Branding Agency Archives

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

Posted on April 26, 2021 by Tracy Lloyd

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Key Advantages of a Strong Brand Strategy

Posted on February 18, 2021October 27, 2024 by Tracy Lloyd

Active Brand Management

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

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

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

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

Three Key Advantages of a Strong Brand Strategy

1. Greater Appeal and Differentiation

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

2. Improved Loyalty and Customer Retention

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

3. Employee Engagement and Alignment

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

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

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

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

Download White Paper

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

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Build a Stronger Business by Embracing Your Brand’s Hidden Truths

Posted on February 21, 2020 by Tracy Lloyd

Behind every brand there stands a set of as-yet realized or evergreen truths. These truths have the power to change the way you, and everyone vital to your brand’s success, think, feel, and act with respect to your brand.

These truths emerge when the many things your brand does are seen in light of their meaningful outcomes. This means analyzing the actions, attitudes, and behavior of the organization. It also means assessing the organization’s policies and procedures. In each case, the search is for the positive and meaningful outcomes that result.

Not only true, but meaningful

By meaningful, we mean how the outcomes have a positive impact on people, society, and the environment. These are outcomes that resonate deeply with people. Once people are aware of the meaningful outcomes a brand creates, they have greater respect for, and affinity toward, the brand.

As customers, they are more likely to use the brand, talk about it with others, and remain loyal longer. As employees, they are more likely to be engaged, align better to the organization’s goals, and feel more gratified by their work.

Why aren’t these truths evident now?

The fact is, business is a largely rational affair, and meaningful outcomes based on truths tend to operate in the less familiar and comfortable zone of intangible emotions and feelings. As such, their value isn’t so much in what they say, as how they make people feel.

Sadly, most leaders don’t venture far into this domain. But, when leaders do so by retaining outside help to identify the truths about their brand, they are invariably impressed by what comes to the surface, and proud of the meaningful outcomes that flow from their businesses. It then doesn’t take long for them to realize the power and value these outcomes represent.

Where will your brand’s truths take your organization?

That depends on you. If you’re a progressive and forward-thinking leader, you will readily seize the possibilities of competing on a meaningful level. You’ll see how being a champion of your brand’s meaningful truths will make you a more admired and trusted leader. You will recognize that by bringing these truths to the surface in sincere ways, your customers and prospects will start to see your brand in new and deeper ways. Your brand strategy will shift to reflect the emotional connection you are forging with your entire network.

However, if you leave your brand’s meaningful truths lying dormant under facts and figures, your competitive power will diminish, your followers will hardly be inspired, and your customers will likely gravitate toward those brands that do reach out on a more meaningful level.

Choose the truth. Focus on meaningful outcomes. Matter more to people. Get them on your side. Win by being meaningful.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

To read more about brand differentiation and stronger business practices: Why all the Talk About Purpose and Brand Strategy? Or, check out our white paper:Download White Paper

Img credit: Anton Burmistrov

On Design, Branding, and Where the “Brand Magic” Happens: Interview with Emotive Brand Creative Director

Posted on February 15, 2018 by Saja Chodosh

Interview with Jane Brown, Creative Director

Jane joins Emotive Brand with over 20 years of experience developing corporate and brand identities ranging from global corporations to startups – bringing both agency and client-side, as well as print and digital media expertise to the table. Jane has built a reputation around delivering high-level thinking and design systems that enable new brands to compete in crowded marketplaces and venerable brands to deepen their relevance.

In this interview, Jane shares her point of view on branding challenges, client-agency relationships, collaboration, and what gives brands that extra “magic.”

What drew you to Emotive Brand?

There are a lot of different understandings of the term “brand.” I’ve been following the agency for a long time and I think the way Emotive Brand defines brand is so smart – and completely aligned with my thinking.

Emotive Brand gets it. Brand isn’t just about customers, it’s also about employees. It’s built from the inside out. It isn’t just about a logo, it’s about the people who work within the company. That’s where it all starts – getting to the heart of what the company stands for and why it matters.

I admire the attention Emotive Brand puts on process. The agency has created a very smooth, buttoned-up, articulate, and clear methodology. And they’ve worked hard to build a culture of collaboration with the client where this methodology works.

What excites you most about your role here?

To assist EB’s understanding of our brand and our place of differentiation. I’m excited to build upon what’s already been created.

