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Tag: Business Transformation

Roundtable with Bloomerang CEO Dennis Fois and CMO Ann Fellman: Part 1

Posted on by Emotive Brand

The Power of Emotion

One of the most purposeful organizations we’ve ever collaborated with, Bloomerang helps nonprofits raise more with the end-to-end giving platform and expert team built for purpose.

This has been a particularly rewarding partnership, with client-agency alchemy arising from a shared belief. It’s the idea embedded in our name—that strategic use of emotion is central to the success of brands and businesses.

At the risk of making them blush, Bloomerang’s CEO Dennis Fois and CMO Ann Fellman are the kind of leaders we call Visionary Reinventors. They have the emotional intelligence and daring to push higher, and look deeper, for the good of their business, people, industry, and the 23,000 nonprofits they serve.

They were gracious enough to sit down with us for a roundtable discussion exploring how emotion is core to driving their tremendous growth.

 

Emotive Brand:  When you composed the RFP, emotion was front and center in terms of how you thought about success. We’re curious—where does this passion for emotion come from? What was missing from the equation prior to our work together?

Dennis:  My feelings were that Bloomerang fell too much on the empathy side, without any bite or desire or drive or ambition. The opportunity here is to change the [nonprofit] industry, where there’s a scarcity mindset—that you can’t ask for more. They [nonprofits] read bad reports: “Oh, Giving Tuesday was down.” The academia around it is depressing. And so there is this construct of constraints and not abundance. I want to create a bright light of ambition–fast-charging, but also with hope and optimism.

This is a time when we’ve never seen so much generational wealth. There are over 11 million millionaires in the United States alone. We’ve never had this amount of disposable income. There’s literally no reason why giving shouldn’t be going up every year. So this idea for emotion, this passion, needs to come through.

I want to sit on a rocking chair on a ranch when I’m older and reflect that we built a generational company that is looked on as, “They actually shook things up. They were the catalysts for more investment, more technology, better resources.”

But if you connect yourself to the industry and say, “We’re going to do more here,” then you need to bring empathy while also being a bit of a challenger.

Emotive Brand:  I’ve been sitting in a group of management consultants for the past two days, and one of the things that we heard loud and clear again and again was that leaders who are all empathy are the worst leaders imaginable—empathy has to be conjoined with performance for any impact to actually occur.

Dennis:  That’s well said. Yesterday at our kickoff, we talked about the issue that we have–and that’s complacency. We are doing so well. Our retention rates are off the hook. I have never seen anything like it. And you could say, “We are on a tear here,” but if you’re being intellectually honest, you say, “Are the gross retention rates, the fact that your customers don’t churn, because you’re that good? Or is it the feature of a complacent industry?”

If you allow the standards of the industry to define your standards, you’re done. And so there needs to be a perpetual engine, an internal drive to lift and change the industry, to overcome inertia. It’s very easy to forgive yourself for mediocre performance when you’re doing good work.

It’s a wonderful blanket of comfort to say, “Yeah, but I’m working on something really important. I helped that nonprofit. I am doing life-changing work here.” It’s a dynamic that we have to manage.

Emotive Brand:  Ann, amidst all the success that Dennis has just outlined, what did you believe was missing from the brand today or the equation that you were bringing to market?

Ann:  I grew up in B2B marketing. My whole career was tech, and speaking tech. I’d read paragraphs and be like, ‘What on earth did I just read? I have no idea what that said. That means absolutely nothing to me.’

So I’ve always believed that this is not B2B. This is B2H. We are selling to human beings. We are selling to people who have emotions. Whether I’m making a software sale, or buying some consulting, I’m going to be emotional about spending that money. I just am. And so I’ve always been one to say, “Can we push the brand, the marketing, the message to an emotional level, because we’re humans.” We’re not selling to computers–yet.

