Emotive Branding Archives

Infusing a Brand with Big Heart Begins with Big Thinking: How Small Design Cues Can Generate Great Big Feels

Posted on May 1, 2023November 22, 2024 by Robert Saywitz

“We need to make our brand feel human. It needs to reflect our people and our customers. We need to tell a human, emotive story.”

This is how a lot of our conversations about brand design begin. If we were designing for packaged goods that sit on a shelf and give people a tangible representation of your brand, we’d have a well defined experience to address. But most of our work takes place behind the scenes in the B2B and tech space. There are no shelves or stores mediating the process, no physical objects or packaging. There’s sparse or no direct interaction with the end-user. And the technology itself is invisible which increases the challenge of crafting a bespoke visual identity that evokes emotion.

Curating a distinct visual style is table stakes when developing design systems. But we’ve seen that in B2B branding, sometimes the smaller, more nuanced design moves can transform a smart visual identity design into a deeply evocative brand that evokes just the right feelings. Because these design moves don’t hit people over the head, they may not fully register at first glance, but over time, they shape the response people have to a brand.

A sense of (e)motion

Motion elevates the game. While static logos aren’t going away, just about every brand needs to move in some way, shape or form—whether it’s a dynamic logo or a kinetic design system that pushes the limits. And it’s often the little moments that spark delight—the sudden blink of a circle, the anthropomorphic smile in a lowercase ‘e’, or a subtle twinkle of light to punctuate a moment in the story. It’s these moments that draw people deeper into the brand story in the same way that physical packaging might speak directly to a consumer with an elegant serif font or bespoke illustration.

Our recent work to rebrand Katapult—an AI platform behind the e-commerce scenes that gives customers a fair way to pay for their purchases online—was an opportunity for our team to bring all the heart, feeling and optimism of the customer to the forefront of the brand. Sure, the photography needed to capture the heart and goodness underlying the brand, but we had to go deeper. So we used their name as our launching-off point, or catapult, if you will. Rather than trying to force all of our storytelling into a logo symbol, we crafted a wordmark that evokes the feeling of the human hand signing for a bill of goods. That calligraphic sense of motion led our team to develop something more emotive than just a symbol—a brand feeling of being uplifted and elevated. This feeling—which came to be known as “The Bounce”—comes through at every turn, from the upward curve that literally bounces off screen, guides storytelling in infographics, or connects images, words and ideas together. Ultimately, “The Bounce” became more than a visual component—it became a deeply felt personality trait of the brand—and something the client could really get behind as an emotive representative of the brand, something much greater than a traditional logo symbol.

Sonic branding

Just like the barrage of visuals that we experience every day, our world is filled with sounds (a lot of it noise). In addition to motion, sound has a similar capacity to evoke feelings and brings another dimension to what a brand—and more specifically, a logo—can do. Sonic branding adds a richness to the brand experience, often creating a more bespoke and lasting imprint on how you experience (and recall) a brand. The Disney+ logo that introduces their content is a good example of a small moment that adds a big feel to how you interact with their identity. Now, it may be that I’ve seen/heard their identity more times than I care to count while watching with my 7-year old, but there’s no denying how seeing AND hearing that magical beam of light swoop over the wordmark makes a deeper impression. It puts viewers into a state of curiosity and preparation for what’s about to come on screen. The ability to generate that lean-in feeling is a mark of a truly successful logo experience.

Our recent rebrand project for Pindrop included a sonic dimension to the brand. Because Pindrop is a pioneer in the voice technology space, creating a sonic brand was a strategic imperative. It was exciting to work with our partners at MusicVergnuegen to craft an audio component that brought Pindrop’s invisible, future-forward technology to life with a sound of a safe unlocking. Similar to Disney+, it’s hard not to smile when their logo symbol transforms and resolves on an audio crescendo. It’s the little things that often make the most impact.

Design needs to solve problems and deliver on the goals of the client but also has the great potential to unlock new ways of seeing, hearing and experiencing a brand. See (and hear) more of our work here and let us know if we can partner together to help solve your branding challenges.

