want to make it out alive.

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

Sales: The Critical Element of a Growth Company’s Brand

Posted on by Sara Gaviser Leslie

Sales and Brand: A Connection Worthy of Discussion

Sales teams exist to grow revenue and keep customers happy. They’re also brand builders and the face of the brand to many customers.

They hear what customers want and keep a pulse on the market. When it’s easy for sales to share their observations with product development and marketing, their feedback spurs product improvements, brand definition, and growth. The first step in this process, though, is for sales to provide a clear explanation of the problem their product solves.

Recently we caught up with Pier Barattolo, a sales leader with decades of experience in technology companies, to learn how he makes sure the market understands what he’s selling and why they need it. 

Interview with Pier Barattolo, CRO at Density.io

First, can you tell us a bit about your previous roles and your current gig?

My first quota carrying job was in 1996. My current job, Chief Revenue Officer at Density, is my third CRO position. Our sales team is small, handpicked, and focused on building the foundation for high growth and scale. As CRO, I am responsible for partnerships and business development and although I do not directly own marketing, I have a strong voice and influence on all marketing related activities.

When you join a company, you tend to be a founding member of the sales team. Tell us where you start.

Yes, I’m usually one of the first—if not the first—sales person at a company. I work very closely with the founder / CEO to establish product-market fit and put in the processes to scale the business. I start by thinking about the critical messages we need to develop and then what will get prospects to talk to us and, eventually, purchase. I ask myself, “Who should care about us?”

It’s about keeping things really simple. At a previous company, I didn’t take the time to really define our reason for being and this left the sales team to do their own thing and had to figure it out on their own. It did not work out very well for us. Now, I always work to identify and focus on the problem we solve and put it in simple terms so that everyone can articulate and explain it.

Messaging is, obviously, easier when the problem is familiar to people. But it isn’t always. Have you ever worked at a company that was in a new product category?

Category placement is really important. You have to be really clear which category you’re in so others can place you. It’s hard to sell something to a company that doesn’t have any budget allocated to that product/solution. I’ve found that when a category is particularly new, education is really important. This is often a big issue for platform companies.

So how do you create a platform brand?

You can’t depend on the enterprise to understand the power of the platform. It’s the selling company’s job is to educate the enterprise on the platform’s potential, the specific applications and how it solves a specific problem for a specific executive / buyer.  Unless widely adopted, companies do not go out and look for platforms.

At my current company, Density, our technology allows enterprises to measure occupancy by counting people passing through a doorway. We position ourselves as an analytics platform, driven by occupancy data. On its own, that doesn’t mean much to most people! We need to define the platform and also give examples of the things the platform can do and the problems it solves.

So how do you do that? How do develop a value proposition for each customer?

You need to get clear on what you do, how you do it, and begin to develop the proof points as quickly as possible. At Density, we have a device we install above a door that measures people going in and out of a space. The problem we solve really depends on the customer. When we talked to our initial customers, we looked for underlying trends and recurring problems. We identified initial applications that were common and valuable to our target audience and focused on those “use cases”: security tailgating, office space wastage, facilities management, and conference room and cafeteria planning.  We give executives the necessary data to enable them to make better decisions.

Let’s talk more about brand. You’re in a very early stage. Do you focus at this point on the brand?

Brand recognition and brand awareness help potential buyers understand who you are as a company. You’ve got to invest when you can. When I join a company, I first focus on the problem we are solving and then how we solve it in a way that is differentiated and valuable to customers.  That might not be the flashy brand stuff people see but it makes a big impact on the sales cycle. The better you define the problem and the solution, the easier it is to sell and the stronger your brand becomes.

Speaking of sales, what’s your approach to scaling the sales team?

I tend to make sure that I have a strong foundation that can withstand high scale—but at the right time. It doesn’t make sense to scale before you have a clear and repeatable product-market fit and go-to-market strategy. Although our technology is applicable to every Fortune 1000 company we’re targeting companies that align best with the use cases we are focusing on today.  Once we see a repeatable process, we will add reps and allow them to apply the recipe many times across many accounts.