It’s okay to put emotional color and commentary into your message and how you show up, because it’s more enjoyable. You remember when you have fun doing something. We had a wild kickoff yesterday, talking about some pretty serious stuff. We’re asking people to work harder, do more, and at the same time, we’re laughing and making jokes about poop emojis– [laughter]

Dennis:  Sorry.

Ann:  And so we’re being real human beings with emotion to connect. We’re going to do hard stuff, but we’re going to have joy in that. So when we think about what makes a really good company, yeah, you got to have all the tech, but you’ve got to have a powerful story that connects with humans, right there, front and center.

Emotive Brand:  That’s amazing. We just wrote a white paper about the role of emotion, and the research says it’s even more important in B2B. Maybe because the decisions are big and weighty, and there’s more riding on it.

Ann:  Yeah. You could lose your job if you make the wrong decision–put in some really crappy tech and you end up destroying the teams, their momentum, and morale. There’s so many layers of emotion behind these decisions.

Emotive Brand:  Our experience working with many tech companies over many years is that they undervalue the so-called soft skills and soft metrics that actually drive not just decision-making, but the change and transformation necessary for those companies to show up in the world in a really significant way. It’s interesting how much that’s pushed to the margins, especially in the world of B2B, where to Amber’s point, I think it has the most potential to make a difference.

Dennis:  Yes. This is a really good point. I understand where it comes from, especially when you’re talking about a technology company. Listen, the technology companies are by and large product companies. The goal as you scale is to sell the same product over and over. And if you’re not careful, it creates a very inside-out view—you want to stay very close to the true essence of the product, describe that in the best possible way and get everybody to say the same things over and over again. Obviously, that avoids a real understanding of how people buy, so that’s where leadership needs to step in.
Most organizations want to sell based on the value of change, and you can only sell the change if you have stories.

Ann:  It’s always the phrasing of ‘this thing does blah-blah-blah.’ But no. Now you need to fill in the last piece, which is, so I can do what? Who cares? So I can raise more, so then I can deliver more.

Emotive Brand:  As you frame the success of your leadership team, I can’t help but think that on some level, it’s because there is a greater sense of emotional investment, not just in each other, but in the success. It cannot only be a rational desire for success.

Dennis:  I think what all of us have in common is that it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to be working on a project like this. It’s where unbelievable financial success and outcomes and high quality company-building comes together with a genuine world impact. It’s not a unicorn story where we’re changing the world through AI. No, it’s real societal impact. Normally, you have to pick one of the two.

Ann:  Yeah, we chose the hard path. We chose to push ourselves further.

Emotive Brand:  It’s like a reflection of what you want for nonprofits. The bar raising.

Ann:  We’re choosing to raise the bar, and we’re going to take our teams and our customers with us in that choice.

Emotive Brand:  Yeah. I mean I love the proverbial eating your own dog food, but I’m curious, do you see brand as the mechanism to communicate that to your prospects and current customers?

Ann:  It has to. No customer wakes up thinking about your business every day or your product, unless there’s an absolute problem. So your brand is that positive manifestation of the outcomes, and then you’ve got to put it front and center, all the time.

Emotive Brand:  And so is success in your mind if Bloomerang is always connoted with unlocking that sense of abundance and opportunity? Is that the ultimate kind of emotional unlock that you hope to achieve?

Dennis:  I think so, because if we successfully do what you just said, then you basically blast it through all of the excuses not to grow. Now you’re confronted with your own reality–what is driving you? Well hopefully, it’s that passion for the purpose.

 

Our gratitude goes out to Ann and Dennis for taking the time to reflect with us. Keep an eye out for Part 2 of our conversation, focused on the power of partnership. We’ll look into the alchemy of Bloomerang and Emotive Brand’s stellar collaboration.

The Business of Transformation is Human

Posted on by Amber Johnson

How we feel matters. It determines—and has the power to transform—how we show up in the world and for each other, and in the end, the type of impact we create. We see it in our work with Emotive Brand clients all the time.