Emotive Brand and Emotive Branding: Our Origin Story

Posted on August 24, 2022October 9, 2024 by Tracy Lloyd

Brands for the Better

The idea of emotive branding—and the creation of our agency, Emotive Brand—flowed from our desire to make a positive difference in the way people and brands interacted with each other. These were our goals:

Bridge the gap between commerce and civility.
Create brands that people appreciate, respect, and actively seek out.
Help employees of brands feel better about their jobs.
Make partners and suppliers vie for the opportunity to work with our clients.
See communities welcome our clients’ brands with open arms.

As a result of all of this goodwill, our clients’ brands would thrive and prosper.

Realizing the Value of Meaning Something More

We came to those goals through two major realizations:

First, as consumers ourselves, we noticed that only a handful of brands really went out of their way to mean anything to us. When they did make a connection, wow, it was love! We’d go out of our way to interact and engage these brands. We even felt disappointed when we had to settle for something less. We’d get excited when other people started talking about these brands and chimed in with our most recent, “I can top that!” story. These brands had come to mean something to us because they had a clear reason for being and made us feel something good time and time again.

On the other hand, zillions of brands never really hit our emotional radar. These brands meant almost nothing to us–even though we’ve heard about them or even bought and used dozens of the brands regularly.

A Problem in the “Brand Decks”

Second, as brand experts, we saw firsthand why so many brands fell flat–lackluster and bland–in the minds of customers. As designers, copywriters, and strategists, we work on virtually every aspect of communication from identity to websites to advertising to point-of-sale to employee recruitment and beyond. Behind each piece of work, there’s always a brief, and often attached to the brief is a two-hundred some page PDF titled “About the Brand.”

Reading through many of these so-called “brand decks,” we quickly recognized a problem. In fact, the “brand decks” were the problem.

Traditional brand thinking results from business people from branding agencies talking to business people within client organizations. The language they use is full of industry jargon, client-speak, and solely rational thinking. Everything is expounded upon, nothing is simplified, and little is made human. And after several rounds of review, the final documents show the scars of compromise.

And what do these documents lack? The brand’s meaning as defined by its reason for being (why it does what it does) and how the brand wants people to feel (how the brand connects emotionally with customers). Brand decks, on the whole, left out what matters most to us as consumers and businesses and what we admire most in the great brands out there.

So we asked the question: What if meaning was the entry point into brand thinking rather than an appendage at the end? And that, folks, is how Emotive Brand was born.

Learn more about our methodology emotive branding, how our approach challenges convention, and why emotive branding is a next generation brand strategy.

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

Navigating the New Norm: Fast Forward for Efficient Growth and Strategic Stability

Posted on April 26, 2021 by Tracy Lloyd

We work and compete in a fast-moving world, driven by an accelerating pace of technological and social change. The markets we compete in shift quickly, competition intensifies, and expectations rise. Flux is the new normal. This increases the pressure to enhance efficiency, sharpen competitiveness, and improve profitability—all at the speed your business demands.

As a brand strategy firm, we understand that many of our clients, especially those operating in crowded, in-flux categories, need a much more agile approach to address the changing dynamics reshaping their markets and business. To meet these needs, we developed Fast Forward. Fast Forward is a six-week process that focuses on the challenges your brand, team, and business face, prioritizes them, and gives you the tools to address them.

Fast Forward is an agile set of strategy development frameworks, tools, and practices designed to empower learning, gain superior return on capital, and accelerate implementation. It’s a more flexible process for overcoming the barriers to successful, timely activation of strategy. Fast Forward does exactly what its name suggests: moves your business forward, and moves it fast.

Your Fast Forward engagement is completely customized to your situation. The deliverables are defined by the challenges and opportunities you face and the strategic outputs you prioritize as most important. The speed and power of Fast Forward stems from its format and focus. Below is an outline of what we tackle each week to gain momentum and drive impact.

Weeks 1-2: Immersion and Audit
We embark on a comprehensive week of intelligence gathering and analysis. We dive deep into your brand, business, and industry, fully immersing ourselves to gain insights and understanding.

We’ll assess your current positioning to distinguish your brand from key competitors, interview stakeholders to gain a deeper understanding of what is and isn’t working, identify white space opportunities for you to own in market, evaluate your latest brand and product messaging, and present a comprehensive audit of our discoveries.

Week 3: Workshop
Based on our findings from the immersion and audit, we develop, explore, and workshop new ideas to enhance your positioning and messaging, ensuring alignment with internal teams.

