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Tag: Emotional Connection

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

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

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

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

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

Not only true, but meaningful

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

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

Why aren’t these truths evident now?

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

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

Where will your brand’s truths take your organization?

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

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

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

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

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

Img credit: Anton Burmistrov

Creating Meaningful Brand Connections

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Creating Meaning by creating more meaningful brand connections

In our latest white paper, “Transforming your brand into an emotive brand“, we introduce a number of key drivers of our thinking, including the notion of “Meaning/meaningful brand connections”.

In our white paper we top-line this key driver in this way:

Emotive and meaningful brands strive to operate at a higher level than conventional brands. They act, interact, and react in ways that make every moment emotionally meaningful. Your customers and employees are left feeling more secure and connected. They feel your brand has helped them grow as humans. They feel your brand has touched them through love and beauty. 

What do we mean by “meaning”?

Our pursuit of meaning goes beyond mere linguistics, as in “ABS means automatic braking system.” It also goes beyond the first level of outcomes, typically the “benefit” accrued, as in, “more stability in sudden maneuvers.” It often even extends beyond the second level of interpretation, as in, “so, your family travels more safely.”

And it always goes beyond the product level. Indeed, we search for meaning across a brand’s products, policies, processes, procedures, and practices. We interrogate the impact the brand has not only within the scope of the customer experience, but across a spectrum of meaningful outcomes that can appear on the individual, social, and environmental levels.

Our quest is to harvest the goodness that is now otherwise buried in the brand, and to bundle it into a set of high-order brand truths. These truths form the basis of the brand narrative we produce.

What are meaningful brand connections?

Meaningful connections come when a brand forges a link between what it does, and what people are seeking on a very deep, human level. We believe that deep down, we are all seeking the same three things:

  1. To feel safe and secure in our surroundings, our social situation, and in our hearts
  2. To feel connected to the people, ideas, and ideals that we care about, and which nurture us
  3. To feel we are growing physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, through our thoughts, actions, and possessions

Seeing the world, and the brand within that world, through this lens helps us interrogate, dissect, and rethink the brand to find those traits and attributes that link directly to these deep drivers of people’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.

The value of bringing this meaning to the surface is often not clear, because it presents the brand in a new, and often unfamiliar light. It provokes anxiety by suggesting that what is truly meaningful about the brand is very different from the way the brand has been traditionally presented.

The resolution to this tension is the blending of the “commercial” and “human” meanings in future brand actions and communications. This gradual evolution can lead to true brand transformation, as the people of the brand embrace its truths and live out its promise.

Why be meaningful?

Meaningful connections that flow from deep within the organization, and that reach deep down inside the hearts and minds of people, lead to greater brand appeal, differentiation, and loyalty.

The internal dynamic changes when the heartbeat of meaning is present; there is greater collaboration, self-initiative, innovation, attentive customer service, as well as higher degrees of engagement, gratification, and loyalty. This meaning-driven difference internally resonates externally, attracting prospects, recruits, suppliers, and communities to the brand.

Given the current pressures on brands, and the continuing challenges that loom ahead, many smart brand owners are seeking their meaningful difference. They see it as a high-level strategic choice that brings with it serious commitments of time, energy, and money.

Those who eschew the meaning option do so at their own risk. As more and more people become aware of their need for meaningful connections, and see that our culture offers few options, they will increasingly be drawn to those people, ideas, ideals, and brands that satisfy their core human needs.

Don’t stand idly by as meaning comes of age. Look deep within your world and see it as a person seeking meaning would do. Grab onto the meaning you find. Work hard to integrate that meaning into everything you do, every product you make, and every moment you have with the people important to your brand.

Transform Your Brand into an Emotive Brand Download White Paper

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

More information fromHavas Media on the subject of meaningful brands, check out their latest global insights

Could Your Brand Ever Command as Much Loyalty as a Sports Team?

Posted on by Dann Wilkens

Sports Fan Loyalty

Brand Loyalty – a strong feeling of support or allegiance.

At least once a year, my good friend wears the 40 year-old T-shirt of his favorite sports team. It’s too small. It’s faded and threadbare in places. It’s garish color looks terrible on him. It has a hole in the shoulder. But he loves it. It represents something that matters to him. His team.

40 years ago they won an NBA championship. Who knew at the time that it would take 40 years to get another chance? Over the decades, even though the team had highs and low, he still held out the hope that they could be great again. And he is so proud of his team right now.

The amazing thing is how attached we become to our teams. How does this happen? How is it that we become a dyed-in-the-wool Badger, or an Old Blue, or a fan for life?