The most rewarding part of strategic writing and design is not spotting our work in the wild—perched on grocery store shelves, splashed across websites, or looming large on billboards. It’s having the opportunity to change how people think and feel about their work. You know, that thing they spend most of their limited time on earth doing.

At Emotive, we get to see clients’ faces brighten as we reframe what their company and brand stand for, to illuminate higher purpose and uncover deeper meaning.

When the strategy and creative are right, it’s clear–because sparks of transformation flicker before your eyes. Client teams light up with new ideas to shape all areas of the business. Their energy level and ambition rise. Too many leaders say emotion is intangible. We know it’s palpable.

How people feel matters more than ever, and can tank or propel the success of brands and businesses. Here are three reasons why.

Humans now face constant change and uncertainty.
The seismic jolt of the pandemic keeps reverberating, alongside a push to get people back into the office. There’s the specter of layoffs, political division, and the high cost of living. With technology, epitomized by AI, progressing faster than humans can adapt, upheaval is neverending.

“Change leaves people and organizations feeling confused, vulnerable, and fractured at a time when resilience, cohesion, and collaboration are necessary to perform at the highest levels.”

—Harvard Business Review

 

People are exhausted by constant change. So if you want to spearhead transformation, you have to give them something worth caring about, something they can feel and believe in.

People are fed up with corporate bullshit.
The scourge of shrinkflation. Greenwashing. Planned obsolescence. Employees’ and consumers’ tolerance for being deceived is depleting. That’s why the number of B Corps and Benefit Corporations keeps climbing, along with the popularity of de-influencers and the “right to repair” movement.

“During the challenging year of 2020, only 4.5% of B Corps failed, compared to 12.5% of American businesses overall.”

—Federal Reserve Board

 

Getting ahead of these issues, instead of waiting to be exposed and called out, is not just the right thing to do. By building trust and loyalty with employees and consumers, a proactive approach can save and sustain businesses.

Humans need more than products and paychecks.
Your brand or organization has a golden opportunity to lift people up at a time when all of us are fighting battles that wear us down. Like navigating education and healthcare systems that fall short, being squeezed as part of the sandwich generation, or needing purpose at work but struggling to afford soaring rents as a Gen Zer.

Retention, loyalty, and growth—the aims of transformation programs—are best served through genuine connection and alignment with how people feel and what they care about.

“The human emotions of people working at the centre of a transformation play a pivotal role in its success or failure.”

—EY and Oxford University report

 

At Emotive, we leverage emotion to transform brands and businesses in ways that contribute, even just a little bit, to a better world for people. No mere paycheck can compare.

Transforming Business Through Empathy

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Empathy and Business? Some say no, we say yes.

There are many factors that add meaning and purpose to a brand, and they all stem from a single source: empathy.

Empathy is the ability to walk in another person’s shoes. That is, to see and experience the world from a perspective different from your own.

Here we explore how empathy plays a vital role in shifting brands from a bland and vulnerable position to one that is robust in meaning and purpose.

Empathy as a driver of brand strategy

When you’re close-in to a business’s daily operations it’s hard to see how your brand is perceived by the people you serve, both as customers and employees. To create a meaningful and purposeful dimension for your brand requires you to step out of your own perceptions of what’s good and valuable about your brand. It forces you to look at your brand – and everything it represents – through the lens of human needs, values, and aspirations. Through an empathetic approach, it’s easier to see the meaningful outcomes people experience based on their interactions with your brand. As such, empathy leads you to the deep-rooted, emotional connections that can be forged to create strong and enduring bonds. You won’t reach this point without allowing yourself to take the necessary steps back to the most common and fundamental needs, values and aspirations of humanity.

Empathy as a cultural ethos

Your business is a set of policies and procedures that have been conceived and designed to produce desired metrics (e.g. productivity, efficiency, profitability). Empathy can be used to elevate how well these functions not only produce the desired metrics, but do so in a way that aligns to the needs, values, and aspirations of the people involved. Empathy helps you create a more human-centric culture, by encouraging you to rethink and reconfigure the nature of your policies and procedures. As such, empathy helps you better engage and motivate employees. This means they’ll be far more likely to listen to, appreciate, and follow your leadership.