Weeks 4-6: Develop, Refine, and Deliver
During the final phase of Fast Forward, we focus on producing your bespoke deliverables that will provide the highest possible value and impact on your organization. Below are just a few examples of deliverables you can choose from after we’ve aligned on the key challenges you are facing:

Implement your augmented positioning and messaging through website landing pages that stand out and move the needle
Refresh your sales deck to amplify the impact of your elevated story
Craft a narrative to align and empower cross-functional teams with a unifying vision and strategy to harmonize your efforts

At the end of the six-week engagement, your team will hit the ground running with renewed strategic clarity and the agreed upon market-ready strategic elements to achieve the transformations essential to creating durable value and returns.

The interior of the diagram represents the iterative process of our Fast Forward offering.

The goal of Fast Forward goes beyond just solving problems; it identifies new strengths with the potential to accelerate your performance by generating new levels of coherence and coordination among your activities, resources, and people. All too often we’ve seen that the 30,000-foot views of strategy do not succeed without successful on-the-ground execution. Such execution requires the commitment and belief of leaders and implementers.

Fast Forward involves your team throughout the process to ensure alignment and gives you a new cohesive approach to strategy and implementation. Is it time to Fast Forward your business? Are you looking to make an immediate impact?

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and creative agency that unlocks the power of emotion to propel brands, cultures, and businesses forward. We are a remote-first agency with a footprint in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Branding Project: Do You Actually Want Something Bold?  

Posted on January 21, 2021November 22, 2024 by Chris Ames

Make it Bold

There is a four-letter word that gets said during every branding project. No, not that one. The word is “bold” and no one knows what it actually means.

Perhaps it’s the word’s own sense of daring and fearlessness that has allowed it to march undaunted into every creative brief and client meeting, even when it is not requested. Enterprise software companies want to be bold. Insurance adjuster services want to be bold. Startups and law firms and logistic companies want to be bold. But do they really?

What it Is and What it Isn’t

Here’s what bold is: it’s uncomfortable. It’s the tallest leaf of grass daring someone to cut it. It will garner you some attention, sure, but it will also get you in trouble. It’s a willing and gleeful rejection of sameness at all costs.

Here is what bold is not: it’s not easy to get approved. It’s not a minor tweak that fears to disrupt existing perceptions. It’s not a new color and stock photo with the same logo.

When a client says, “We want something bold,” nine times out of ten it actually means, “I’m absolutely terrified of change.” Here’s the thing. As much fun as it is to put the blame on the client – and it is very fun – they are doing exactly what they are supposed to do. Be safe, be careful, don’t damage the brand.

The magic trick of a great agency is not coming up with a bold idea – it’s finessing the right visual applications and strategic frameworks for that bold idea to survive the cutting room floor. Some of that work simply comes down to educating your client on the branding process in general – what are these assets, what do they mean, how do we activate them?

Keeping Bold Ideas Alive

But the real heavy lifting for getting bold work through the guillotine unscathed starts in the design pitch deck. How do you present ideas? How much narrative, context, and scene-setting do you provide? Do you present the work on a sliding scale of safe to bold? Is it possible to rig the system by reordering the work to trick the client into the “right” choice? (Almost never.)

As far as I can tell, the only surefire way to keep a bold idea alive is to never put the onus of imagination on someone else. If you leave something up to someone else’s imagination, you’re letting them draw the constraints of what’s possible. The client’s version of what’s possible will always be smaller – that’s why they hired you in the first place.

Our design presentation decks are incredibly extensive. Every concept is supported by a narrative, an animated schematic that shows the influences that led to the design, and an ever-growing myriad of creative apps that span print, digital, product, social media, motion, and of course, swag. Even if the assignment is for a short-term execution, our concepts still show how the brand could potentially evolve the design over the next few years.

It’s a herculean amount of work and the inherent risk is that it goes to waste. But in taking the imaginative leap for the client, you inevitably end up further than if you let them define the starting line. If you’re a brand, the goal should be to hire an agency that will elevate your thinking and respectfully challenge what you think is absolute. That kind of agile relationship can lead into some, dare I say, bold territory.