How can the sales team impact brand building?

First, arm them with what they need. Content is king. We make sure sales has the content – data sheets, pitch decks, case studies – they need right away. The content doesn’t have to be perfect but they need something. We iterate on and refine this content over time.

Speaking of iterating, our reps are key to our ongoing learning process. They are out there hearing about how customers see our brand, how they use our solutions, and how we can make it better. You have to use every customer interaction to learn. Then you bring that feedback back inside and adjust. And then you go out again.

Any closing thoughts?

I’d just say that when you start to think about how your brand matters to people, it’s overwhelming.  I really try to stay focused. If we can do everything, it’s hard to do anything. Take it step by step and get straight on fundamentals first.

Pier makes it sound easy. But finding product-market fit and defining your value isn’t always simple. If you’re struggling to articulate the problem you solve or develop the use cases that communicate your value proposition, we want to hear from you. Emotive Brand understands the connection between positioning and messaging and sales. Let’s talk about how we can help you make your product more relevant to your customers and drive revenue.

Emotive Brand is a B2B brand strategy and design agency.

Personalization Can Drive Meaning For Brands

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

What helps create a truly meaningful brand? A flawlessly articulated purpose? A killer logo? A leadership team that really understands the value of brand? Complete internal alignment? Oftentimes, the interplay of many different brand elements work together to create cohesive and lasting meaning. But one element that is gaining value in the world of branding is personalization.

Right now, personalization is “in” with brands. Mass consumption and mass production are becoming things of the past. These days, brands that matter and resonate with people are the ones that feel like they’re authentically made and designed just for you. It’s the age of personalization.

In marketplaces crowded with new technologies, ripe with innovation, and full of competition, personalization has become one of the most important ways to differentiate. People crave connections, and brands that establish relationships and produce emotionally meaningful connections with their audiences stand out – and win.

Here are five ways brand personalization helps create meaning for brands and drives brand performance.

1. Product Customization

When people get to customize a product to perfectly fit their need, aesthetic, and lifestyle, the brand gains meaning because they play an active role. Customization increases feelings of uniqueness and individuality, while still allowing all the positive brand associations of brand belonging to arise. For instance, Nike ID allows shoppers to design their own shoes and feel as though they are stylists and designers themselves. The brand is flexible to each individual, while living up to their brand promise of inspiration and innovation. Customization allows brands to become ownable to their audience on an individual level.

2. Ease and Convenience

In the hectic lives of today’s consumers, time is a precious resource. People want to spend the least amount of time doing things that don’t matter to them so they can dedicate time to doing the things that do matter. People want brands that integrate into their established lifestyle with the minimal effort. For instance, some people choose to do all their grocery shopping online in five minutes via apps like Instacart vs. spending hours at 3 different grocery stores. Other brands focus on personalizing for your well-being by tracking eating, exercise, sleeping, and stress patterns on a single device. Adaptability is a huge component of personalization these days. Brands like the FitBit not only add ease to a user’s life, but adapt to their every move, and push them to make the changes needed to reach personal goals.

3. Cohesive Look and Feel

In order for a highly personalized brand to function, it has to have an especially cohesive look and feel that grounds the brand. Even though consumers can build there own, unique Nike shoes, all Nike products and brand experiences are still easily recognizable as Nike and branded this way. A strong brand logo is key to this. Oftentimes, established brands, such as Coca-Cola, can pull of fun personalization tactics (like writing names on their cans) and not run the risk of diluting their look and feel.

4. Social Buzz

Personalization campaigns can create a lot of buzz on social media. Because they are personal, people are more likely to share brand experiences on their personal pages. When people get socially engaged with a brand, the brand becomes even more integrated into their own personal brand, and also easily expands into their social network.

