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Tag: Empathy

New Opportunities for Insurance Brands Today: Disruption Plus Meaning

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

The Force of Digital for Insurance Brands Today

According to Network World, we touch our phones an average of 2,617 times a day. There is no underestimating the role of digital today. And with the proliferation of technology, consumers have come to expect a better insurance experience – one that is more meaningful, consistent, and trustworthy.

Right now, trust is low and insurers are struggling to move away from the “unfair,” “horrible,” and “outdated” reputation that surrounds most providers today. This means not only embracing new, innovative tech, but using digital to power personalization, build deeper levels of empathy, and create more meaningful and differentiated experiences for consumers.

Lack of Satisfaction Opens New Doors

New ways of buying insurance are appearing in the marketplace. According to Fast Company, 70% of consumers expect a self-service option for handling commercial questions and complaints. 64% of millennials expect self-service. In an HBR global survey, more than 65% of customers said they would think seriously about buying insurance products from non-insurers. More specifically, 23% said they would buy insurance from Google or Amazon-like online providers.

By 2020, our workplaces will include individuals spanning five generation. This means one-size-fits-all solutions should be going extinct. Insurethebox is one company leading the telematics trend. The brand gathers driving behavior data and rewards drivers for safe driving. These kinds of trades – consumer information for the chance of lower costs – are becoming more commonplace and are likely to enter the healthcare industry soon. New models like “pay as you go” are gaining popularity as well.

Insurance Brands: Building Better Experiences

The research points to the same underlying fact: people are looking for something more. While many insurance companies are focused on offering lower costs as a means of differentiation, research has shown that people are actually willing to pay even more for insurance if it means getting better coverage, better experiences, better advice, transparent and simple communications, and products that are customized to their unique needs.

This is a huge opportunity for those insurance brands that can get the customer experience right. Here’s how.

1. Empathy

Because insurance companies often interact with customers during emotionally-charged events, stress, anxiety, and uncertainty are common feelings surrounding brand interactions. This creates higher stakes for brands looking to connect with their customers in the right ways. An empathetic approach is always best. Great benefits help show you really care. So does consistent, warm, and responsive service. As technology advances, staying human amidst a digital world becomes even more important. Cold, distant insurance companies looking to earn customer loyalty have no place in an industry that demands high emotional intelligence and consistent, trust-provoking behaviors to succeed.

2. Personalization

Personalization was the buzz of 2016 – and is still the buzz. 73% of global marketers today believe they must deliver a personalized experience to be successful. They aren’t wrong, and the insurance industry is no exception. Hyper-personalization may be the key to success. People are demanding care, assurance, and insurance that is more customized to their individual needs than ever before. Whether it’s offering a fuller range of pricing, products, and services or using data or new tech to drive personalization, if you want to compete, you need to figure out new ways to better tailor your offerings and experiences to the people who matter to your business.

3. Meaningful Experiences

Since customers must engage and interact with insurance companies at several touchpoints along their customer journey (some expected and some unexpected), there are many moments that can go wrong. There are also many moments that can go right. Looking at the customer journey as a whole is integral for any insurance company looking to create a meaningful experience. It’s not just about how one person interacts with a customer on the phone, but how the customer feels the first time they visit your site, log in to your online portal, receive their first bill, decide to sign you up for their business, etc. Mapping customer journeys can help identify important opportunities for more meaningful connections. Strategic mapping can also make sure you are living up to what you promise your customers at every moment.

Seizing the Opportunity

Now more than ever, insurance companies have an opportunity to take their business strategy and digital strategy and map these closely to their brand strategy. Recently, we helped position a company in the insurance industry. When our client gained clear alignment around the experiences they wanted to offer, it ensured that they were promising the right thing to the right people and delivering on that promise each and every day. For those insurance companies that can get this right, the benefits are endless. You will be able to better connect in meaningful ways that will enable both your business and your consumers to thrive.

Reach out to learn more about our client work and how we can help situate your business for success.

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

Machine Learning Is the New, New Thing. But Can It Help CMOs Build Brands?

Posted on by Carol Emert

Can big data build brands better?

A few years ago, Big Data promised to radically transform the marketing landscape. CMOs were warned to master it or watch their brands get left behind. Artificial intelligence was the next new, new thing. Now the hot property is machine learning, the data-crunching tool that can find patterns in big data and make them actionable.

Each of these innovations is truly transformative — and each has limitations. As machine learning gathers steam, let’s look at what it means for brands. Which challenges can machine learning tackle which still depend on human intelligence?

What is machine learning?

Simply put, machine learning is a form of artificial intelligence that uses high-powered algorithms to find patterns in huge datasets. By tracking the (mostly digital) behaviors of thousands or millions of anonymized individuals, machine learning can become predictive. For example, it can identify high net worth individuals and “rewind the tape” of their behaviors as they were climbing the ladder to financial success. It can then identify others who appear to be on the same ladder, so marketers can start nurturing their loyalty on the way up.