Stay Nervous

Agencies can only do so much. If you really want to disrupt something (and seemingly everyone in Silicon Valley does), then your copy and design should make you nervous. If you’re working with a great agency, that nervousness will be tempered by a process of education and foresight.

Bold doesn’t have to mean reckless. It doesn’t have to mean shock value or clickbait or artificial flavoring. Bold is simply embracing the fact that there’s immense value in meaningful differentiation. Chances are you’re already comfortable using the word. Now it’s time to truly embrace the spirit.

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

B2B Brands Can Be Emotive and Should Be!

Posted on January 14, 2021October 27, 2024 by Tracy Lloyd

B2B brands deserve the same level of effort as their B2C counterparts

We were talking with someone the other week about emotive branding and they said, “Sounds great for consumer brands, but I can’t see it working for a B2B brand.” Well, we begged to differ! Indeed, we believe B2B brands have tremendous opportunities to differentiate and grow their businesses based on an emotive proposition.

Note that we didn’t say an “emotional” proposition.

Through “emotive” propositions we talk about B2B brands that reach out to people in a way that not only makes them think but makes them feel something memorably satisfying.

The Power of Emotive Branding in B2B

Emotive branding is about digging deep into a B2B brand’s products and services and finding emotional connections to the needs, beliefs, interests, and aspirations of people. (Don’t stop reading, this is the good stuff most B2B marketers overlook.)

It is about aiming for a meaningful outcome from your commercial endeavors; and recognizing that when you touch people in meaningful ways, they pay you back.

Your employees work with greater purpose and get more satisfaction from their work. Your customers become more loyal, spend more money with your firm, and recommend your brand to their peers. Your supply and distribution chains become more responsive to your needs.

Emotive branding isn’t about creating “emotional” advertising that gets people all misty-eyed about your widgets.

Rather, it is about conveying the meaning and evoking the emotions that draw people closer to you and sets you further apart from your competition.

And when B2B brands deliver in these ways, it is one of the most powerful ways to differentiate, grow revenue, hire top talent, and more easily deliver customer success stories.

Here are five additional reasons why B2B brands should actively pursue emotive branding:

1. Business audiences wake up as humans – From the CFO to the data scientist to the salesperson to the receptionist, everyone in your business wakes up as a living, breathing member of the human race; a race as driven by the way they feel about things as anything else. By marrying your rational message to distinct meaning and feelings, you connect to people on a human level (and, as you well know, people like to be treated that way).

2. B2B brands desperately need ways to differentiate themselves – Widgets easily blur into other widgets. It is increasingly difficult to differentiate on a product, feature, or service level as competitors find it easy to quickly duplicate innovation. So, where can B2B brands effectively differentiate? We think it’s by connecting to people on a higher level through meaning and feelings. It’s not as difficult as you think.

3. Engaging employees is vital for B2B brands – In many B2B scenarios, it is the company’s own employees who develop, produce, market, and sell their offerings. Creating a sense of common purpose, motivating people to work effectively, and encouraging them to promote a spirit of collaboration are important cornerstones for any B2B enterprise. Emotive branding provides these cornerstones by creating a sense of purpose and direction in a humanizing and welcome way.

4. B2B brands enjoy many deep brand moments – B2B customer meetings, a visit to the executive briefing center, and trade shows are deep brand moments that give B2B brands wonderful opportunities to convey their brand in new and differentiated ways and evoke positive feelings. Emotive branding offers interesting tools that help B2B professionals reconfigure, reshape, refine, and enhance these brand moments in often surprisingly subtle yet powerfully meaningful ways.

5. There’s proof in the pudding – All of us at Emotive Brand have B2B experience (as well as B2C). We’ve applied the principles of emotive branding in a number of B2B scenarios, including global enterprise software companies, high-growth technology companies, global consulting firms, and businesses leading with purpose.

Looking to set your B2B brand apart by connecting meaningfully to people and distancing yourself from the competition? Emotive branding is your answer.

To learn how emotive branding works, download our white paper below:

Download White Paper

Emotive Brand is an Oakland brand strategy and design agency.

Making the Case for a Rebrand

Posted on January 10, 2019 by Chris Ames

Rebrands are for Firebrands

Not everything in the branding world is relatable. For the average person, chatting about go-to-market strategies or employer brands isn’t exactly scintillating dinner party conversation. But there is one thing that ignites fiery debate and criticism, even from those without any skin in the game, and that is the curious case of the rebrand.