5. Handcrafted

In many ways, the trends of personalization are returning to previous times when tailors made clothes one by one. People want things that feel specifically produced for them. Take Harry’s razors for instance. Harry’s delivers their handcrafted razors in packaging that resembles old wood boxes. They are not only easy and convenient, but feel handmade. They feel indulgent in a way that says, “just for you”. People want brands that are making a positive impact in the world and that also make them feel special. Brands that can create products that feel handmade are able to create positive feelings towards the brand.

Personalization, if done right, can be a huge brand asset. It can create deeper meaning, brand relevance, and drive growth. Make sure that personalization is well-connected to your brand strategy so that all aspects of the product development, brand experience, and look and feel are tightly connected. Each brand should use personalization in a personalized way — one that lives up to the brand promise, and is tailored to the way their brand wants to make people feel.

Emotive Brand is a strategic branding agency.

To Every Marketing VP: How to Talk About Brand so Your CEO Will Listen

Posted on by Sara Gaviser Leslie

The Role of VP of Marketing – It’s Not Easy

Is VP of Marketing one of the hardest corporate jobs? We think so. As a Marketing VP, you have a set of responsibilities that varies dramatically day-to-day – and company to company. You touch every area of an organization and engage with almost every member of the leadership team to solve your business’s most pertinent problems. People look to you to drive demand gen campaigns, build awareness for products and the overall brand, support sales teams, support the company’s HR, and fuel recruitment efforts. And, of course, no technology marketing job is complete if you aren’t working to get included – and/or maintain your place – in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.

Even if you do all of these things well, though, nothing matters if you don’t have a strong brand strategy. Your brand strategy connects your work in marketing to the business strategy. It provides a backbone to everything you do. It explains what you do, why you matter, and what people should expect from you. If you don’t have a strong brand strategy, you risk confining yourself to the role of executor, not an essential member of the company’s leadership.

Whether you use an outside agency or bring together a team within your company, first off, you’ll need to convince the CEO to invest in the brand development process. We’ve found that this can be the most difficult step in developing your brand strategy because CEOs often don’t understand it! You mention “brand strategy” and you hear:
“We have a logo,” or, “I like our color scheme,” or “PR’s doing a great job getting us press.”

Maybe your CEO has had a bad experience with a branding project – and wants to avoid more of the same in the future. They respond to you with something like this:

“A brand strategy workshop? I don’t want to tell people my spirit animal!”

So How Do You Get Around CEO Misconceptions About Brand Strategy?

First, you need to explain that a brand strategy is just that, a strategy. It describes why and how you do what you do. It creates meaningful and emotional connections between the brand and both internal and external audiences. One of the most important elements of brand strategy is positioning. Positioning is about separating your company from your competitors, telling the market where you stand as a brand, and explaining the part of the market that you will own.

Then, depending on what you are trying to accomplish, here’s how you should talk about the business problems your brand strategy project solves:

  • Demand Gen: A strong brand will differentiate you from your competitors and convert leads
  • Go-to-market Strategy: When you’ve got a great brand story to tell – crisp and interesting – you can increase customer awareness. You develop pull for your brand and drive sales.
  • Recruiting and Retention: When you purposely build emotion into your brand, you create the potential for not just customers but also current and prospective employees to opt in.

Language Matters: Talk Business

For example, if the project you want to invest in will drive all marketing initiatives for the year, explain to the CEO that your “repositioning” project takes a new cut at the company’s go-to-market strategy, helps to differentiate the product, and increases productivity of the channel and grow sales.

If you want to do an employer brand project and must convince your company’s Head of People or HR, talk about “internal alignment”,“culture”, and“behavior”, and how your work will ultimately reduce turnover and recruiting costs. 

Though it sounds counterintuitive, when you take the word “brand” out of the conversation and focus on the business problem, you speak in a language that a non-marketing person can understand. You also introduce accountability – solutions to business problems have measurable and reliable results. When you use business terms to sell your brand project, you’ll have an easier time reaching your audience and, ultimately, be more successful.