What inspires me the most about my job is the utilization of design to explain transformative ideas. My goal is always to leverage this power, and I’m excited to do that with Emotive Brand.

What do you bring to the table that is unique?

I bring an understanding that can fill the gap between agency and client. I can pivot. I understand the pain points and cultures on both sides, and I know how to negotiate the two so that Emotive Brand, as an agency, delivers what is going to make our clients most successful.

Speaking of your in-house experience, how does that inform your agency-side work today?

In a lot of ways, in-house and agency-side are often contradictory worlds. There’s a lot of pressure that internal teams face daily to get work done – now. On an in-house team you’re valued for your collaboration, cooperation, positive attitude, and ability to get things done.

In contrast, in the agency world, we tend to be valued more for our skills and aesthetic. Agencies create the highest aesthetic standard.

There’s a sweet spot. I’m known for delivering delight to clients, and everything I do is always implementable. My in-house experience has taught me that you have to create tools that clients can actually use.

So what do you believe successful design systems should enable for clients?

Transformation – for the employees and the business. The brand must support and align with business goals.

For employees – to live that brand. For customers – to truly understand who the brand is. And that the brand can live up to the standards we’ve defined at every brand interaction.

Visually and verbally, the brand must ring true. It must be authentic. Authenticity is super important to me when measuring success.

What are the biggest challenges you see brands facing today?

The web created a lot of possibilities, but also, a lot of challenges. I see the danger when you look at the heap of templates available online. As a result of this mass availability, everything is starting to look and behave the same. Developing a unique and proprietary brand is a lot more challenging now and more important.

Is that where the value of bringing in an external agency comes in?

As an outside agency you are paid to be critical. It’s easier to diagnose and solve problems because you aren’t living them every day – internal teams can be too close to potential issues.

What does collaboration mean to you?

Shift from me to we-centric. Collaboration means we are all on the same team. You just want to create the best work – together. And on the agency side, this is all about creating the best solutions for the client. It has to be what’s right for the client.

What do you believe defines great, meaningful brands today? Where does the “magic” happen?

How does the brand make you feel? The magic has always been there. Emotive Brand was founded on the idea that feeling is transformative for brands. And I’m right there with them.

When teams pivot from logic to feeling and begin to reimagine and visualize what is possible, that is where the magic happens and where I get super excited.

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

Brand Differentiation: Where Do You Even Start?

Posted on August 7, 2017 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.

If you enjoyed this post, you may enjoy this post on Storytelling for Demand Generation

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Co-Founders On Brand Strategy Today

Posted on October 28, 2016 by Paige Lansing Valle

Co-founders, Bella Banbury and Tracy Lloyd, weigh in on what matters in brand strategy today.

It’s important to remember that, in the end, the age-old question is always the same. Client needs all come down to “How do we differentiate our brand?” It’s just the way people ask the question and the way we answer the question that evolves. Here’s what we’ve been seeing more specifically in the market:

1.Heightened attention around data security:

Since 2016 was all about using data, now it’s all about safely storing and accessing that data. Gartner predicts that by 2018, 50% of business ethics violations will be related to data. There’s lot of questions and doubts about how brands are collecting information and keeping it safe. People are distrustful and worried about privacy issues. Smart brands are focused on security and smart storage. And those brands that can keep data safe, and their users even safer, are winning.

2. Even greater demand for trust:

Companies with a culture of trust have outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of three, and high-trust companies are more than 2½ times more likely to be high performing revenue organizations than lower-trust companies. Nothing is as important as trust for any brand looking to make an impact moving forward. In 2016, we saw a lot of brands lose people’s trust, both internally and externally, in banking, in technology, in the automobile industry, and in the food industry. So this year a lot of brands are working on building and keeping trust this coming year. And this effort always comes back to brand strategy – helping brands make promises that they can keep to both build and keep the trust earned. That’s what we do.

3. Purpose divides:

The conversation around purpose-led business continues. There is more and better research coming out that supports the ideas of purpose-led business and the research supports our belief. When companies articulate and embrace a meaningful purpose or vision, their people naturally pay more attention to all the elements that drive sustainable growth. Brands that want genuine purpose to fuel innovation, culture, and business need to make sure they live authentically by it and communicate it clearly.

