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Tag: Business

The New Measurements of a Successful Business

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

What does it mean to be a successful business?

In the new age of meaningful business, it’s time for more inclusive forms of value. It’s no longer enough to measure financial impact. Companies, brands, investors, entrepreneurs, and consumers are asking: what’s the social impact of your business? What’s your environmental impact? Your emotional impact? In other words, people are asking: Why should I care? Why does it matter? And they are also wondering, can you communicate the value of these impacts to me quantitatively?

In any successful business, there is value outside the actual venture. Endless factors play into the success of a business, and these factors differ from company to company. In other words, measurements of success for one brand may not apply to another. This makes finding a universal measures quite difficult.

Purpose

Oftentimes, measuring purpose is ignored, put in the “aspirational” box, and left to sit – separated from business, undervalued, and never quantified. But we can’t separate aspiration from business. The two are intertwined and, in fact, hinge on each other. Alignment of purpose within a business energizes and focuses the brand towards success. Clear, strong, and inspiring purpose differentiates and gives brands a needed competitive edge. It empowers employees to do more valuable, impactful work and encourages a collaborative leadership team – a purpose-led business.

A purpose-led business helps everyone who is key to the business become aware of the impact they are creating each day. By measuring purpose, the “whys” become clear and tangible: why you go to work every day, why your work matters, why each individual’s contribution matters to the greater success of the company and the world at large. Focusing on purpose pushes the people who are integral to your business to take risks, think creatively, and dedicate themselves to their work each and every day.

Measuring Purpose

We wish we could tell you exactly how to measure the purpose of your business. The fact of the matter is that in order to quantify purpose for your specific business, first, you have to fully grasp and align your business – understand all the factors, emotions, and components of why you do what you do. In order to break down your purpose, you must approach it from all angles. What are your key values? Your main aspirations? How do you measure each of these tenants and promises?

In his article, “Measuring Purpose. The next key business imperative,” Hilton Barbour proposes ten potential questions that might help Nike measure its purpose: “to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.” We believe Barbour’s questions are a great example of how any business might measure and quantify their impact, be it innovation or inspiration, like Nike, or any different purpose.

  • What do we define as inspiration and what part do we play in that inspiration?
  • How many inspiring products do we sell (and therefore who do we inspire and to do what)?
  • What did those products cost to develop?
  • What do we make from them?
  • To what extent are we making money from products that continue to inspire vs. those that are re-inspiring vs. those that will inspire into the future?
  • What is the “inspiration” contribution of our product vs. that of the sponsored athlete, high school jock, and weekend warrior wearing it?
  • What innovations have we introduced in the last year for athletes?
  • How many of them have we sold?
  • What’s still in development and what are the projections for those products in the business case?
  • How quickly is our innovation cycle being realized in terms of saleable goods and what effect are those innovations having on our bottom-line?

We agree with Barbour that this introspection about measuring purpose is not only worth it, but necessary to do doing meaningful, purposeful, and impactful business.

Your brand’s purpose warrants measurement and time dedicated to building a personalized system for your business. Ask questions and believe in your purpose to the extent that quantification and qualification of it matters, that it truly does drive success both internally and externally. Build a measurement system that can be explained and communicated to all the people that matter to your business’s success.

One that:

  • Inspires and keeps your business moving and looking forward.
  • Demonstrates possibility and generates potential. That’s what purpose is all about.

To learn more about why meaningful brands should measure their positive impacts, check out our blog “If You Want a Meaningful Brand, Make a Meaningful Impact.”

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

The Art of Swift, Smart Decision Making in Business

Posted on by Paige Lansing Valle

Too Many Choices

Business leaders can be gun-shy about making decisions – big and small, important and minute –when it comes to both their business and their brand.

The abundance of scenarios about the unknown can easily feel overwhelming. But effective leadership hinges on effective decision making. And it’s impossible to choose a direction when you’re trying to please everyone and do everything.

To Compete, You Have to Decide

At the end of the day, there’s no room or time for slow decision making in today’s competitive, fast-paced landscape. In fact, businesses and brands in every industry are struggling to become more agile and move fast enough to gain and maintain competitive edge.

And this kind of agility requires quick, streamlined, confident, decision making. Trying to make a decision with too many stakeholders involved will only stall your business from moving forward. This ‘hurry up and wait’ mentality can be crippling to how your business progresses.

