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Emotional and Meaningful Brand Connections Matter Right Now

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

The Time for Emotion and Meaning Is Now

Battling the arduous winds of COVID-19 will take more than a shift in your communications. It will require a real change in behavior. Right now, people are experiencing a whole slew of complex and contradictory emotions. Some of these feelings are ephemeral and are changing every day; others like uncertainty are staying around for the time being. So to truly connect with people where they are, you have to speak their emotional language. That’s why having your brand behave in a more emotionally charged way and putting the focus on building truly meaningful experiences is what really matters right now.

At Emotive Brand, we’ve built our methodology on our belief in the power of emotion. Our methodology has never proved more important or relevant than now. Emotive brands forge emotional and meaningful brand connections by caring deeply about people and aligning their actions and communications to the deep-rooted human needs, desires, and aspirations of all those important to the brand.

We see the keystones of such connections as empathy, compassion, and mindfulness. In our seminal white paper, “Transforming your brand,” we introduce these key drivers of thinking in this way:

“Emotive brand strategies use empathy to better understand and address the needs, values, interests and aspirations of people, both within and outside of your business. As such, we take your brand’s positive attributes and match them against what we know about the ideas and ideals that people care about, connect to, and that can change their behavior. We also encourage our clients to adopt new behaviors that are more empathetic toward both their employees and customers, and to use the insights they gain to identify ways to make their workplace and offerings more personally relevant and emotionally important in the moment.”

Why Empathy?

Empathy is being able to vicariously experience how another experiences something. It’s not actually having the same experience, but rather allowing yourself to see the world from another’s perspective. For example, you don’t have to be blind to understand what life is like without the key sense of sight. Empathy is an innate trait (children are naturally empathetic), and simply needs to be sourced from within. We take an empathetic view of your audiences and then assess how your brand addresses their deepest needs. The results are sometimes unexpected, but always gratifying to our clients, and cultivating empathy is especially essential in navigating uncertain times like these.

Why Compassion?

Compassion is putting the insights you gain through empathy into practice in a helpful way. This is the essence of problem-solving. You come to understand another’s needs and then redesign products, experiences, and communications accordingly. This means greater creativity, innovation, and a continually broadening perspective. We turn to our compassionate nature to translate the unique intersection between your brand and basic human needs into actionable practices that bring the resulting meaning to life.

Why Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the practice of being more aware of the surrounding world and more alive to its inherent possibilities. It is about having a broader perspective and a universal respect for others. It is recognizing that more unites us than separates us. It is about being humble, feeling connected, harnessing and using energy in new and more gratifying ways. When you employ a mindful attitude in everything you do, you enable a mutually-beneficial balance between your tangible business needs and the intangible meaning that will help your brand thrive in a COVID-19 world and beyond.

Every brand strategy we develop embraces the practices of empathy, compassion, and mindfulness. Through this we are better able to match your brand’s attributes with what truly matters to people today on deep and meaningful levels. At the same time, the brand behaviors we develop aim to promote these factors on both leadership and organizational levels.

Making Meaning A Way Of Doing Business

Organizations and leaders are often overwhelmed by circumstances and respond by turning inward both as individuals and on an organizational level. A state of mindfulness enables organizations and leaders to rise above the immediate situation and to turn outward to others on a deeper and more personal level.

Brand behavior that promotes an empathetic, compassionate, and mindful culture helps ensure that your brand will evolve into the most meaningful state possible. As a foundation for your brand culture, these vital traits also make sure that your brand’s meaningful way of being is sustainable and enduring.

As brands seek to confront the challenges of this new world, it’s only natural that they turn to meaning. But it is important to remember that it’s one thing to claim meaning, and quite another to continuously create meaning both within and outside your brand organization. When empathy, compassion, and mindfulness inform the organization, drive its decision-making, and shape its vision, meaning goes beyond being a buzzword and becomes a way of doing business.

Download White Paper

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

Image by Alen Pavlovic

When Designers and Developers Collaborate, Everyone Wins

Posted on by Jonathan Haggard

A great developer recognizes and enhances design decisions. A great designer understands the technology they are designing for. Both developers and designers need to have an intimate understanding of each other’s fields in order to produce better experiences for brands.

In order to deliver a bespoke experience for a brand, a collaborative environment needs to be fostered.

How to Actually Collaborate

A key element to facilitating design and developer collaboration is reshaping the reviewing process. The traditional way is to do a bunch of design work upfront, get client approval, polish the entire project, and hand it off to a developer completely “designed.” This often results in quite a few design decisions being compromised because of poor documentation, developer interpretation, or non-feasibility.