Empathy as an engine of innovation

If your business, like many, is struggling with hyper-competition and increasing product commoditization, innovation will be a primary focus. Nothing inspires innovation better than empathy. By encouraging your development people to “walk in your customer’s shoes”, either literally or through sensed experience, you bring them closer to what’s really important and valuable to the market. An empathetic attitude sheds new light on what’s needed now and how to best address that need or opportunity.

Empathy as a leadership practice

We’re all born empathetic. As babies we all had the capacity to perceive how others were feeling and what they were experiencing. Sadly, over time, we lose this skill. However, it is remarkably easy to revive and put to good use. Mindful leadership is the goal. All it requires is that you adapt your leadership presentation and style based on an understanding of your follower’s needs, values, and aspirations. You don’t necessarily change your management objectives, you simply radically improve your leadership performance by forging more meaningful connections with your followers.

If you are looking into the future, looking for new ways to transform your business, and have questions about your brand’s ability to navigate the rough seas ahead, you’ll want to carefully consider your own, and your organization’s, capacity for empathy. The strongest businesses going forward will be known for how their meaning and purpose-led behavior enhances both individual and collective well-being. They only reach this strong position by embracing empathy every step of the way.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.
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Business Growth Strategies for a Brand Turnaround

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Business Growth Won’t Last Forever

Business growth should never be taken for granted. Even when things look promising, your business could still be at risk for falling into a slump, or worse, taking a dive. It’s impossible to deny that the market is volatile and unpredictable. Competition is abundant, and all businesses lose market share at some point.

When revenue hits a speed bump, it’s common for leaders to anxiously ride it out. But when business growth really slows down, denial isn’t going to get you out of the rut. Leadership may react with a mad scramble to redirect the sinking ship: new products, new markets, or new acquisitions can transpire overnight. But if these changes occur in a C-suite silo, there’s a high probability your employees and core customers will feel left in the dark. And employees with varying ideas about the future and customers, who no longer feel connected to your business, can easily derail a growth strategy.

Misalignment only leaves more opportunity for your competitors to encroach on even more of your space. And when that happens, employee morale can sink deeper, recruiting becomes more challenging, and share prices may plummet as investors abandon ship. At this point your options are clear: execute a thoughtful, agile turnaround strategy or risk becoming obsolete.

Bringing Your Brand Along for the Ride

Some of the most common approaches to a turnaround strategy include increasing growth through new market penetration, tapping into new markets, pursuing alternate sales channels, developing new products, or expanding your customer base. Regardless of which avenue you follow, transforming your business without preparing your brand to adapt alongside it can jeopardize your plans for growth.

Consider the recent news of Tesla Motor’s offer to acquire SolarCity. With Tesla shares dropping 16% over the last year, Tesla turned to the acquisition as a business growth strategy. They could no longer afford to burn through the $2.2 billion dollars of the last 4 quarters. The acquisition was an obvious attempt to turn around Tesla’s business. The problem was that Tesla took the leap into solar energy without fully considering the consequences of the brand, and more specifically the people the brand matters to. And shares have plummeted even further since the deal’s announcement. What’s the cause? Apparently, investors aren’t on board with the idea of buying solar panels. Tesla misunderstood its target audience and will now have to backtrack to renew brand loyalty. Although this example shows long-term vision, business growth without a parallel brand strategy may have insurmountable long-term consequences for Tesla and SolarCity.

Map Brand to Business

Aligning your brand to your business as it undergoes a transformation is the best way to create a roadmap that is tailored for business growth. The vision for the business needs to guide all business decisions. By bringing your brand and business together, you’ll ensure that your business stays true to who you are, what you do, and why you matter. As you position your business to grow, respecting the underlying vision of the company will ensure that the growth is in line with what the brand stands for.