I’ve had multiple conversations with people who, though they have never expressed an interest in any other aspect of branding before, suddenly discuss the latest logo change, mission rewrite, or app redesign with a passion normally reversed for movies or sports.

And I think that’s because there’s something inherently emotional and human at the heart of a rebrand. It’s a vulnerable desire to reinvent yourself, shed what’s holding you back, and reenter the world with a clean slate. Who doesn’t want that? Plus, for better or worse, people wrap their own identities into the brands they love. When a brand changes without your consent in a strange direction, it can feel like a personal attack.

Standing Still Is Not an Option

For a business, this heightened emotional state can be a blessing or a curse. People are either going to cheer on your transformation, or feel offended, cheated, manipulated, or worst of all, bored. And like all things, executing a successful rebrand takes a considerable amount of time and money. So, why would a brand roll the dice on a high-risk, high-investment bet? Because in life and business, the only thing worse than a misstep is standing perfectly still.

Too often, rebrands are only discussed when a business is trying to disassociate itself from a negative image. And with the ubiquity of Wells Fargo’s apology tour, we don’t blame you. But the truth is, even well behaving, top performing brands constantly have to ask themselves questions, like: Is our story still relevant? Do we need to streamline our services under one cohesive identity? Are we still attracting top talent? If not, it’s time to make the case for a rebrand.

Telling the Whole Story, Example: WeWork

WeWork, the co-working startup that launched in 2010, is known for renting out office space on flexible terms, but co-founders Miguel McKelvey and Adam Neumann clearly have ambitions far beyond the co-working craze. In 2018 alone, they opened a private school called WeGrow and a physical store called WeMrkt. Neumann has even expressed a desire to one day have entire WeWork Communities, where everything from your apartment to the school your children attend is brought to you by WeWork.

As their service offerings change over time and their brand story becomes larger and more meaningful, they have rebranded to match. The “We” in “WeWork” has become a parent brand of sorts, encapsulating all of their different products – and what a perfectly fitting container. For years, they have been driven by the power of community. As stated on their mission page, they are a place where “you join as an individual ‘me,’ but where you become part of a greater ‘we.’” Now, that “We” is a flexible support structure to hold all of the new product developments they will drive in 2019 and beyond.

Reaching a New Target Audience, Example: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Politicians tend to be in touch with graphic design and branding about as well as they are with how most Americans actually live their lives. Considering how blunt, clunky, and meme-driven the political discourse has become, it’s easy to forget that each politician is essentially a unique brand under the larger umbrella of their party.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s primary victory over Rep. Joseph Crowley in New York’s 14th Congressional District was stunning for a variety of reasons. For one, her campaign’s radically designed posters and buttons were actually stunning, designed by Maria Arenas of Tandem NYC.

Ocasio-Cortez, representing the 192-year-old Democratic Party, faced a challenge that many legacy brands must deal with: how do you deal with a rapidly changing target demographic? Her grassroots campaign sought to speak to a different voter base and audience – and that required a different visual language. One that embraced visual text-framing devices styled as speech bubbles, symbolizing a vocal, pluralistic approach to politics. It immediately conveyed a more diverse racial, cultural, generational, and ideological representation in the face of career politicians.

Keeping Up in a Brutal Landscape, Example: Toys “R” Us

After 70 years in business, Toys “R” Us stores across the U.S. shut down last June. For many, it was an oddly heartbreaking moment when the last vestiges of childhood went officially bankrupt. And while you can certainly blame Amazon, Walmart, and all the other one-click delivery monoliths, the guiltiest party of all was us. For one reason or another, we fell out of love with the brand and lost the magic that we kindled as children.

Toys “R” Us is a particularly interesting case study because we actually have a glimpse of where the brand was heading before they closed. In the liminal space between bankruptcy and liquidation, Toys “R” Us CMO Carla Hasson and Creative Director Lee Walker enlisted the branding and design firm Lippincott to reestablish their relevance for a new audience: parennials, or millennial parents, that grew up in the aisles of Toys “R” Us. Along with a series of delightful animated videos, the firm honed in on the backward “R” as the piece of the brand with the most equity and nostalgic affinity.