The new way of doing things is beyond agile—it’s actual collaboration.

Collaborate

Setting a frequent and casual cadence of check-ins between designer and developer not only speeds up each other’s workflows, but it also allows each party to influence each other’s practice. True collaboration is a developer showing a designer an interaction that is 50% of the way done, so that the designer can fiddle with the code in order to make it perfect. True collaboration is also a designer showing the developer what they are thinking for design early on, so that the developer can raise any flags or offer suggestions to improve the design.

Using contemporary tools is the best way to achieve this type of working relationship. Gone are the days of sharing Sketch files over email and setting calendar events where eight people on the agency side show up to have a formal conversation with a developer.

Today, we use Figma so that the developer can see and modify the designs as they are being worked on. We use Slack to keep in communication on a regular basis and have video/screen share calls when reviewing things that keep updates frequent and easy.

Building Collaboration via Overlapping Skill Sets

To actually collaborate with someone, having overlapping skill sets is key. If each party has an understanding of the other’s expertise, they can make decisions together confidently. This also establishes trust between one another. For example, if a certain interaction is going to be too time-consuming to develop, the developer can offer a suggestion that is rooted in the agency’s design expertise. This is great when needing to come to a consensus on changing a piece of the design to fit the timeline since we can trust that the developer’s suggestion is going to be feasible. It also gives designers a new model of interaction to design against, so we can refine the design accordingly.

Building Collaboration via Remixing

When you have two parties with overlapping skill sets, the other party will often take the idea you have designed and enhance it.

Internally, we used our knowledge of front-end development to deliver custom interactions to our developer Cory, and he would surprise us by making them even better in his implementation. This type of relationship is critical in creating a site that expresses the brand to its fullest potential.

To be technical, our original design intended to use CSS to pin one part of the design while the rest scrolled. The developer went even further and added an overlap to the pinned area once a certain scroll threshold is reached.

This design was enhanced in implementation because the developer split up a Lottie animation and CSS animations that aligned perfectly with the timing. This needed to be implemented this way because the text needed to be editable in the CMS.

Start Today

The best way to build a culture of true collaboration is to start actually collaborating with people today.

Are you working on a document that you are trying to perfect before sending off? Get on a screen share and get input from a developer.

Do you work with a team that has a skill set you don’t have? Start learning their skills, gain empathy for what their jobs are, and bring them into the conversation. Show that you care about their craft and that you’re willing to learn outside of your role in order to make something better than you could have done alone.

Did someone send you a project to execute? Think creatively about it and enhance it beyond what they were expecting. Those little one to two-hour experiments add up over time and really improve the quality of what you’re working on.

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

Enabler Brands Are Inspiring, Too!

Posted on by Chris Ames

Disruptor vs. Enabler Brands

These days, disruptor brands get all the attention. Companies like Airbnb, Netflix, and Uber have each skyrocketed into popularity by rattling the industries they came from. We get it. There’s something inherently inciting, even American, about the idea of taking down the big guys with your off-kilter vision of the future. It’s easy to root for.

But here’s the thing about trailblazers — if everyone blazes their own unique trail, customers are faced with a dizzying network of singular (and often incompatible) solutions. In the course of one day, a person might bounce back and forth between ten different technologies, all of which claim to take the hassle and complexity out of life. I want to find a photo, but I’m not sure if it’s on my phone, my external hard drive, or one of my various clouds. Have you seen that popular new show? It’s exclusively on one of the streaming networks — but not the one you have. 

Don’t Downplay the Power of Unification

More and more, we believe there’s a strong case to be made for the power of enabler brands. The ability to bring everything together in a way that’s secure, contextual, and delightful is nothing short of a magic trick in this ever-shifting technological landscape.

In our work in the B2B sector, too often we see enabler brands limit the inspirational nature of their work. Whether it’s customer case studies, presentation decks, or collateral design, enabler brands can sing with the same sparkling brilliance as B2C disruptors.

While every company has its own unique challenges, here are some general thoughts on how enabler brands can elevate their impact.

Hone in on the results of the technology, not the technology itself.

Granted, your technology needs to be world-class and should always have a technical click-through for the nitty-gritty. But at the highest level, people are more interested in what new worlds you’re opening for them. That’s your role: to engineer what’s possible. Think of Dropbox’s recent redesign. They went from just a place to store your files to a living workspace that brings teams and ideas together.

How does this look in practice? Look at the imagery in your decks. What are people seeing? Is it moments of authentic human connection that wouldn’t be possible without your radiant technology? Or is it computer generated graphics and stock photography? During the next big conference, which one do you think will unite your team more?