4. It’s all about disruption:

It’s clear that people are drawn to brands that are challenging the status quo, saying something new, and making a splash today. Whatever is it –disrupting a category, challenging the way we pay for things, changing the way we get healthcare, the retail experience – it’s all about disruption. Industries we’ve been most excited about are insurance, healthcare, wellness, and education because of this same reason. Brands that reimagine what is possible and deliver new ways of behaving will gain momentum over their competitors who remain stuck in the same thinking.

5. Digital health, on the rise:

There are many changes afoot in wellness and digital health. Last year, we saw more investing in this space and we imagine brands will need to start working harder to differentiate themselves in the next year. Right now, the future seems exciting and yet somewhat vague. This space will require digital health brands to clarify, differentiate, categorize, and tackle shifts head on. The digital health market is huge, and those brands that can figure out how clearly articulate why they matter and deliver on that promise could very well become Wall Street darlings.

6. Role of the CMO changed for good:

The role of the CMO is almost unrecognizable to five years ago. CMOs are now expected to deliver against P&L metrics, grow the top line, and drive the brand forward. Steering the brand in the driver’s seat means delivering on the brand promise. It also means ensuring all customer experiences are aligned to the brand purpose. It’s about understanding the customer journey and embracing customer experiences across all channels. So in order to compete, the CMOs of 2017 need to be brand focused, technically savvy, and data driven. They need to deliver better customer experiences and use insights to strategically deliver business growth.

7. All about brand experience:

Because expectations of brands are continually rising, smart brands are uber-focused on creating meaningful experiences. The real challenge is creating cohesive, connected experiences that resonate across platforms and at every touchpoint. These experiences drive engagement, build loyalty, and drive ROI. And brands need a clear strategy for succeeding in creating the right kind of experiences for the people they are trying to reach. Developing strategies to outline brand behavior has become more relevant for brands looking to deliver something people can count on – whether it’s B2B, B2C, or B2B2C.

As a San Francisco branding agency, we are excited to continue to help our clients develop the right brand strategies to transform brands in order to transform business.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Using Values to Build Engagement and a Meaningful Workplace

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Tracy Lloyd

Fifth in a series.

“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.

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).

Did you miss the first four parts of this series?

Read Being Meaningful: It’s the Key to Better Engaging Your Employees, Getting Employees to Respond Positively, Why Workplaces Aren’t Meaningful Now, and The Meaningful Workplace: It Takes New Ways of Thinking, and Acting.

This series is excerpted from a white paper titled The Meaningful Workplace that was first published at Emotive Brand.

The Meaninglessness of Logos as Brands

Posted on November 19, 2015 by Tracy Lloyd

Hugh McLeod once again hits the nail on the head with this cartoon.

Logos only have value when people associate something they value with them.

A logo alone does not convey meaning.

When a company, product or service has an established brand promise and a meaningful way of being, people start to ascribe that meaning to the logo (and the company, product or service behind it).

A brand promise matters when it relates to the needs, beliefs, interests and aspirations of people, and promises to make their lives better and more gratifying.

A brand promise matters when it creates positive feelings at every brand interaction; feelings that are driven by the look and feel of that moment, the tonality and messages of that moment, the functional ease of that moment and finally, the associations made to relevant ideas, people and causes in that moment.

As such, meaning goes beyond an intent to do good – it only becomes real when your attitudes and behavior prove your intent, demonstrate your intent and make your intent emotionally meaningful to people in every exchange you have with them.

Brands that matter behave in ways that matter. A logo only matters when people value something that goes with is.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency helping brands matter more.

Cartoon from www.gapingvoid.com

Purpose Becomes Ambition in a Meaningful Workplace

Posted on July 14, 2015 by Tracy Lloyd

“Ambition” is the new “purpose.” Workplaces become meaningfully relevant when employees see the point of what they and their employers are out to do: the company’s “why”, it’s reason for being, it’s meaningful ambition. When presented in a credible, inclusive and authentic way, the company’s meaningful ambition is respected, admired and embraced by employees because it aligns to their personal values and answers their desire for meaning.

Continue reading “Purpose Becomes Ambition in a Meaningful Workplace”

Getting Employees to Live Company Values

Posted on April 3, 2015 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.

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.

Getting employees to live company values

Engagement built around feelings

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.