Brand strategy will address your key target audiences, your value proposition, your positioning, your narrative, and your go-to-market strategy. With these elements adjusted to reflect the business transformation, your brand will be prepared to roll out a strategic marketing plan. To really change the tide of business growth, the strategy needs to incorporate long-term goals with a short-term action plan. It needs to be measurable, too. Identify the key indicators of business growth and hold the business accountable as it transforms. A turnaround that shows improvement to employee engagement, brand perception, NPS, and customer loyalty will ultimately affect sales. And increasing top line revenue increases market share and for some, stock price.

It’s All About Execution

But that’s just the plan. Executing the brand strategy as the business shifts requires agility in the changing market. Too often, companies take a year to develop a strategy and by the time they’re ready to implement it, the market has shifted. Testing and iterating in real time will allow your business and brand to adapt quickly so that it remains relevant. It’s critical to develop a flexible strategy with participation from your sales and marketing team. They will provide necessary, immediate feedback from the people on the front line of your business. Their buy-in and shared responsibility creates alignment from the top-down. As the business turnaround happens, the sales and marketing teams drive the messaging to make sure your target audience is on board, too.

Achieving Sustainable Growth

Growth strategies are never achieved without a brand that is strong enough to weather the tides of change. Whether you’re looking to grow through market penetration, market development, alternative channels, product development, or expanding your customer base, your brand needs to lead the way. And change doesn’t happen in a vacuum. An agile, measurable approach that stays true to the long-term vision is key to turning around your company’s trajectory. Grow your brand and grow your business.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy agency.

Business Transformation: How to Drive Successful Change

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

The Need for Change Management

There are many reasons why an organization might come face to face with the need for a business transformation. Increasing competition, new seemingly unattainable prospects, large growth goals, or not meeting the expected return on investment are among many of the most common we see. These reasons and warning signs are by no means mutually exclusive.

A business transformation generally involves large shifts that dictate change at every level of the business and brand – small and large scale. And managing a change of this scale is no easy task for businesses or leaders today.

Too Much with Too Little

Many business transformations fail. In a recent McKinsey Quarterly survey, only 38% of executives believed their transformation had a “completely” or “mostly successful” impact on business performance.

Our observation is that when a transformation doesn’t deliver the expected results, it’s often because leaders take on too much with too little – too many initiatives with too few resources and not enough commitment to back them up. The transformation isn’t productive in the long term because support for it can’t be sustained, energy dwindles, and things are left undone.

Deciding where to focus energy is always a challenge. While some businesses find themselves trying to focus on too many initiatives at once, others place all focus on one initiative that, in the end, simply isn’t powerful enough to drive the entire transformation forward.

Transformations are dynamic, long-term processes, and it’s easy for the process to feel chaotic for those involved. Creating clarity and maintaining the momentum needed to create and manage long-term change is hard work. And it demands strong leadership and a rigorous process.

In order for a business transformation to be successful, leaders need to manage change through:  

1. A clear and deep understanding of the reasons for change:

Explaining the context for change is key to any transformation. In order to get everyone on board with change, you need to build a strong case about why it’s necessary and how it will pay off for the business and each individual within it. Especially at the early stages, metaphors, analogies, and illustrations can help.

In order to build trust, be transparent as leaders about why things need to change and how change can drive a larger transformation that positions the business and its people for success.

Make it a story and tell both sides –  emotional as well as rational. Being humble and credible as a leader goes a long way when trying to build context. Questions like – Why change? What will change? Who will change? How will we change? – are all crucial questions that help build a critical foundation of shared understanding.

2. A purpose for everyone to believe in:

Articulating the aspirations of a transformation has a lot of power. When people have a purpose they can believe in and a larger goal they can work towards together, they feel inspired and more connected. Defining the aspirations from the outset makes them more attainable. Everyone aims higher, thinks bigger, looks wider, and moves faster.