Productivity is its own kind of delight.

Most enterprise tools aim to improve productivity. That might mean managing information, storing data, tracking issues, sharing updates, whatever you need to get the job done. But just because something is functional, that doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful. Look at Slack. They have taken something often regarded as a chore — communicating with your co-workers — and made it, dare I say, fun? On their design blog, they discuss the importance of bringing humanity into the product. By putting people (not features) first, they have built a brand people love to experience.

Building a community is more rewarding than growing users.

As Scott Cooper writes in his blog, “The Changing Role of Brands,” enabler brands have the unique opportunity to empower the communities behind the technology. “Look at your audience with new eyes, in terms of community,” says Cooper. “Listen for the ideas that they believe in deeply or identify with. Let go of any preconceptions about your roles as a marketer and the relationship your brand has with people. Now ask yourself: how you can contribute meaningfully?”

When building your customer success stories, ask yourself what communities are truly benefiting from your technology? How can you champion their voices? There’s nothing inherently emotive about a 3-D printer, but whether it’s creating prosthetic limbs or affordable housing, people are using them in inspirational and innovative ways every day.

The biggest mistake you can make is thinking these efforts are somehow separate from the real work of your technology. If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times: people make decisions with their hearts. Investing in the human aspects of your brand is not fluff: it’s a holistic way to equip your sales team with better tools, attract and retain top talent, and foster a healthier, more productive culture. Instead of giving your team something to work on, you give them something to work toward.

So, enablers, remember this. Disruptors will always hog the spotlight, but sometimes nothing is more exciting than being given the right environment to thrive.

Brand Affinity: The Discipline of Choosing Who Loves Your Brand

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Want Everyone to Love Your Brand? Think Again.

Don’t build a brand for everyone. Build a brand for the people who will become your most loyal and loving customers. You can’t be a match for everyone – especially if you’re at the earlier stages of growth. You don’t have the time, energy, or resources to successfully connect with such large, indistinct groups. A “let’s-make-everyone-love-us” mindset will only dilute what some people could really love about your brand.

When we work with clients on developing target audiences, they often want to become like Nike or Apple – a brand that almost everyone names as their favorite. Or they believe they can find some huge, untapped segment of the market that will go crazy for their product. However, these kinds of vast segmentation strategies fail more often than not. They cast nets that are much too wide. The groups are too big. The perfect customer is too vague. And in the quest to reach and satisfy everyone, those brands end up pleasing very few.

Create a Deep Connection with the Right People

We talk a lot about the value of emotionally-connected customers. It’s something we truly believe in as an agency, but it has also been proven time and time again. In fact, according to HBR, on a lifetime value basis, people who report an emotional connection to your brand will be twice as valuable as even your most “highly satisfied” customers. They will purchase more, visit more, spend more, engage more, recommend more, and trust more. Why? You make them feel something positive and unique that deepens their bond at every brand touchpoint.

So the question is not: “How many people can you make love your brand?” Instead, it’s “Which people will love your brand the most?” Focus on the people who can connect with you – emotionally and meaningfully – and go from there.

Consider these examples of companies who deepened brand affinity with the people who mattered most.

Finding the Sweet Spot: Amex

American Express introduced its first credit card in 1958. But in the early 1990s, competition intensified. The company had to reconsider its product line and its target customers in order to stay at the top. Credit cards had become commonplace. Amex (strategically) made the decision to not keep marketing to every person. Instead, they decided to focus on their most profitable customers – deepening the brand’s emotional connection with the people who already loved them. And they reaped the benefits.

They doubled-down on the “point junkies”: business executives who thrived on accumulating points from travel and hotels. Amex decided to reward these customers even more. They created the Rewards Gold Card in 1994 – a card with a higher annual fee, but double the reward points.

Point junkies loved it. In fact, by targeting this small but valuable group with a very specific offer, Amex converted even more people into point junkies.

The brand’s charge volume increased substantially and they outpaced all the competition. Not everyone loved them, but the people who mattered did.

Ease for Everyone: DocuSign

Now consider a different kind of example – a brand who started small and then cast its net wider. DocuSign, now the global leader in digital transaction management, started off with one simple goal: make it easier for real estate agents to get signatures and close deals.

Anyone who signs a document was a prospect for this company, yet they began with a targeted approach. From there, they’ve expanded to the enterprise segment and simultaneously expanded their service offerings. So even as they expand to different markets, DocuSign continues to deepen their relevance with the people who love them already.