Emotive Brand a San Francisco brand strategy and design agency.

You may also like this post about aligning business strategy and brand strategy for long term growth.

AI and Machine Learning: A Future Forward for Brands?

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

The Future, It’s Here: AI and Machine Learning

It’s easy to think of an AI-led world as a thing of the future – that movie-like image where robots run hotels, TV ads know your name, and data is more valuable than the gold people ran to California for decades ago.

Yes, the future is blurry, exciting, full of fear, and countless unknowns. Yes, it is changing every day – and fast. But the future is happening, now. In fact, AI is already integrated into the way each of us experience brands every day – even if we don’t know it. You wake up in the morning and ask Alexa what the weather is. You Google Map how to get to your meeting and blast your Spotify Discover Weekly playlist on your drive. You buy a new book based on an Amazon recommendation. You scroll content on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter – all while your bank is making sure you’re safe from credit card fraud. There’s AI integrated into all of those brand experiences.

And it’s no longer something solely owned by the tech giants. Smart businesses and brands – big and small, old and new, B2B and B2C – who want to elevate their brand experiences and build a brand fit for the future are investing in AI and machine learning in innovative and strategic ways, today. 

It’s Complicated

Right now, the breadth of AI is huge, and it’s only getting bigger. AI is being used to improve decision making, fuel creativity, increase speed and flexibility, and personalize at scale. Right now, AI assistants are being trained to display complex human emotions like sympathy. Brands like Microsoft are building teams of data scientists, data sustainers, poets, playwrights, and novelists to develop the right AI personality for their brand. Autodesk’s Dreamcatch is being programed to enhance the imagination and fuel the creativity of the most exceptional designers out there. At the same time, GDPR regulations are arising intricate and important questions surrounding privacy and data collection. Teams are hiring in-house ethicists to help navigate issues. With every innovation, comes another challenge.

Each day, the circumference of possibility expands. And this can be overwhelming for brands and businesses trying to find their place in the future.

 A New World of AI and Machine Learning

As a brand strategy agency that works to help brands navigate their space and build better experiences for the people that matter, we have also been watching AI. There is so much to consider, but here’s some insights we are keeping top of mind.

1. Voice Matters

In the same way that people can be disappointed or delighted by an experience with a customer representative, they will also have an opinion of your chatbot or AI system. So what’s important for brands building chatbots today (as are many) to remember is that the voice of your AI system must reinforce everything you want people to believe about your brand.

Alexa is confident and polite but Siri, unlike Alexa, is sassy. This distinction in voice reveals a difference in brand. Apple strategically built Siri to be just like it’s brand – individual, bold, not afraid to say something different. Sephora’s Kik bot is conversational, fun, in-the-know, and a little bit sparkly (think emojis galore) – just like the teen-targeted brand. On the other hand, Microsoft’s Cortana is helpful, but not bossy. So like any new touchpoint, put strategic thought into the experience and use it to reinforce your brand.

2. Decisions, Decisions – Better? Faster? Stronger?

Take Stitch Fix – an online clothing retailer that offers subscription clothing and styling service. The differentiator? Users don’t actually shop for clothes. Instead, they give measurements, connect their Pinterest boards, submit personal notes of preference, and fill out style surveys. Stitch Fix’s machine learning algorithms take in this data and communicate key findings to the company’s fashion stylists (real life humans!).

In short, AI superpowers the productivity and effectiveness of those stylist’s decisions. With greater speed and better accuracy, stylists can recommend even more creative, personalized, in-tune clothing options. The data collected in the process allows Stitch Fix to see style trends before the market itself catches on. The brand even develops fashions entirely born from data – which they term “frankenstyles.”

The collaboration between machine learning technologies and creative, visionary employees is key here. When you join the forces of human and artificial intelligence, amazing things happen. Innovation increases, creativity soars, and employees can hone their strengths. So never forget about the power and intelligence of your employees – you’ll always need their capabilities.