Constantly re-articulating these aspirations is key. By redefining them, you can put your greater vision in different contexts. Defining the payoff of the business transformation in terms of profitability and market value can also help make it real for people.

Other times, creating smaller aspirations that lead to a greater vision help make the long-term vision seem closer and more realistic to people. Creating small markers that gesture to the larger vision helps drive people to work with more ambition and feel more excited about the future.

3. Leadership that creates energy and champions change:

As a leader, you must be a consistent model for change. Behavior trickles down and building alignment at the top is key to ensuring your team gathers maximum momentum moving forward.

In order to create real energy, you have to make the transformation personal and exciting to people. When employees gain clarity about how their work might change today, tomorrow, and years down the line, it feels empowering. Clear direction creates energy and mobilizes people. And strong, focused leadership is key to reducing the anxiety around change and letting the positive excitement take over.

As we know, positive energy is hard to maintain and sustain, and as a leader your role is to manage the process. Creating a pace that builds momentum and moves quickly can help keep energy up and people inspired. Building reinforcement systems and a well-articulated timeline can also help sustain momentum.

Focus on change management to guarantee a successful business transformation. Powering the right kind of change in the right kind of ways can position your business to thrive in the short-term and long-term future. 

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency.

Brand Behavior Matters for Transforming your Business

Posted on by Paige Lansing Valle

To Transform Your Brand, Transform Your Brand Behavior

In the end, brand behavior is what drives results. No matter how smart and inspired your brand strategy may be, it’s just strategy. And oftentimes, it’s just not enough. In fact, we’ve seen many brand strategies fall short because they failed to move beyond brand identity and communications, and didn’t provide the guidelines, tools, and processes needed to actually bring the brand’s defining attributes to life through meaningful behavior and action.

Brand behavior is all about how your brand reaches out to people and how they respond back to you. In reality, people never experience brand strategies. Instead, they experience brand moments. These brand moments are what bring the strategy alive. So if you want to transform your brand and reap the benefits of this transformation, you have to focus on these brand moments. By honing in on how your brand behaves at every touchpoint, brand behavior is what will ultimately take your brand strategy further than the “brand deck.” The goal of brand behavior is two-fold: make customers more satisfied and loyal, while creating an aligned, ambitious, and meaningful workplace that behaves in line with your brand.

Workplace Behavior

Because behavior is learned and often mimicked, people from childhood onwards depend on elders, role models, and/or authority figures to show them the “right” way to behave. And patterns of behavior operate the same way within a workplace. They trickle down. This means workplace behavior is self-propagating, infectious, and often indicative of the culture of an organization. In fact, if your brand isn’t living up to its potential, the cause may very well be workplace behavior does not pay off why your brand matters. When you add meaning to workplace behavior, you add meaning to the brand.

No Small Task

Modifying behavior internally is key to shifting your brand externally. But aligning behavior to reflect your brand is never easy. Old, rooted, and integrated patterns of behavior become second nature and breaking out of these patterns can’t be done overnight. It’s easy to get stuck in a cycle of off-strategy behaviors, especially in the midst of a business shift. Because change is more easily said than done, it requires true courage and hard work.

Shortcuts never work. Leaders can’t just ask employees to change behaviors that they aren’t modeling themselves. And just a few “behavior champions” won’t be enough to transform your businesses. Everyone plays a role in transforming a brand (no matter how large or established the business). If behaviors don’t fit – even on an individual basis – your business will be slowed down.

When done right, workplace behavior can be transformative for you business, shifting the way people think, feel, and act with respect to your brand – and making your brand matter more.