The work is fascinating because you can actively see the firm working to solve the problems of a legacy brand that waited too long to make a change. Questions of retaining brand equity, maintaining relevance, and creating a memorable impression that will stick with your customers are all being tested. The work is a cautionary tale and a reminder of the power of rebranding.

Rebranding Is Problem Solving

As Aiden Cole, Cofounder of NTuitive.social, says, “Rebranding for the sake of rebranding is a waste of time and energy. Understand what problem you are trying to solve and figure out if rebranding will fix it. If your customer base has changed, new customers are coming back and you are altering your entire business, then yes, rebrand. But if you are simply having a slightly off year, don’t spend the time.”

Rebranding is no slight thing. But if you’re looking to revamp your products, focus, or reputation, it just might be the answer. To learn more, contact Founding Partner Tracy Lloyd at [email protected].

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design firm in San Francisco.

San Francisco Branding Agency Shares New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on January 4, 2018 by Tracy Lloyd

We promise to…

Deliver Business Results

Our clients hire us because they are looking to solve business problems. We know how to successfully enable growth by delivering positioning strategies that differentiate, brand campaigns that fulfill on marketing and sales goals, and deliver employer brand strategies that engage global employees around why the brand matters. Our work continues to drive business for our clients in a way that is transformative. We are focused on standing behind our work and delivering a strong ROI on every project.

Continue to Lead with Purpose

We stand behind the belief that purpose is at the core of any good brand. When purpose and brand are perfectly aligned – when what you do = what you say – you’re firing on all cylinders. We will continue to help unearth our client’s purpose so that their brands can flourish in 2016.

Evoke Emotions to Help Brands Connect with People

The feelings brands produce are not consequential, but essential. We will continue to explore how to peel away the layers – inside and outside a company– and arrive at the core of a brand’s emotional impact. This emotional understanding helps brands build powerful, meaningful, and vital connections with their audiences. Emotional impact is the greatest impact a business can make.

Drive Business, with Empathy Behind the Wheel

Empathy is the driver of any successful brand strategy. We work to shift perspectives, introduce a different lens, and examine a brand from every angle. Empathy is crucial to humanizing a company and helping build brands that understand the people crucial to their success.

Share What We Believe

We’ll continue to write and share our thoughts on the subjects that matter most to you by being aware of the content you most enjoy and share. It inspires us to inspire you. That is what being a thought leader is all about. We are committed to more, to better lead and inspire you.

Continue to Collaborate

The theory and practice of collaboration is how we’ve always worked. We know that the best ideas are the ones that result from a diversity of thought, generosity of spirit, and the courage required to bring new thinking to life. We know this is the kind of collaboration that transforms business. We promise this year will be no different.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Emotive Branding: Becoming a Global Movement? A Fellow Agency Share Its Thoughts

Posted on November 7, 2017 by Saja Chodosh

Kindred Agencies Building More Meaningful Brands

At Emotive Brand, we work to build meaningful brands that can change the trajectory of a business. Purpose and feelings sit at the heart of what makes our approach different.

The awesome thing about sharing our unique methodology of emotive branding with the world is discovering like-minded people and agencies. Throughout our 8+ years, we’ve connected with agencies from across the world. From Amsterdam to South Africa, there are others who believe what we believe about brands – emotive brands drive business.

Recently, a kindred-spirit agency of ours, the Brand Station from South Africa, made their way into our own studio. We have been digitally connected with Brand Station for years, but hadn’t yet met them in person. If there was only one thing we gathered from meeting in person, it’s that the world (yes, the whole world) is ready for emotive branding. If there was ever a time for purpose and meaning, it’s now.

Read our interview with the Brand Station to find out why.

So what brings you to Oakland? It’s not a short trip here from where you call home.

We love Cape Town. It’s home. But we needed to step out of our own playground and gather some new inspiration. Hit refresh a bit. We’ve been traveling all over – across the ocean, across the states, down the coast. We hit LA next. But for right now, we’re just soaking in this Bay Area magic. And we couldn’t be happier to finally be in the Emotive Brand studio – it’s taken too long. We are thrilled. Traveling and meeting new people really fuels our creativity and passion. We are going to go back home feeling inspired and refreshed.

How did you get connected to Emotive Brand? Why did you stay connected?

