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Tag: Business

Good Leadership Character Leads to Good Brand Character

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Tough time call for strong leaders

As recognition sets in that the COVID-19 crisis will not be short-lived, companies must respond appropriately by communicating in ways that are empathetic and relevant, contextually aware, human and sensitive. Leaders, brand stewards, and their teams must be extremely focused, keep up with the new normal of uncertainty, and have the ability to rapidly re-evaluate what their company stands for, how it communicates, and why this matters now more than ever.

Leadership Character

An excellent post at IMD.org speaks to two attributes that the writers, Professors Stewart Black and Allen Morrison, believe are necessary for leaders of global organizations today: emotional connections and integrity.

I think this advice is great for any business leader, not only those operating at the “global” level. Here’s the section on emotional connections that talks about being sincerely interested in others, genuinely listening to others, and understanding different viewpoints.

Emotional connections

Global leaders need to establish personal, empathetic relationships with people from all backgrounds inside their company, and in the broader community. Doing this requires three distinct abilities: sincere interest in other people, a heightened ability to listen, and a strong capacity for understanding different viewpoints.

Sincere interest in others

Our research found that effective global leaders actually like people – all kinds of people. They enjoy talking with people and being around them. They care about people and want in some way to make their lives better. All of these attributes help them to form better business relationships, which are a critical part of doing business in many countries. “International customers buy a relationship, not equipment,” David Janke, Vice President of Business Development at Evans & Sutherland, told us. “We’re not selling equipment: we’re selling somebody’s career, because she’s got her neck on the line. She is buying something and making a large investment,” he said. “If it doesn’t work, everybody points the finger at her, so she wants to deal with a company and people…that she trusts.”

Genuinely listening to people

Being interested in people is not the same as genuinely listening to them. As one executive recently told us, “It can be too easy when you are in a leadership position to do all the talking.” Yet, for others to feel understood, leaders must excel at picking up verbal and non-verbal communications. They must also overcome the “everyone thinks the same” assumption, which suggests a superficial understanding of the aspirations, interests, and feelings of other people.

Understanding different viewpoints

Understanding people requires leaders to relate personally to the lives of their employees, customers, and others who are relevant to the business. It means understanding context and, more specifically, how to provide appropriate leadership within it. For example, how a 40-year-old American expatriate manager delegates to a 35-year-old Japanese subordinate with a U.S. MBA should differ significantly from her delegation to a 55-year-old Japanese subordinate with no U.S. experience. To succeed, the American manager should pay much greater deference to the 55-year-old Japanese subordinate.

Effective Leadership

Establishing emotional connections is an essential part of effective global leadership, but this is not the same as “going native.” Leaders who are interested in people, who are excellent listeners, and who are familiar with local conditions and traditions do not have to become like the people they are with. While they need to keep an open mind, they should never forget who they are or what they represent.

When leaders have character, their behavior influences people throughout the organization. This impacts on every aspect of the business, including the way its brand behaves. When the organizational culture is built around character, a new way of being emerges that is far more appealing to people, both inside and outside the business.

To sum up: When you bring empathy to your leadership style, you win. When your leadership style makes your brand more empathetic, everyone wins.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy firm.

How to Make a Business and Brand Transformation Successful

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Emotive Brand hinges itself on the power of business transformation through brand strategy, and brand strategist, Jo Schull adds a honed strategic mind to our team. By working directly with clients to help understand the true essence of their business, she uncovers the necessary internal and external strategies needed to transform the potential of their brand into a reality. In this interview, Jo offers her thoughts and expertise on how to make a brand and business transformation successful.

People are always talking about business transformation – what does that mean?

Business transformation can mean different things to different people. Some leaders see business transformations as bold, quick moves meant to shake things up. Others look at business transformation as the start of a change – a process that starts with purpose, strategy, and vision, and then takes shape through a series of changes to the business.

When or why should businesses attempt a transformation?

Many businesses wait too late to ‘transform’ themselves. They wait until they’re in trouble. They wait until competitors have encroached on their territory, until employee morale is low, until recruiting is difficult, until share prices are down. They wait for when the business is stuck in a downturn. These are all certainly good and necessary reasons to attempt a business transformation, but smart businesses are always looking ahead. These leaders know that the best transformations anticipate and head off crises.

What’s an example of that?

Smart businesses are constantly thinking about what’s next.  They ask themselves: what’s the next phase of their evolution? For some, it might be about a product expansion or moving into other markets. For others, it might be about refining their customer experience: how can their offering become the best and most beloved brand for their core customers? In the end, it all comes down to honing in on the business’s purpose — understanding and communicating clearly why you exist as a business. From this, the business can be intentional about its future, who you serve, and why you want to serve them.

What are the essential components of a successful transformation?

  • The business must have executive-level participation and ownership. The leaders of the company have to be an essential part of the process. They set strategy, make business and brand decisions, and are responsible for the company’s overall performance. They lead the change.
  • The process must be inclusive. All cultures are different. Some are top-down, and others are more inclusive and democratic. The most successful transformations are those that feel authentic. And the best way to achieve authenticity is by including many voices in the process. As much as it’s important that leaders lead the process, it is equally important that the process involves perspectives and participation from across the organization. This includes different divisions, different geographies, different functions, and different levels within the organization. Many top-down transformations have failed because leaders did not understand the day-to-day realities of the business.
  • The transformation must be true to your brand and business. There’s nothing worse than attempting a brand and business transformation that is misaligned with your brand or business position. Your employees will be the first to see the disconnect and your customers won’t be far behind.