Brand Affinity with the Right People

Think about your most profitable customers. The people you connect with best and the people who show the greatest loyalty and love for you today. How can you deepen the bond with them? How can you expand that core group or leverage them to attract others who will love you just as much? These are the types of questions you should be asking.

If you need help with segmentation strategies or increasing your brand affinity, please reach out.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco strategy and design agency.

Why are Feelings and Purpose so Important in Business Today?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Feelings and Purpose-led brands

Why are purpose and feelings so important now for brands? A meaningful brand is the persona-driven presence and experience of an organization that has proactively decided to orient itself around an authentic purpose. Such brands do so with the intent of emotionally connecting to people on a deep level, by addressing core human needs. Most significant, a meaningful brand strives to forge these attitude and behavior changing connections both inside and outside their organizations.

To summarize, a meaningful brand is:

 – Proactively meaningful across all brand touch points and experiences

 – Driven by a purpose that is embodied in a brand promise that reflects the positive personal, social, and environmental outcomes of the brand’s products and activities

 – Successful because the organization behind it takes a holistic and organic approach to change that addresses both the internal and external aspects of the organization

Why is the concept of becoming a meaningful brand important?

Very few brand owners can afford the luxury of simply leaving things the way they are. Turbulence abounds. Competition is relentless. Commoditization is rampant. Disruption is commonplace. Add to this the fast-changing attitudes, preferences, and behaviors of both customers and employees.

Brands simply cannot stand still. They need to take a proactive stance, create a solid, yet adaptable reason for being, and think of their brand strategy not in terms of whipping up icing for their cake, but rather as initiating the chemical reaction that turns raw materials into a new and exceptionally desirable cake.

They can do this by adopting the principals and practices of emotive branding. Working out from a purposeful brand promise, meaningful brands fundamentally change the way people within and outside the organization think, feel, and act. This is because a brand’s promise is coupled with a plan to transform the attitudes and behaviors that drive both the organization as a whole, and all the people within the organization. Throughout this transformation process, emotive brands evoke a distinct emotional aura that forges more heartfelt and enduring connections.

Why are purpose and feelings even important to a business?

After all, one could argue that it’s always been important to matter to others. The question is, at what level does a brand need to take it to matter now: at a superficial and vulnerable level, or at a deep and heartfelt level?

The past is full of brands that mattered by being, “better, faster, or cheaper” than their competitors. But most brands today find it hard to identify a clear and compelling competitive advantage. This leaves them resorting to bland, highly contrived, and readily mimicked points of differentiation, that easily get lost in the noise.

Brands that matter today take a different tact. They don’t work from the inside out, but rather work from the outside in. They use empathy to see their brand’s value through the eyes of the people they impact. They then develop a way of behaving that taps directly into deeply felt core human needs. Exposure to, and experience with, such brands positively changes the way people think, feel, and act.

This is because people are hungry for more meaning in their lives. Why? Among other things, people have been alienated by our aggressive consumer culture, feel stunned by the economic meltdown, and are increasingly aware of our social challenges. At the same time, they have started absorbing more and more different kinds of information that are making them feel ever-more distant from the institutions, including brands, that surround them.

Brands that are purpose-led and which evoke positive emotions stand apart because they directly and intentionally address the needs that result.

Why both B2B and B2C should take note

The issues that are prompting people to seek meaning aren’t exclusive to consumers. Every employee and business decision maker arrives at their desk each morning carrying the same concerns and deep-rooted needs. These needs operate below the surface and don’t enter into everyday conversation, or find their way into research studies. But they are there in the background, informing every decision and action, and shaping every mood and motivation.

So purpose, meaning, and feelings are equally important regardless of the market thrust of your brand, or the apparent lack of meaning inherent in an offering. Indeed, we believe even the most basic and dry offering can be elevated by seeing it through the lens of meaning.

What kind of leader is advocating this approach?

The leaders that are championing this shift toward meaning are united by a single trait: mindfulness. Regardless of their relative level of “charisma”, these leaders recognize the value of defining a “North Star” ambition for their brands and leading their organizations to it by listening to, appreciating, and directly addressing the core human needs of the people vital to the brand’s success.

These are leaders who want to be more than mere figureheads. They employ the personal power that comes from being purposeful and empathetic, rather than the dictatorial power that comes from their position at the top of the org chart. They bring people along by building belief, establishing trust, and making the needed changes both personally relevant and emotionally gratifying to every person involved.

By being human-centric themselves, these leaders create the human-centric brands that outperform their increasingly outdated and irrelevant competitors.