Wouldn’t it be great if your brand could earn such unswerving loyalty?

To find out, let’s break down how it happens with sports teams.

Geography – When you live in a town, it’s hard to escape noticing the local team. Brands that have a consistent presence over time get noticed. And when a rival team invades your town, when it’s us against them, you automatically line up on the side of the locals, even if you’re just a casual, fair-weather fan.

Parents – You grew up listening to games on the radio with your dad. You grew up watching games on TV with your mom. Their deep feelings for the team became your deep feelings. Your brand loyalties were embedded early on through osmosis by the people you respect the most.

Friends – It’s contagious. If your friends are huge fans, it’s hard not to get caught up in their excitement. The example of their engagement, commitment and strong emotions rubs off on you. After all, it feels good to be part of the team, especially if it’s with your friends.

The Monday morning coffee break – “Hey, that was some game on Saturday, right?” When people talk about the team on Monday morning, you want to join in. You want to have a point of view. So you get pulled into the conversation, and into fan-hood, without really trying.

Creating Meaningful Connections

So what can a brand that doesn’t hit home runs or shoot three-pointers do to inspire a loyal following? It’s not so different from sports. It’s really simple. It is all about creating meaningful brand connections, as often as possible, to inspire people to go out of their way to support the brand.

Done consistently, that’s how a brand can hit a home run.

  • Geography is like community. If your brand pays close attention to your community and respects their needs and wishes, it will create consistent, meaningful experiences and stick in their minds and connect to their hearts.
  • Parents are like thought-leaders. When a brand leads from a purposeful belief, it can connect with people who share the same ideals. When your brand truly matters, people change the way they think and feel about your brand and you create a long-lasting relationship that can withstand the test of time. Some even call it loyalty.
  • Friends are like word of mouth. A positive word from someone you know is the strongest endorsement. If your brand behaves with emotional integrity and respects each individual customer every time in every brand experience, it can earn the kind of loyalty that friends share with their friends.
  • The Monday morning coffee break is like a conversation with a group of informed colleagues. If your brand performs consistently well with everyone it encounters, the weight of public opinion will be on your side, even when people are from different levels or walks of life.

Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty has always come by emotional engagement. Creating meaningful connections and differentiation is where loyalty happens.

Your brand may not inspire fans to get tattoos or wear 40 year-old T-shirts. But it can form a strong emotional connection with people by learning what matters to them, by understanding their feelings and by behaving in a way that shows that you care about them.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco Bay Area-based brand strategy firm with an emotive approach to branding.

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,c 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.

Brand Campaigns Talk to the Heart During Olympics

Posted on by Sarah Herold

We are an athletic bunch here at Emotive Brand – we are triathletes, marathoners and mountain bikers, just to name a few. So it’s not surprising when we gather round the lunch table each day that we’re talking about the Olympic games. And the inspiring accomplishments of the world’s best athletes. But aside from our passion for sport – and competition – we haven’t lost sight that we are in the branding business. And we’ve been paying close attention to the Olympics-inspired brand campaigns and the emotional themes that are resonating during the Games.

The landscape has changed
Official sponsors like Visa and Proctor and Gamble no longer have a lock on the Olympic Games. This year saw a relaxation of the rules surrounding non-sponsor advertising. Brands who launched marketing campaigns at least four months prior to the games can continue to run their ads through the Olympics … as long as they don’t mention the Olympics by using its marks, terminology and imagery. So that means more brands have gotten in on the action. And are using the Olympics as a way to connect with their customers. While non-sponsors have gotten creative with their brand campaigns, it’s forced all brands to be more thoughtful about their advertising – and all of the potential angles – in order to evoke all the right feelings.

Online, digital and social
This year, brands are using social in a much deeper and more meaningful way. They aren’t just investing in social campaigns but creating ways for people to participate in the games through live experiences and sharing their own stories.

As a massive audience talks about key moments on Facebook or Twitter, brands want to be a part of that energy and excitement. Brands like Ford and Coca-Cola are following social conversations, and figuring out how they can be part of those conversations by developing content on the fly. They are looking to engage spectators beyond what just they see on TV, but by bringing them into the Rio experience. McDonald’s is going even further— as part of its “Friendship” campaign, they brought 100 children from around the world to participate in the Opening Ceremonies.

Human stories trump product
Brands are not only shifting how they tell their stories but also the kind of stories they tell. Where Olympic brand campaigns typically highlight athletes or the fans, advertisers are now more focused on tapping into the human experience rather than their own products’ features.