How do you work with leadership teams to create alignment during a business transformation?

We start by getting the leadership team clear on three things:

1) Why does your company exist in the first place?

2) What’s the next big problem you can solve for your customers?

3) Where are the biggest threats and opportunities?

Ideally, leadership teams are aligned on these questions. But occasionally, they are not. Either way, it’s important that when going into any sort of transformation that leadership teams are aligned about these questions. A transformation will get them on the same page about why they exist, what they are trying to do, and where the next opportunities lie.

How do you rally employees?

When we talk about rallying employees, there’s no one right way to do it.

You may ask: Is this a course correction, or a 180° shift? What’s the state of employee morale? Will this come as a shock or has the leadership of your company been transparent and brought employees along the journey? How large is the company? There are always many factors at play, but here are some guiding principles.

  • Inspire: To many people, ‘rally’ implies large events where leadership teams unveil big visions and strategies to employees. Those events have their purpose – especially in large companies where leaders need to reach hundreds or thousands of employees at once – but a one-time event isn’t enough to create sustainable change.
  • Demonstrate: What’s equally important, if not more crucial, are the actions of the leadership team every day following those large inspirational events. Employees need to see evidence of change – both progress toward goals and examples of new ways of working.
  • Involve: If employees have been involved in the process, they’ll already have a stake in the transformation. They’ll understand the reasons for change and will believe in the vision for the future.
  • Reinforce: Examine internal systems such as messaging, reviews, rewards, and recognition to make sure they’re supporting and reinforcing the change you want to make, especially when dealing with culture change. Nothing erodes employee trust more quickly than policies and procedures that are at odds with a company’s stated values and beliefs.
  • Communicate: Keep the new strategic direction top of mind. Build it into employee communications and presentations. Bring it into areas where employees will see it. Highlight a section of the strategy and focus on it for a month or a quarter. But whatever you do, don’t let your new strategy languish in a drawer.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy firm.

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”

Make Purposeful Brand Resolutions in 2016

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

The New Year is the perfect time to step back and create impassioned and attainable brand resolutions. What do you want to achieve in 2016? Look back on 2015 and reflect on your business. What were your greatest successes and biggest challenges? How can you live your brand promise in 2016? How can you build your brand to flourish?

Emotive Brand wants to add some inspiration and purpose to the start of your 2016. We’ve asked top business executives across varying industries to share one piece of advice about managing a brand and driving business. Our advice: read up.

1

“Managing your brand is a full-time job that starts with brand strategy and truly never ends. It takes dedication, time, and relentless focus to embed your brand into your company culture. Your brand should be used as a filter for all business decisions. Make sure everyone in your company understands your brand and lives it too. They should be your most enthusiastic promoters. Share the brand with them, and keep reinforcing its promise over and over and over again.”

Eve Maidenberg
Senior Director Integrated Marketing
FICO

4

“We’ve learned to never underestimate how potential customers make snap judgments about how a brand makes them feel. Don’t underestimate any touchpoint!”

Zane Vella
CEO
Watchwith
10

“Keep in mind that a brand can be product brand or an employer brand. Both are critical to the businesses success. Without employees wanting to work for your brand, you don’t have a product. Without a product, you don’t have a business.”

Brad Cook
Global Vice President Talent Acquisition
Informatica

7

“See possibilities over limits. Build a brand platform that loves flexibility, embraces change, and welcomes the unexpected.”

Rob Corwin
Creative Director
Cooley LLP

 

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“Brand is what those outside of our walls think, feel, and believe about our firm. You must not only communicate, but constantly demonstrate your brand promise. Your brand can be advanced at every single interaction with clients and potential clients.”

Steven M. Bell
Leader of Marketing and Business Development
Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice

2

“Don’t confuse marketing with branding. Marketing is about attracting potential customers. Branding is about keeping them. Every touchpoint is an opportunity to enhance the brand experience and therefore the opinion a customer has about your brand. If you’re doing it right, you will move your brand from ‘like’ to ‘love’.”

Peter Gerber
Director Global Branding
Eaton Corporation

8

“Understand that your brand isn’t just what you message to your audience; it’s also what your audience messages to each other. Customers don’t always repeat a brand message as you’ve carefully crafted it. It’s just as important to make sure customers are thrilled with their experiences as it is to tell your brand story directly. They are the messengers of the brand and their stories resonate.”

Jessica Wan
Director of Marketing
Magoosh

9

“Build your brand around your core strength. For most businesses, there is a reason they have stayed in business: what is the one true thing that has existed through all the ups and downs?”

Joaquin Lippincott
President & Founder
Metal Toad

5

“My best advice is to get to the truth of who you are as a brand, and then own it, accentuate, and don’t deviate from it. There are so many pressures to be something to everyone, yet focus yields stronger results.”

Kendra Frisbie
Brand Builder; Communications Strategist & Creative Director
McGuire Furniture

6

“Brand drives business. Creating a brand that represents and emotes who you are and what you believe is the key to success and growth.”

Jeremy Fudge
Partner, Attorney at Law
BAL

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”