To learn more about the tenants of emotive branding and creating a more meaningful brand, download our paper below.

Download White Paper

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design firm.

Rethink How Your Brand Makes People Feel

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Emotions and feelings

Right now your brand is making the people important to its success feel one thing or another. The question is, are those feelings a help or a hindrance? If sales are slipping, good employees are leaving, loyal customers are defecting, or it’s getting harder to recruit top talent, it’s time to rethink how your brand makes people feel.

Feelings and emotions lie at the heart of emotive brand strategies. In our most recent white paper, “Transforming your brand into an emotive brand”, we explain that emotions and feelings are key drivers of our approach to brand strategy. Here we explain why.

Understanding the two levels of feeling: “feels right” and “feels good”.

The first goal of emotive branding is to get people to say that your brand “feels right”. This happens when they consciously realize and internalize your brand’s purposeful promise. The second is to get them to sense that they “feel good” when they reflect on the emotional experience of dealing with your brand, your products, and your people.

Meaningful brands seek to operate on both levels:

– First, they generate positive, heartfelt feelings that flow as people realize new levels of purpose and meaning in their lives thanks to the brand.

– Second, they also actively create feelings that surround their brand with a distinct emotional aura that draws people in, and makes them want more.

The first level flows from how well your brand adds to the emotional, physical or spiritual lives of people, and/or the collective wellbeing your brand creates for society and the planet. Helping people feel they are part of this goodness will fill them with significant feelings, and change the way they think about, feel for, and act on behalf of your brand. It is important to note that these positive feelings won’t be generated purely through messages you send proclaiming your good deeds, but from the real and tangible outcomes those deeds lead to. As such, brand-building messages need to be centered more on the outcome than the brand.

The second level flows from the intentions, attitudes, and behaviors of both your organization and each person working within it. These feelings are only generated as people within and outside the organization experience the brand’s corporate and employee decisions, actions, and gestures. Again, it is not about communicating a promise of making people feel one way or another, it is ensuring that both your brand and workplace behavior leave people feeling something unique, positive and memorable about your brand.

Don’t fear emotions and feelings

Emotions and feelings have been traditionally inhibited within the business world. We like to think that logic and reason are the prime modes of behavior in corporate dealings and consumer decision-making. However, science proves we are essentially emotional beings who are seeking to feel more secure, to feel connected, and to feel as if we’re growing. Brands that take steps to address these core needs through meaning will not only make people think their brand is great, they’ll also make people feel great about being a part of the brand’s world.

Seek to touch more than just brain cells and wallets. Reach out and touch lives in deep, rich, and meaningful ways. And watch your brand thrive.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy firm.

The Age of Meaning: Break Through the Commodity Barrier

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Moving Your Brand Into the Age of Meaning: It’s Not a Trend, It’s Survival

The Age of Meaning has significant impact on business visions, brand management, and marketing execution.

In today’s fast-changing and competitive marketplace, it is hard to maintain a distinct and meaningful difference in the hearts and minds of people.

It seems that as soon as you make a product improvement or change your service offering, your competitors are there either matching you or upping you one.

There is another playing field available for your brand; one that most brands are blind to.

It’s the field of meaning.

A brand creates meaning by bridging the gap between what the brand can do for people – and what people feel they need today.

In the past, this was a relatively short and easy gap to bridge.

Brands offered new, interesting and unique options.

People wanted stuff.

Now many brands look a lot like the others.

At the same time, more and more people are tired of simply consuming stuff, and are looking for brands that can help them realize their values, needs, interests and aspirations.

They are seeking out brands that can help them find their rightful place in the world.

We help our clients bridge this gap and find a far more meaningful position for their brands.

Download one of our top white papers The Age of Meaning and learn more about

  • The implications of the journey to the Age of Meaning
  • How The Age of Meaning differs from The Age of Opulence and how to embrace this shift and make a meaningful transition
  • What The Age of Meaning implies for the future

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Cartoon by Hugh McLeod.

Meaningful Millennials: On Brand Loyalty

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

This is the third installment of our weekly series entitled “Meaningful Millennials”, where we interview millennials on a variety of different subjects that are top of mind for us in the studio.

As a brand strategy firm, we work with our clients to help create and roll out strategies that enable their brand, their business, and their workplaces to be more meaningful. We believe that with meaning comes loyalty. And with loyalty comes sustained and successful business. This month, we have been focusing on how brands can build loyal relationships with millennials that inspire connections, maintain trust, establish rapport, and continue to grow throughout time.

As a millennial myself, this week, I asked my peers: What is a brand that you are loyal to, and what do you think drives your brand loyalty?