So how do you create an environment that fosters quick, informed decision making?  

Because of the accelerated pace of business today, businesses need a strategy for decision making.  The most important thing is to make a decision and stick to it.

Being afraid to put a stake in the ground is only going to hold back your brand and create frustrated, confused costumers, employers, and investors. Bottle-necks are antithetical to brand growth. In the end, following through and rallying everyone around the direction you select is what matters most.

Don’t let perfection stand in the way. It doesn’t exist. There are always going to be alternatives to the biggest and smallest decisions you are tasked with making. But the most meaningful, and powerful choice is a direction you actually follow. And if you have a good team and a good product to back you up, you can build your brand and business in whatever direction you choose.

The best leaders are comfortable making decisions using established, agreed-upon practices and then align the subsequent brand and business paths accordingly.

That’s why a solid brand promise is key. With it as your North Star, everything from your brand’s position to its look and feel will have a clear path to guide your decision making. With your promise well articulated and shared, you are better positioned to empower employees to make their own decisions in line with the direction of the business.  Giving employees this power gets rid of the bottleneck that often accompanies the decision making process (or lack thereof!).

Flexibility and Focus

Effective decision making requires a balance of flexibility and focus – honing the prize, and leaving room to shift along the way, within degrees of reason. It is not possible to please everyone or predict exactly what the future will bring. So choose a direction and go with it. You can always readjust the brand. Being a smart, swift decision maker and empowering others within your organization to do the same can ready your business and brand for whatever lays ahead.

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

 

Purpose-Led Brand Strategy Optimizes Business

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Purpose-led Brand Strategy that Masters the Intangibles, Masters Markets

A purpose-led brand strategy has the power to optimize the present and future value of your business. When your brand actively embodies all the true and meaningful aspects of your corporate decisions, policies, and actions, it not only brings new energy to your current competitive efforts, it also signals a brighter and more energizing future to the people vital to your company’s success.

Your brand houses your company’s intangible value

Everyone knows there’s a link between the perceived value of your “intangible assets” and the market value of your company. Your brand is one of the many intangible assets in your company, and it serves a very important role. In fact, your brand is the house in which virtually all of your other intangible assets tend to live.

This is because your brand is the place where customers, employees, and investors store all the information, data, experiences, and collective good and worth they attach to your company. This collective good and worth can be seen as a positive energy that propels your brand forward, based on the trust and confidence that energy builds.

Value builds as the energy grows

The opportunity is to bring all that energy together through a meaningful purpose that not only increases the value of the goodness your business does now, but also inspires your organization to pursue new avenues of meaning. A meaningful purpose helps rally and align your people so they create more meaning within and outside of the organization. These efforts, which make your organization a more rewarding and gratifying place in which to work, have a compound effect on the value that flows from your intangible assets.

Don’t leave your intangible assets to their own devices, proactively manage them for greater success.

Smart leaders strive to optimize the value of their intangible assets. The most credible way to do this is to make stronger and more pervasive contributions to the collective well-being through individual, social, and environmental initiatives. These efforts will signal both social responsibility and a long-term view for the brand. They will energize your organization, and empower it in new ways. They will help you forge stronger connections with customers, attract new prospects, make the work of your employees more meaningful and gratifying, bring in the new talent your organization needs, and give investors the confidence they need to stick by your brand over the long-term.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Img credit: Motherbird

How Being a B-Corp Truly Matters in Business

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Is their value in evaluating the idea of your business becoming a B-Corp?

A B-Corp is a newer breed of businesses that is founded on an amazing set of principles.

B Corps are for-profit companies certified by the nonprofit B Lab to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.

Today, there is a growing community of more than 1,600 Certified B Corps from 42 countries and over 120 industries working together toward 1 unifying goal: to redefine success in business.

“The B Corp movement is one of the most important of our lifetime, built on the simple fact that business impacts and serves more than just shareholders—it has an equal responsibility to the community and to the planet.” Rose Marcario, CEO of Patagonia

If you are curious, here is a great place to start. How does your business measure up to the B-Corp “Declaration of Interdependence”

You may not be a B-Corp today, but every step you take toward living to these values and ambitions will bring you closer to people looking to live lives that matter. Brands that are purpose-led and authentic in how they behave, are brands that perform better.