3. Extreme Personalization at Scale

We’ve talked again and again about the power of personalization – and, the demand for it. Now, AI gives brands the opportunity to achieve unprecedented levels of personalization, at scale.

For example, Mercedes Benz created Cobot arms (with AI-technology) that act as extensions of their own employees on the ground. These cobots allow employees to do less manual labor and heavy lifting, and act as pilots of the robots. Customers at the dealership want to see the car with leather seats? Add new dashboard components? This innovation creates the agility to customize right there. No two cars that leave the dealership have to be the same. And customers can see their unique desires become realities in real time.

Considering the moments and experiences you can tailor to your customer’s needs and desires can be one of the best ways of tapping into the power of AI.

4. Trust, Transparency – Are You There?

Although, there is a lot of buzz out there surrounding AI – there is little talk of trust.

And in a world where what privacy is being questioned more than ever, leaks in data happen every day, discussions around face recognition and data collection ethics are commonplace, and new rules and regulations are emerging in response, ultimately, brand trust matters more than crazy algorithm or hyper intelligent robot.

GDPR gives consumers the right to receive an explanation for any algorithm-based decision. Businesses globally are hiring what people call “AI sustainers” – employees who work to ensure that the systems are working properly, safely, responsibly, and ethically. This all comes in response to a greater demand for transparency, and a larger need for trust – one that has been bubbling over for quite some time.

So put resources and focus towards building trust before you launch into something that risks jeopardizing it. And never forget to be human – brands that feel human to people build better, more trust-filled relationships.

Like Anything, Get Strategic

The future might be here, but the fact is that brands are still struggling to use AI technologies to solve real business problems. It’s not that the tech doesn’t work, it’s that people aren’t clear around how to actually use it strategically.

Part of what’s so scary for brands and consumers alike is how open the world of AI seems. It’s expansive and complex – a huge and often risky investment for brands who might not sure how to approach it.

The worry is that AI becomes a black box. So if you choose to invest in AI, don’t make it just another separate R&D initiative. Get people around the table – not just data scientists, but leaders and creatives too – to think strategically about how AI can strengthen your brand, deepen and complement your employees strengths, help you connect with the right people, position you for growth, and ultimately fuel your business into the future.

That’s the future we can’t wait for.

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

Enduring Brand Lessons from the Worlds of Retail, Restaurants, and Other First Jobs

Posted on by Chris Ames

Is there anything as formative as our first jobs? It’s a magical time when the newfound autonomy of getting a paycheck is immediately countered by an ugly truth: making money is hard work. For many of us, first jobs start in the worlds of retail, restaurants, and other seemingly unglamorous customer service gigs. There are, by definition, entry-level positions, but don’t let that fool you. Any job that puts you in front of people — people with highly-specific desires, big expectations, and virtually no patience — requires a herculean amount of smarts and emotional intelligence.

There is a certain social stigma against customer service positions. We are taught to laugh off those early stints and seek out “real jobs.” The truth is, the early lessons from those first jobs can form the bedrock of great branding. You must embody consistency, differentiation, experience, and the simple fact that when you win someone’s heart, it’s not long until you win their wallet.

The following is a roundtable interview with the Emotive Brand team about their first jobs, and how those early experiences have informed how they approach branding today.

Saja Chodosh, Writer

For two years during the summer, I was a hostess at a pub in Salt Lake City. Naturally, I had to deal with a lot of drunk or impatient people. One of the first lessons you learn is: tone really matters. You can relay the same basic information — It’s going to be an hour-and-a-half wait — with drastically different tones and get drastically different results. It’s the difference between someone storming out or someone saying, “It’s cool, I’ll just get a drink at the bar.” As a writer for brands, tone in copywriting is super important. Just like at a pub, it’s going to affect how long people are willing to interact with you.