  1. Address shifts head-on. The importance of workplace behavior can easily be brushed under the rug, misunderstood, or lost in translation. Shifts must be communicated, outlined, and demonstrated clearly from the onset. At larger companies this is especially important. It’s easy for someone who has been working for your business for 40 years to have a different understanding of the shift then your new hire. Take the time to be clear. Good communication goes a long way.
  2. Model behavior from the top down. Leaders lead by example. Demonstrating how behaviors connect to what your brand is all about is much more compelling than just telling people how to act. By behaving thoughtfully, you will discover why these behavior shifts really matter, what the challenges are, and how to overcome them as a community. This understanding will foster more successful teamwork, productivity, and help everyone move forward
  3. Show empathy, respect, and trust. Empathetic businesses are smart businesses. Try to see your business through your employees’ eyes. Through this shift in perspective, it’s easier to identify the behavior shifts that are necessary to make the brand promise relevant and powerful to everyone. Show respect for everyone’s role. Strategic shifts change how people approach and do their jobs, and these transitions can prove difficult for many. Empower your employees to make the necessary behavior adjustments.
  4. Make people feel like they matter. Recognize and reward meaningful behavior. When people feel like what they do and how they do it really does matter, they are more likely to embody the new behavior because they see first-hand how it makes a difference. The best way to get employees to behave in line with your brand is by demonstrating their individual value to the business – showing each individual how the brand can help them grow both professional and personally.
  5. Build a roadmap. In larger companies, employees often feel out of touch with where the company is headed. What’s it going to be like in 5 years? What are the goals? How can each individual help? Building a roadmap is a great way to make people part of the shift towards success. Show employees where the business could go if everyone gets on board and behaves meaningfully each and every day.

Meaningful workplace behavior will positively affect the way your brand is perceived both inside and outside the business. When people see those behind the brand behaving in a way that truly reflects who you are, what you do, and why you matter, they feel more connected and appreciative of what the brand stands for. Workplace behavior can help your brand matter more to everyone.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy firm. 

The Meaning Gap and What it Means for Your Business

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Your business’s performance suffers when people don’t do what your business needs them to do. So why aren’t they doing what you need them to do? The meaning gap represents the distance that’s growing between your business and the people vital to it’s success. As your business becomes more sophisticated, measured, and managed – in other words, less human – it moves one way.

As people, acting as customers, employees, social media users, and citizens, become more mindful, concerned, and discerning – in other words, more human – they move in a different way.

Unless you act, this gap will keep growing wider and wider.

  • Your business will become more and more distant from people.
  • People will stop seeing why your business matters to them, and therefore, change their behavior in ways that work against your interests.
  • Your customers will become more and more dissatisfied and start searching for more meaningful alternatives.
  • Your employees will work with less vigor and unconsciously thwart your efforts to innovate and provide superior customer service.

Going deeper into your business, the people who are you partners, suppliers, distributors, and investors are also looking to align with businesses that matter beyond profit. As the meaning gap becomes more evident to them, they will be less likely to support you, work with you, or invest in your business.

This is all because we have moved on from the days of mindless consumerism and working-for-a-paycheck, to a time when people seek to create meaning in their lives and in everything they do.

They no longer just buy or work or stay silent or think only of themselves.

They want to do more with their lives, do things that matter, and feel they are making a positive difference through their decisions and actions.

Most important, they want to associate with businesses that help them do all of this in ways they admire, respect, and value.

The goal is to bridge the meaning gap by reaching out to people in new ways that engage them on an emotionally meaningful level.

Curious? Read our paper, “The Meaning Gap: What it Means to Your Business.” You may also find our paper, “The Age of Meaning” helpful in understanding the drivers behind the emerging values, attitudes, and behaviors of the people vital to your business’s success.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Preparing for Transformation

Posted on by Thom Elkjer

One of the big themes for business is constant change — transformation. With globalization making markets more volatile and cross-border financial flows making bondholders and investors more powerful, companies have to keep evolving to keep up. So they change their business model or their brand strategy. If they keep doing the old things, they do them in new ways. Or they do entirely new things in ways that haven’t been invented yet.

For our parents, IBM was a computer company. For us, it’s a consulting company. Time Warner was a media company; now it’s a content company after selling its cable and internet businesses and announcing it will exit print, too. HP has been trying to figure out what it is for years.

Continue reading “Preparing for Transformation”