I heard 12 millennials’ thoughts and here’s what I learned.

Millennials value reliability and authenticity. They want brands that feel like they were built for them. Being personal is one of the biggest assets a brand can have. To be successful with millennials, brands should generate feelings of trust, and also excitement. We like brands that we can rely on, are always satisfied by, and also excited by. Brands gain emotional meaning when they are connected to important and shaping experiences and people in our lives. In the end, loyalty isn’t really about price or product. It’s about brand experiences and associations, and how the brand adds to our life in meaningful, unique, and individualized ways.

Read more about what these twelve millennials had to say.

mm13

“As a twenty-something-year-old, who has moved more than a few times since graduating from college, my loyalty to most brands change almost as rapidly as my current housing situation. However, one company has had my love since a very young age; Ikea. Land of ball pin play dates, DIY furniture, wondrous colors and designs, and the best meatballs on the planet, this brand has been a must-have in my life for as long as I can remember. Ikea means more to me than just house furnishings and kitchen wear – each piece of furniture has a story behind it, a memory of a trip to the blue warehouse, an assembly marathon, a pride that comes from DIY success. It is the simplicity, modernity, and ease that Ikea creates in every item in their collection that has won a place in my home, and I will keep me coming back for more. Ikea will always have a place in my heart, and will always leave me full, happy, and with bags and bags full of things I never knew I needed.”

—Sierra Adams, Development and Member Services Coordinator, Martha’s Vineyard Museum

 

mm1

“I am extremely loyal to Nordstrom’s for a number of reasons. Nordstrom’s customer service is exceptional. If you frequent a specific store, they will remember your name, style, and shopping habits. While their prices can be a little expensive at times, the quality of their clothing is high and very consistent. Lastly, their return policy is unmatched by any other company. I can return any item purchased online or in the store without a receipt, regardless of how much time has passed. This makes shopping from them even more attractive. I attribute Nordstrom’s high customer loyalty to their attention to detail and focus on customer convenience.”

—Megan Renken, Intern, The Claremont Institute

 

mm2

“Steve Madden because they have high quality-products that last a long time, but aren’t outrageously priced. They manage to have a variety of different types of shoes that always have a unique look, but at the same time follow the same underlying style! I always know exactly what I’m going to get from one of their products. They are always going to be my style.”

—Sara Chinnaswamy, District Sales Representative, Nalco Champion, an Ecolab Company

 

mm12

“I’m loyal to Danner. My mom’s hand-me-down pair of Danner boots has seen me through camping in Acadia and hikes in Oregon. Every time I wear Danner, I remember the places my mother has been and feel inspired to get outside.”

—Kate Weiner, Creative Director, Loam Magazine

 

mm9

“I am loyal to Red Wing boots for their timeless style and quality. I am also loyal to Master & Dynamic headphones because they provide better sound quality at a lower price point. I’m also involved in the company. I’m definitely not loyal to IKEA because my bed frame keeps breaking. I think cultivating a clear brand image and sticking with it creates a culture of brand loyalty. Brands that have a clear vision, which they don’t compromise for any trends, tend to a attract a small group of lifetime customers.”

—Caleb Sule, Student, University of Pennsylvania

 

mm7

“A brand I am loyal to is Target. Household items aren’t the most exciting things to shop for, but Target makes it personal. They truly care about their customers, demonstrated through a simplified shopping experience, community outreach, and an easy-to-use rewards program (Cartwheel). In return, I will go out of my way to shop at Target instead of other large department stores or smaller convenient store chains.”

—Ellie Donohue, Deutsch LA, Account Coordinator

 

mm4

“There are a handful of brands I’m loyal to, but one that sticks out most is Madewell. Their whole look is natural yet aspirational, authentic yet modern. Madewell does great collaborations with style influencers that make their products feel a bit more special than the average retailer. Their sense of effortless style certainly has me checking them out more frequently, plus when Madewell has a sale, it’s killer!”

—Janice Fong, Art Director, Sapient Nitro

 

mm11

“I thought for a while about a brand I might be loyal to and had a hard time coming up with even one brand that I am actually loyal to. Then I realized that everything I own is an Apple product. I have an iPhone, an Apple computer, iPad, and use many of the different software Apple produces. I think Apple is a great company because, for the most part, their products just work. Anyone can easily learn to use them. They are also aesthetically pleasing. Apple products in the end are also extremely useful and powerful machines that are used for large portions of our lives. As long as Apple maintains the quality of its products, I will be a loyal customer.”