Kelly Peterson, Project Manager

Believe it or not, I was actually a papergirl. Every Wednesday, right around the corner from my middle school, I would plug in my iPod and run the streets. It was all about how you can be most efficient before it gets dark. It’s a lot like solving how to get the most out of people before a deadline. You had your regulars, the people who would plan to see me at the same time every week. They depended on that consistency – getting consistent value at the same time, no matter what. Plus, the emotional connection of being able to take time to chat with their neighborhood papergirl – despite my sunlight influenced deadline. As a project manager, consistency, efficiency, and people skills all factor in.

Shannon Caulfield, Project Manager

For better or worse, in Burlingame, I was known as the “frozen yogurt girl” because I worked so much. That job is where I really learned the importance of customer experience, and how a brand’s perception totally depends on their people. We took our Yelp reviews super seriously. If someone took a picture of a frozen yogurt that wasn’t perfectly swirled, we got in trouble. If you’re a company, you are producing thousands and thousands of customer experiences every day — but you have to remember, the customer only gets that one impression. When you don’t treat each experience with care, they could walk away with a bad taste.

Carol Emert, Strategy Director

One summer during college, I traveled around Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, writing for the “Let’s Go: Europe” travel guide. It was fun but pedantic work, researching transit schedules, hostels, and cheap eats. The big lesson I took from that time is that people love to tell their story. It may feel like an imposition, but when you show a genuine interest in someone else’s experience, most people delight in being able to talk about themselves and their interests — whether it’s their hometown in Norway or their relationship to a product or a brand. It’s not universally true, but when you want to hear someone’s story, it’s usually possible to find people who are happy to share. Today, as a consumer insights researcher and brand strategist, I am quite unapologetic about asking people to share their story.

Joanna Schull, Strategist

My first real job was working at Häagen-Dazs. As part of the training, you must learn to do everything. Whether you’re the manager or have only been there for a week, you need to know and be willing to do all the tasks. And that’s because, if you’re a customer, you don’t really know or care about the difference between who’s a manager and who’s not; you just want a great experience. No matter your place of employment, you should always be willing to do all aspects of the job. If you’re the CEO of an international coffee conglomerate, you should still know how to pull an espresso. At the end of the day, you need to know how to do the thing and live the brand. Everyone should understand the ins-and-outs of what makes the customer happy.

Also, when I was a lifeguard, I had to assert control over people who were considerably older than I was. I needed to find a way to convince adults to follow the rules, to follow my rules, and to keep people safe without being a jerk about it. It’s challenging to exercise authority when it’s questionable whether or not I should even have authority. In our line of work as consultants, we’re often working with people that are unbelievably successful, and the question becomes: how do you get them to trust you? How do you lead them through a process that might be uncomfortable? You need a mix of confidence and humility. Whether you’re leading a workshop or watching a pool, you’re not there to be the most important part of the engagement. You’re there to make sure things work seamlessly.

Keyoni Scott, Junior Designer

I’ve had a ton of jobs — pizza delivery, clothing stores, sandwich shops — but I learned something interesting about working at this deli in Yountville, a small town in Napa Country. You know, Napa has a certain association of being a very high-end, maybe even uppity place. There are the stereotypes of the fancy, wine-tasting people. I think it taught me the importance of ignoring assumptions, and really taking the time to truly know your audience. Regardless of stereotypes about a place, everyone is different and brings something unique to the table. Working in a deli, it’s a matter of being able to read people quickly. You should engage people on an emotional level, and get a real idea of what their life is like. Reading people goes a long way, creates stronger bonds, and ultimately, earns you more tips. Knowing when to joke with customers — or clients — goes a long way. Don’t make assumptions about your audience. Take the time to read them.