Continue reading “How Being a B-Corp Truly Matters in Business”

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.

Your Business Problems Might Have a Brand Strategy Solution

Posted on by Dann Wilkens

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

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

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

Top B2B Business Problems We are Asked to Solve

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

When you’re a brand strategy firm with a B2B technology focus, there’s no better place to be than the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area. Silicon Valley has extended everywhere the bay waters touch the shore, so our location on the Oakland waterfront puts Emotive Brand at the epicenter of the action. Living and working in the middle of this incomparable start-up mecca, we’re surrounded by some of the greatest technology companies ever built, with leading VCs and amazing entrepreneurs as friends and neighbors.

Continue reading “Top B2B Business Problems We are Asked to Solve”

Meaningful Brands Are Led by Meaningful Leaders

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

The key to meaning is empathy: the ability to step outside one’s own life and see the world from another’s perspective. In both branding and leadership, the value of this ability cannot be underestimated. Both areas depend upon engaged followers. Engagement only comes when followers see leaders connect the dots between their personal needs and desires, the goals of the business, and the greater good.

Brands and leaders that are inward-focused and self-absorbed fail to connect with people who are increasingly attuned to the needs of humanity and the planet. This puts them in a precarious position. That’s because these people are increasingly applying these altruistic criteria to the products they buy, the brands they support, and the companies for which they choose to work.

The result for brands? More meaningful competitors steal your customers and profits. Your brand’s real and perceived value drop. Your brand’s ability to attract top talent diminishes.

The result for leaders? Those you hope to have as followers drift away. Your reputation for generating results suffers. You experience defections and cannot hire the people you need.

When people see that what’s lying behind your brand or leadership is an honest effort to use business in a positive way that will pay them emotional dividends and address their altruistic concerns, brands and leaders thrive. Of course, meaning is easier said than done, and must flow from a sincere and authentic base. It must be routed in the truth as nothing more readily violates the social contract than lies and deception.

You are born with empathy.

It’s there within you, waiting to be rediscovered.

Pull it to the surface, apply it to your business, brand and your leadership thinking, and discover the power of truthful and meaningful connections that positively change the way people think, feel and act.

Additional reading: Transforming business: the four faces of empathy 

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco Branding Agency.

Business Success is All About Building a Meaningful Workplace Culture

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.” – Albert Einstein

A business’ fate is determined in large part by its culture. A business culture is the reality created by how people act, react, and interact with each other based on their attitudes, beliefs, and ambitions.

The most damaging business cultures are those in which aggression, neglect, and punishment leave employees feeling they have no reason to commit their energies and skills, share their ideas, or help the company advance.

Wanted: A culture that unites and connects employees

A culture built principally around rewards for individual or group performance pits individuals and teams against each other, often in ways that create class systems, in-fighting, and divisive loyalties. The winners in such cultures find meaning in their rewards. The rest are left wondering what the point is for them and their employer.

A passive, benign, and inert business culture leaves the business subject to the aggregate confusion that results when each individual employee’s quirks, tendencies, and potentially questionable morality and ethics are accommodated.

The most beneficial business cultures are those that unite employees around an ambition, make them feel emotionally connected, and surround them with people who share their ambition, feelings, and behavior.

4 factors in transforming your culture

By consistently and intentionally conveying a meaningful ambition and evoking a set of unique and positive emotions, businesses can transform the meaningful outcome of every aspect of the work experience:

  1. The physical environment – the aesthetics and functionality of the workplace;
  2. The policies and procedures – the actual rules of the company as well as the way in which employees experience them;
  3. The attitudes and behavior of fellow employees – the feelings evoked when dealing with superiors, peers, and reports;
  4. The moment of contact – the nature of company/employee and employee/outside world interactions.

A Meaningful Workplace culture is based on the way employees experience these factors – what meaning is conveyed and how they are left feeling.

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

Photo credit.

10 Reasons Why Business Should Banish the Word “Brand”

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

Our rather controversial thoughts on “Brand”

1. It is meaningless

Ask five people in your company what the word “brand” means and you’ll get at least seven definitions. As such, the meaning of the word “brand” is completely diluted and lacking in concise meaning. That’s not helpful.

Continue reading “10 Reasons Why Business Should Banish the Word “Brand””