In 2012, our agency friends in Amsterdam told us we had to get connected. That our three agencies were all doing similar things in different parts of the world. We all cared about building meaningful, purpose-led brands. So we had a Skype session and we started an Emotive Transformers group online. We became knowledge partners. We became friends.

Knowledge partners? Like you would exchange ideas, learnings, and challenges with each other?

Exactly. Exchanging ideas would strengthen our thought process. Thinking about emotive branding became a kind of school of thought. And together, by discussing our challenges and wins, we could strengthen our methodologies and processes and ultimately innovate together. Whenever we did talk, I would think, this should be done more frequently. We could ask questions like “all of us follow a pretty linear process – but maybe there is another way?” Things like that that unlock new possibilities.

What are some of the relevant challenges your agency is facing lately?

Our ultimate challenge – what faces most agencies today – is what do our clients really need? How can we be more client-centered? How can we fulfill our clients’ immediate needs? In fact, lately, we’ve thought about devolving into five different companies that all have the same core – meaning and purpose. One company could be a campaign studio, another a design studio…Basically it’s a solution for creating clarity and making it easier for people to approach us and understand that we can actually solve their problems. A lot of the time in branding, you are offering the same thing – brand strategy – but you have to put a different name on it so people get it.

Another challenge we’ve been thinking about lately is that a brand strategy that’s left in a deck or a brand book has little to no meaning. Activating the strategy – that’s what matters. We’ve been focusing on activation lately. How does the brand live that strategy? How do people live the brand every day?

At Emotive Brand, we have our own way of defining emotive branding. How would you define it? What does it mean to you and your clients?

To us, emotive branding is a framework. It’s an authentic way of thinking and looking at things. We actually never put emotion into something. We just help infuse the emotion that’s already there – maybe it’s hidden – into the brand so that people can get behind its purpose. We assess brands, redefining and rediscovering what they can offer to the world and in what ways. Our favorite brands to work with are purpose-driven already. Our job is to make sure that purpose comes to life in everything that they do and say.

What are some major shifts you’ve seen in branding since you founded the Brand Station?

Branding used to be super design driven. Most branding agencies were founded by people who came from design agencies – like Emotive Brand. Strategy was kind of in the slip stream for us. Now, we’re strategy-driven and strategy-focused. Our first clients were brave to do the insights and research parts of our process. Now, that’s always where we start. We’ve also moved design in-house which wasn’t always the case. This helps integrate the two and make sure that all our design is directly tied to strategy.

We’ve talked a lot about things that Emotive Brand and the Brand Station have in common. What’s different? I assume branding in South Africa means something slightly different?

Can you think of a South African brand you know of the top of your head? Probably not. That’s our problem – we don’t have any national brands that we can all be proud to call South African. Because of our history, brands have to have a deeper meaning in South Africa. People are always changing and often fickle. That’s part of the reason why we set out on this journey – we wanted to help create the South African brand. The Nike of South Africa. For us, it’s all about building brands that we feel our country can proudly rally behind. That vision fuels us forward. Most of our favorite clients are brands that want to start some kind of movement. But a lot are too humble to start it on their own.

As business and life partners you must think highly of collaboration?

We both believe strong collaboration can propel a business forward. And yes – a good partnership always inspires. Just like Bella and Tracy, we both have our strengths and our interests. And we complement each other. We are always there for one another – in life and in business. Plus, we always take time to have a little fun.

Do you think more people are getting on board with purpose and meaning?

Yes, definitely. Now, every agency is claiming that they are purpose-led. This is exciting because, like Emotive Brand, we were at the forefront of this moment. But it’s also a challenge. In the end, I think agencies who are focused on authenticity and meaning are going to come out on top. People are demanding more authenticity and more meaning for a reason. With all the empty marketing out there, being purpose-led has to ring true at every touchpoint. And I know Emotive Brand feels the same way.

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

Authentic Brands Just Feel Right: Inject Purpose and Feeling

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Saja Chodosh

Everyone’s Claiming Authenticity

Where are all the authentic brands? In today’s world, where curation is everywhere, vacuous claims are made left and right by brands, and people are inundated with meaningless media content, authenticity is a hard feeling to come by. You can’t visit a website or see an ad where you don’t see brands declaring that they are, in fact, “the most genuine and the most trustworthy.”