Robert Saywitz, Senior Designer

Oh man, I’ve worked as a host, a busboy, an ice cream scooper. At an all-you-can-eat buffet, I was literally the muffin man. When I was going through art school, I worked part-time as a waiter. In general, working in the service industry not only teaches you how to engage with difficult people, it teaches you extreme empathy. It informs you how to be a considerate and normal person when you walk into a restaurant, and that there are two sides to every story. It’s a brutal, but necessary lesson to learn. I truly believe that every single person on this planet should work in the service industry, like a military draft. Because here’s the real lesson: it teaches you how not to be an asshole. Working in a restaurant is a lot like working at an agency. You’re dealing with all sorts of different job positions — writers, strategists, designers — with tight deadlines and many links in the chain. Things simply won’t get done if you’re not a well-oiled machine. You can have the world’s best menu — if the chef and waiters and hosts aren’t communicating well, no one is eating there.

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So, whether you’re entry-level or enterprise, serving up mixed drinks or massive deliverables, we hope you find something to take away and apply to your brand. To misquote Gertrude Stein, “A job is a job is a job.” No matter your position, there are tangible steps you can take to make people fall in love every time they interact with your brand. And if you have lessons you’ve learned from early jobs, we’d love to hear about them in the comments.

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

Emotive Design Is Felt in the Gut

Posted on by Chris Ames

This week, we had the pleasure of adding Beth Abrahamson as a Senior Designer to our team. She is a multidisciplinary graphic designer whose practice challenges the distinction between art and design. Constantly shifting in and out of different mediums – collage, ceramics, photography, drawing – she’s an expert at imagining how these forms can live in the digital world. With an MFA in Design from California College of the Arts, Beth has recently worked with AirBnB, Southern Exposure, San Francisco Art Institute, and many others. We sat down with Beth to discuss her work, the importance of collaboration, and the definition of emotive design.

Tell us a bit about your background.

I came here seven years ago to attend the San Francisco Art Institute for a design and technology program. After graduating from California College of the Arts, I hopped between freelancing at design studios, companies in-house, and building my own client base.

What brings you back to a studio environment?

I really value the ability to see so many different types of environments. It’s so interesting to be able to be a fly on the wall. Every place is different, and sometimes as a freelancer, you’re treated as an outsider. I came here because I was seeking the kind of collaboration and diversity you only get with a studio.

What advice would you give to studios on how to best integrate freelancers so they feel embraced?

It sounds simple, but all anyone wants is to be treated as part of the team. Fostering a healthy team dynamic is super important, and it can make all the difference. You want a place where everyone brings a different skillset, knows their role, and has a seat at the table. There’s such a big difference between “sitting in close proximity to other people” and actually collaborating. As a creative person, I thrive on variety – in projects, clients, and mindsets. With a studio, the sum is greater than the parts.

At Emotive Brand, strategy drives everything. Have you had experience working with strategists before?

It’s so crucial for design, and it’s an area I really want to learn more about. Good design always has to be backed up by good strategy. I value the environment that Bella and Tracy have created here. Both their authenticity and their approach. It’s very rare to have this female-led dynamic, and whether or not you want to admit it, it makes a difference. Just in the approach to empathy, emotional intelligence, and communication. It’s about achieving that perfect balance of everyone having a role and everyone feeling like their voice is heard.

How would you describe your approach to design?

I am a firm believer in the concept defining the aesthetics, and not the other way around. It’s about the process. I take a lot of inspiration from the world around me – from physical things, from mundane forms, or things that may seem mundane at first glance. A big part of my process has been about translating ideas across mediums. Not just working on the computer but working by hand – building things, cutting things. All of that informs what then becomes the digital graphic. With a lot of my work, you can feel the artist’s hand. I try to create a simplicity and accessibility.

Outside of the 9-to-5, what are you working on right now?

I’ve been teaching myself ceramics for the last two years and I’m totally obsessed. There’s a very strong relationship to graphic design. Right now, I’m working on vessels that have different geometric forms as handles. Those forms are coming from some 2D work that I’ve done, and vice versa. An idea will often move from a blind contour drawing, to a screen print, to a ceramic shape.

How would you define emotive design?

For me, emotive design is felt in the gut. It inspires others, draws them in. It’s about translating passion from the maker to the viewer – and in that transfer of ideas and feeling, there is a deep connection. When it works well, that connection – between people or brands – is unbreakable.