—Tyler Peters, Freelance Production Associate

 

mm6

“When I’m home, I will go with my father to Costco and call it an afternoon well-spent. You never know what inhuman shape the suspiciously cheap Timberland clothing will have, but it’s fun to find out. The gentleman serving frozen pierogi samples will offer his preparation preferences. The largest Nutella container in existence probably lurks down the right aisle. It’s not about the precise product. Even if I don’t buy anything (besides the mandatory giant slice of pizza), I can depend on Costco for the sheer density of novelty.”

—Ari Kaufman, Student, Wesleyan University

 

mm3

“I am extremely loyal to Barilla pasta. I think I have a special connection to it because when I started shopping for myself in college, I recognized the blue packaging as the type of angel hair pasta that I would eat before runs in the morning. I think that what drives brand loyalty is that feeling of familiarity or elite status or whatever it needs to be for you to really be connected with it. I buy my pasta from blue Barilla packages because I feel like I have a relationship with it and that’s what matters more than price or image or quality (although all of those things help to determine that relationship).

—Brooks Hall, Content Developer, Niche Associates

 

mm10

“Excellence and affordability undoubtedly drive brand loyalty, which is why I am loyal to Honda. Their vehicles consistently receive accolades for safety and value, but trust is ultimately the most powerful factor behind brand loyalty. From St. Louis to Hilton to Ann Arbor (and more), our family Honda has taken us on countless adventures across the country. Most importantly, though, Honda always gets us home. I have been hit in my Honda a few times and have emerged with no injuries and minimal vehicle damage. To trust a brand with your life is the highest form of loyalty, and Honda has not let me down.”

—Amrita Hari-Raj, Clinical Research Technician, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis

 

mm8

“As someone you don’t want to be around without coffee, I’m avidly loyal to Keruig. It’s always there before class, or after, and it doesn’t take as long to add extra foam. I think in order to ensure brand loyalty, the company needs to feel loyalty towards their product or service just as much (or more) than their target consumer. No way would the founder of Keurig have started the brand had he or she not been a caffeine aficionado. Either that, or they just know what coffee-lovers, a.k.a. college students needs.”

–Arlo Gordon, Contributing Writer, The Odyssey Online

Here are our top-line findings from these millennials.

  1. Brands that fit our personal image, style, and needs integrate seamlessly into our life. They feel like they were meant for us, and we feel naturally inclined toward them.
  2. Brand loyalty is more about experience than product. Millennials associate their favorite brands with other people, aspirations, places, rituals, etc. and these associations and stories are what create meaning.
  3. Feelings of trust and authenticity are key to loyalty. Brands that want loyal consumers have to create trusting relationships with those consumers — building, maintaining, and growing the connection like the brand was human as well.
  4. When millennials feel loyal to a brand, they are more likely to spend more money and dedicate more time seeking out their favorite brands. If a brand goes the extra mile for us, we will go the extra mile for it.

Next week, we will continue our “Meaningful Millennial” series, discussing what purpose beyond profit means for millennials. If you are interested in contributing to this discussion, email [email protected].

Uber Rational: A New Brand

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Yesterday, Uber launched a new brand identity, and it has sparked a lot of media attention. It’s amazing that an app icon update and a new website can create so much buzz, attention, and debate, but it got us thinking: What’s the real impact of changing an already established brand identity?

We believe brands need to consider both rational and emotional needs when embarking on telling their story. Uber’s new identity focuses on telling a rational story about what they do. But it lacks the emotional impact of why they do it and why consumers flock to it. ‘Why’ is critical because it imbues a brand with meaning, drives consumer decision-making, and fosters loyalty.

And the brand identity is particularly important to a company like Uber, where every journey begins with the app. Uber’s new “Bit Atom” concept feels austere, so much so that we wonder if Uber considered what feelings they were looking to evoke when users tap the icon on their screen. We envision Uber would want to evoke feelings like freedom, movement, ease, safety, and liberation – none of which are particularly rational or austere.

At Emotive Brand, we believe that brands should evoke human emotions at every touchpoint. Evolving your visual identity is something that needs to be considered thoughtfully. To do it right, you need to lead with a clearly articulated purpose and an understanding of your brand’s desired emotional impact. Emotional impact drives the expression of how your brand looks and feels to consumers.

Communicate the change and bring people along your journey.

Modifying, evolving, or introducing a whole new visual cue isn’t the same or as simple as introducing a series of new product features or software updates. If brands are about emotion (and they are), then changing a brand’s identity is going to have an effect on how people feel about you.