Procter & Gamble has continued its emotional tribute to mothers this year with a new film “Strong”, following the Olympic journeys of four mothers and their children. And Airbnb released a video campaign, “#StayWithMe” that tells three unique local stories aimed primarily at Olympic visitors.

Leveraging emotion
Campaign trends aside, can you guess which ads grabbed our attention here at Emotive Brand? It’s the ones that create a deep emotional connection that get us excited or make us tear up. These ads leverage happiness, inspiration, and pride — and grab our hearts.

“We’re the Superhumans”
It’s not surprising that the British broadcaster of the Paralympics, Channel 4, has the most shared ad so far in the Olympics with this inspiring spot. Instead of the usual moodiness and grit you get with most Olympic ads, it takes a fresh approach, bringing fun, surprise and creativity to the storyline. Instead of crying along, we were cheering aloud.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IocLkk3aYlk

“Rule Yourself”
Under Armour’s award-winning “Rule Yourself” brand campaign is emotionally powerful and real. Featuring Olympics veteran Michael Phelps as he trains for his last games, the commercial is raw, sentimental and incredibly personal. It shows the quiet struggle and fortitude Phelps has endured to make his comeback to Rio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh9jAD1ofm4

“Thank you, Mom”
Olympic ad themes can start to look pretty similar. But Procter & Gamble found an original approach in reviving its “Thank you, Mom” brand campaign. This uplifting commercial is a series of stories that focuses on the power of mom’s love. It doesn’t shy away from the difficult side of life, but reminds us that success heavily relies on the people who support us along the way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ3k6BFX2uw

In 2016, brands have been working hard to harness the excitement and pride of the Games. By tapping into human emotion, the Olympics are a powerful opportunity to turn a passionate fan base into participants – and ultimately, brand ambassadors. In order to be the gold standard, brand campaigns must be creative, culturally relevant, and embrace the values that are unique to the Olympic experience.

Brand Decisions: Rational, Emotional, or Both?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Brand decisions come down to neuroscience?

Neuroscience is telling us that every “rational” decision is surrounded and influenced by emotions. So what does that mean for brands? Brand decisions are neither rational or emotional – they are invariably both.

But how do you work with an insight like this?

How do you bring an emotional dimension to your brand, especially if today it is emotionally neutral?

How do you change the behavior of your brand – and the people behind it – so that every interaction is either striking, or responding to, a relevant emotional chord?

How do you do this in a way that isn’t seen as exploitative, self-serving and mercenary?

Continue reading “Brand Decisions: Rational, Emotional, or Both?”

Mindful Leadership Leads to Meaningful Business

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

Mindful Leadership

“I believe leaders are most inspiring when their message is deeply personal and yet resonant with the concerns of others.” – Gianpiero Petriglieri, INSEAD

There’s a parallel between what makes a strong leader and what defines a meaningful business.

As my recent interview with

Mindful leaders combine a strong sense of self purpose with a capacity to make that purpose meaningful to others

Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at INSEAD underscores, a key driver of effective 21st Century business leadership will be mindfulness.

Mindful leaders combine a strong sense of self purpose with a capacity to make that purpose meaningful to others

The discipline of emotive branding strives to create mindfulness at an organizational level. It looks deep inside a business for the seeds of meaning. From these, it articulates a strong purpose – one that deliberately goes beyond profit – that serves as the bridge to the concerns of others. It then outlines the steps the business needs to take to change the way it speaks and behaves as it reaches out to the people vital to its success (customers, prospects, employees, recruits, partners, suppliers, investors, and so on). Thus, the brand strategy is built.

As such, the “organization message” we help businesses create is “deeply personal” in nature (authentic, genuine, true to itself). It also is crafted to resonate with the concerns of others through personal relevance (“this makes sense”; “this matters to me”) and emotional connection (“this feels worthwhile”; “I feel gratified”).

Mindful leaders attract great followers.

Meaningful businesses turn that energy into industry leadership

Read  full interview with Gianpiero Petriglieri here.

Emotive Brand is a brand consulting firm.

The Language of Meaningful Brands

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

“Actions speak louder than words.” This adage is at the core of our beliefs about great branding. As we say, our most valuable contribution to a brand’s strategy is nothing but a set of words until the brand and its people act upon them.

Continue reading “The Language of Meaningful Brands”

Good Leadership Character Leads to Good Brand Strategy

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

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.

Continue reading “Good Leadership Character Leads to Good Brand Strategy”