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

Investing in Corporate Narrative During Transition: Essential Tool for CEOs

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

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Transformations and Transitions

The corporate narrative is an essential tool for CEOs. Persuading them to invest in one is hard sometimes.

Competitive pressures on businesses today are stronger than ever. And as a result, many companies are taking new directions, which are leaving CEOs to reevaluate their position, redirect employees, and build new identities and strategies that are going to fuel business forward amidst important transitions and transformations.

As many businesses today shift and flex to changing market demands, it’s easy for a large transformation or transitional period to leave critical audiences and stakeholders feeling lost. Lack of alignment, disparate value propositions across the organization, mixed information, brand behavior, unclear values, or varied messages from recruiters all add to this feeling. And a lack of clarity and/or mistrust among the people most important to driving your business in a new direction is detrimental to a successful transformation. 

Falling Short

When businesses are in the midst of a large transition, focusing on a corporate narrative is usually one of CEOs last priorities. Execs are more concerned with the changing business at hand, meeting profit goals, or fighting off the newest competition. But what they don’t realize is that a strong corporate narrative is the high-potential solution to these top concerns.

Misconceptions about the impact of a strong corporate narrative may be due to the fact that few companies have actually leveraged their corporate narrative to its greatest potential. In these instances, the narrative is stifled because it is formulaic and limited in its reach, use, and emotional impact.

The Value Received From a Corporate Narrative

When built and leveraged in the right ways, a corporate narrative can help your business stand out and fuel the people who are going to power your business forward.

1. Standing Out

Differentiation is one of the biggest outcomes for businesses who dedicate time and resources to a strong corporate narrative. Because corporate narratives operate as long-term solutions, they can help your business sustainably stand out (as compared to a short-term solution like leading with a new product or service). Successful corporate narratives tap into an unmet desire of the people they are trying to reach, and this is the most powerful differentiator. Meeting important rational and emotional needs for the people who matter to your business is the competitive edge your business needs during a time of transformation.

2. Fuel Business Efforts

A strong corporate narrative can help fuel business efforts and drive innovation forward during a transformation by getting people inside and outside the company on board with the new vision of the business. When people are engaged and excited about what the brand and business can fulfill for them, they start behaving in ways that enrich the purpose and drive business forward. Consider all the app developers who have gotten excited by Apple’s narrative, developed their own apps supported by the platform, and as a result, driven Apple forward.

3. Power Innovation

Narratives have the power of opening up possibilities and opportunities for your business. Often, they help bring new audiences into what’s at play, and as a result, new voices get heard, people engage more, and innovation increases. For instance, having a strong narrative might attract new partners or companies to you that want to be a part of the story. Think of all the cutting-edge collaborations Nike has done. Because narratives encourage action and build a community around your brand, they attract more active people, which leads to more innovation. Giving people a narrative to buy into can help people see new possibilities and become more likely to experiment, explore, and collaborate. 

4. Pull People In

When trying to take a new direction with your business, it’s important that you bring people along on the journey. Investing in a corporate narrative can help build important relationships that will help your business sustain long-term success. Instead of pushing shifts on people, a narrative can help people feel like they are part of it, that they’re role matters. When you have a narrative, even during turbulent times, people are more likely to stand by you because they believe in what you stand for.

Your Corporate Narrative = Your High-Potential Solution

With a simple, flexible corporate narrative that fits the direction you want to take, and clear guidelines on how to use it, your business gets propelled in that direction. You become more differentiated, loyalty and pull increases, and innovation amplifies because everyone takes a more active role.

A strong narrative embodies the long-term opportunity your business offers and represents a sustainable future of meaning. It connects with the right people at the right time – bringing them into your collective culture that is formed around the vision, values, needs, desires, and aspirations that your narrative articulates so simply and so clearly. It is a foundation that can drive business success – a high-potential solution for any CEO looking to transform or transition their business in a new direction needs to be taken seriously.

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

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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.