So when you change your brand’s identity, it’s important to manage how people experience the story of change. Communicate the change, internally and externally, in a way that takes people along for the “ride.” Don’t foist the change on people. Make the people who matter to your brand part of the story.

Make sure the story starts with why, not with what.

When creating a visual identity, it’s important not to get bogged down in the what. Lead with why, and let your symbol mark this journey.

For Uber, the app icon should set the emotional tone of the  experience from the first tap. What feelings does Uber evoke? Why does the brand matter? These are the questions we would ask when embarking upon a brand transformation.

Don’t misunderstand: We are confident that Uber didn’t undertake this change lightly. But change is hard, particularly when it comes to big brands with lots of social currency like Uber, and the stakes are very high.

We would have gone with something more evocative of feelings, emotion, and sense of purpose. But then, it’s not for nothing that our name is “Emotive Brand.”

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design consultancy.

Purpose Beyond Profit – A Shift in Perspective

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

At Emotive Brand, we’re big on the concept of Purpose Beyond Profit. Apparently, people interpret this phrase in interesting ways.

Some jump to the conclusion that it means “purpose instead of profit.” That’s a valid approach for B-Corps, perhaps, but most companies – including this one – would prefer to make some money.

Some people think the phrase means “profit plus being good to the environment.” We’re okay with that definition, but it’s still too easy for many brands to dismiss for one reason or another.

The deeper definition applies to all brands, if they can make a simple shift in perspective.

There’s a teaching story about perspective used in the field of psychology. A Buddhist psychologist and a Freudian psychologist meet at a conference. The Freudian asks the Buddhist to explain how their approaches could be different. Aren’t the things that make people unhappy the same everywhere, and don’t psychologists have to deal with those things to get people back to normal?

The Buddhist says, “Yes, with one difference. In Buddhist psychology, the goal is not getting people from negative 5 back to zero. The goal is to go beyond zero to plus five, to plus ten, to a hundred.”

The point of this story for psychologists is that they can do much more than undo deficits.

The point of this story for us is that most people in business would say that their goal is the same as the Buddhist. They want to get their profit beyond zero to plus five, or plus ten, or whatever the target might be.

They would be half right, like the Freudian. The shift in perspective for brands is recognizing that the customer is still stuck at zero.

Most of the time, we pay for things and get what we consider equivalent value. We trade money for something else we need, like food or clothing or travel. We take a chance that we’re getting roughly equal value for our money, and if we do, we’re even. Zero-sum game.

In other words, no brand loyalty. Nothing for the brand beyond the profit.

The best brands generate loyalty – and higher profits – by getting us way past zero, so far that we feel like we won a prize.

Think of a brand you identify with, one that beats zero for you personally. (This may take a moment.) When you identify them, there are almost certainly two reasons. First, the brand means something to you because of who you are. Second, that “something” is not about a product or service. It’s the way the company approaches its products or services.

People who love Southwest Airways love it because of how democratic it feels. Actually flying an airplane safely has nothing whatsoever to do with democracy. But it does make customers feel that they are treated equally, by their equals, without a lot of pretense. People who value those qualities feel good about themselves when they fly Southwest.

People who own BMWs used to drive me nuts the way they talked about the cars – until I got stuck with one as a rental. It hit me with physical force that people were not talking about the car. They love driving itself. A company that gets who they are, and makes them feel more alive behind the wheel, gets their love for life. Turns out I am one of those people. After I drove the car, I bought one. I went from sneering at BMW snobs to thinking of them as my brothers and sisters.

Again, you don’t have to love driving to build a car. But to make your customers feel something meaningful beyond the machine, you have to approach that engineering in a particular way.

To take the best-known example of all, look at how Apple relentlessly changed the emphasis in IT from technology to us, the people who use it. We humans don’t love technology, or technology brands per se. We love expressing ourselves, and technology that magically, invisibly makes us more expressive is beyond price.

It’s also beyond profit, even if Apple makes a ton of money. Steve Jobs’ legacy is a company that doesn’t care how hard something is, doesn’t take its cues from what other people are doing, doesn’t let conventional thinking limit what it does or where it goes.

And that’s only partly because he studied Buddhism. It’s also because we all want to be like that at some level.

We all have a best self we know we want to be and express. We want brands to recognize and speak to that best self — not just to the zero-sum consumer who needs to put food on the table and keep a roof overhead.

Purpose beyond profit means reaching into people’s hearts for where their sense of self lives, and lighting it up.

If you have your own examples – brands that take you past zero with what they mean to you – let us know and we’ll share.

Download our White Paper on Purpose Beyond Profit to learn more.

Download White Paper

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.