The problem is, with so many choices and so much available content, people see right through brand claims that don’t ring true. And because declarations of “authenticity” don’t always ring true, the whole concept has lost some meaning and gained some skepticism.

But Authenticity Still Matters

Finding the authenticity in a brand and making it resonate true at every touchpoint is still one of the most important things a brand today can do. It might be more difficult, but it is also more critical. It requires getting to those important nuggets of brand truth so that a brand can consistently deliver on promises and interact at with integrity at every touch point. Authentic brands lead with purpose and are emotive in nature.

Authenticity that Feels Right

At Emotive Brand, we help create brands that just feel right – helping them evoke very specific positive feelings in the right ways, with the right people, at every brand touchpoint. At the heart of this, is finding the authenticity in a brand.

Recently, we’ve been working with a very successful, 2nd generation family business entrenched in the coffee world where empty claims of “authenticity” are everywhere. Tired with competitor’s meaningless assertions, they looked to us to help articulate authenticity in a different and meaningful way.

Like we do in any client engagement, we dove into their business and kicked the tires of their brand. We conducted a discourse analysis and a competitive audit and we got to know the landscape of the industry. We met the family who started the business over 35 years ago, toured the facility, observed the ways the employees interacted with each other and the family, learned about their innovative processes, unique and supportive farming relationships, and every step along the supply chain that brings their coffee to life.

You could tell right away, this family operated its business in a way that we’ve never seen before, and it inspired us. Seeing the innate warmth and friendliness of their family flow into their entire way of business helped us unearth an important brand truth: this company was a family that did business like a family, in every way. And this was different from the norm. They treated everyone like family: their employees, their farmers, their retailers, everyone.

This insight alone allowed us to realize the emotional impact the brand had to evoke the story it had to tell, and how it had to tell it. The work of our team became all about finding a new way to express its authenticity in a way that was not boastful, but authentic to who they are and how they behave. They are authentic because that’s always been the only option– it’s just who they are and how they’ve always done business.

The Ah-Ha Moments of Authentic Brands

Uncovering meaningful brand truths and gain an understanding of what will really connect with people and ring genuine is key to any brand looking to create significant experiences today. And when you get to those authentic truths that sit at the heart of any brand and you share them with the people close to the business, they just feel right.

Nothing beats the feeling of being able to reimagine a brand in a fresh and authentic way. It’s an ah-ha moment for everyone in the room. You’ve identified something that just feels so true. That stands out. This help gets the entire organization excited about the new trajectory of the brand and confident that this is a story they can tell and really stand behind – proud and tall. And that’s what authenticity is really about.

Click here to read a case study for another authentic brand and client that needed a new way to think about what made them truly unique.

Emotive Brand transforms the way brands reach out to people, and how people respond back to brands.

Authentic brands interested in learning how to transform your brand into a more authentic, meaningful and emotive brand? Download our white paper.

Brand Evolution: Keeping Greatness, Adding Appeal

Posted on April 6, 2017 by Tracy Lloyd

What is brand evolution? I think I found a solid example. I recently came across these photos showing two models of the classic Porsche 911.

50 years separate the two models, yet the clarity of the design concept are obvious in both generations.

It is a brand “evolved”.

Emotive Brand is about taking what is good and great about your business and brand today, and evolving it for a new generation, a new audience, or for the addition of a new product.

It is about transforming the presence and feeling of your brand to make it more relevant and appealing, given how the rest of the world has changed.

Just as Porsche has integrated new technology over the years, a meaningful brand integrates new insights about what matters for people in the 21st Century.

Meaningful Brands

Meaningful brands add a new, higher-level purpose to what they do – something that goes beyond simply going from A to B.

They also find ways to evoke positive emotions throughout the brand experience they create.

They still imagine, design, build, market and service their products, but with a new intent.

They still manage processes, have meetings and make sales calls, but with a new attitude.

They still do the business of business, but with a new, and more meaningful behavior.

They still create and design product, but with a renewed empathetic view of what people want, need, and desire.

Emotive branding doesn’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

It evolves what is great about your business and brand, and transforms it to be more relevant, meaningful, appealing and differentiated for the future.

If you are interested in a recent brand evolution project, please visit our work.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy firm.