CRM platforms are using machine learning to understand the messages that drive engagement, then tailor content to people with statistical similarities. They’re replacing guesswork with statistically sound, automated methods.

So there are exciting ways that machine learning can help CMOs make their marketing organizations work smarter. But what can’t it do?

Don’t leave the human part out of the data part

There are four areas directly impacting brands where we think human intelligence – not machine intelligence — is absolutely required. They are: empathy and other emotions, creativity, insight, and aspiration.

Without these four things, you wouldn’t have a brand; you’d have an incorporated collection of business processes. It will be years, if ever, that a machine can substitute for these functions. Here’s why:

Emotions and empathy

The value of your brand is directly tied to what it means to people – functionally, but also emotionally. Building your brand requires an understanding of how it makes people feel and then a strategy for optimizing that emotional bond. This requires the ability to empathize with your audiences, to feel what they feel.

No machine can empathize with the feelings people have toward your brand. And no machine can develop strategies for optimizing those feelings. Machines can be smart — but they can’t feel.

Creativity

It’s true that software can be used for some limited creative functions. The Associated Press uses a form of artificial intelligence called natural language processing to write quarterly earnings reports, for example. But this only works for content that is templated, with known variables swapping in and out of a rote structure.

Brands by definition are completely unique. Every brand should have a distinctive voice, look and point of view that, combined, create a unique brand experience. Every brand touchpoint should deliver a consistent story. And only a human being can create and curate content that consistently tells and emotes the story of a brand.

Insight

Insight is a human skill that relates to both empathy and creativity. It’s a way of taking information and emotional understanding and evolving them into something greater than the sum of their parts. A machine can compute a fact like 1+1=2. It can’t compute an insight in which 1+1, as interpreted by the human gut, heart and brain, can sometimes magically equal 3.

Brand articulation is built on unique insights about how a brand relates to its target audiences, its competition and its cultural context. No machine can come close.

Aspiration

Every brand means something today and should aspire to mean more tomorrow. Aspirations and new ideas for achieving them aren’t facts that can be predicted by a machine. They’re the product of human emotions and human intelligence, dissatisfaction with the status quo, and yearning to achieve more.

At Emotive Brand, we’re excited about the new efficiencies machine learning can bring to CMOs and their marketing organizations. And we’re gratified to continue using our collective empathy, creativity, insights and aspirations to help our clients build great brands.

Have a peak at a few client case studies to see how we’ve helped CMOs build brands and use big data.

Emotive Brand is a  brand strategy firm working with leaders of high-growth companies to help build stronger brands.

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.

Building the Perfect Team? Is it Even Possible?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

A recent New York Times Magazine article, “What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team,” went viral and became one of the most emailed and widely shared stories for days – for good reason, in our opinion. Building a good team is a difficult task for most companies, organizations, agencies, classrooms, and families alike. And building the perfect team? That often feels impossible.

So why do some groups thrive? Why do others falter? Is there a key to team success? These were the questions Google set out to answer. Here’s our spin on what Google discovered.

Teams = Teams

The best teams are teams and not just collections of individuals. A team is bigger than the sum of its part – at least it should be.

Oftentimes, when people are placed in a team, they enter the group with already well-established boundaries and preconceived ideas about hierarchy, roles, and regulations. When this happens, the team focuses more on meeting deadlines and goals and their interactions become less collaborative. Of course, deadlines and goals are important for any organization, but the purpose of a team is much more significant. Teams should be focused on collaborating in pursuit of creativity and building new ideas. The best teams are the most collaborative ones.

So, try starting a team effort with a different mindset: collaborative, respectful, and honest. Think of your teammates as people who are on your side working towards a common good. Try to take advantage of their strengths, opinions, and experiences that each individual brings to the table, instead of trying to compete with one another, outperform another teammate, or simply please your co-workers or leader.

Empathy and Emotional Intelligence Matter

In their research, Google unearthed what separates good teams from dysfunctional ones, and the answer surprised them. It’s all about how teammates treat each other while working together.

When team members treat each other with respect and exhibit empathy and compassion, the overall intelligence of the team increases. When people are socially sensitive – for example, when they notice subtle signs of how others are feeling, such as tone of voice, facial cues, and body language – teams excel, producing better results.

In team situations, it’s important to take time to set aside your personal or professional motivations. Instead, notice the other people in the room. How are your co-workers feeling? How are you making them feel? How can you be more empathetic to their needs and desires? This kind of unselfish, empathetic mindset can help move your team and overall business forward as a whole.

Psychological Safety and Emotional Sharing

We’ve been saying this for years, but it was gratifying to read what Google wrote about this additional finding : feelings matter. A lot. Feeling safe, also known as psychological safety, matters more to building a successful team than any other factor – more than clear goals or establishing a culture of dependency. Feeling safe matters the most.

Which makes sense. You can’t be open, receptive, or even engaged if you’re fearful about your role in the team and/or how you’re being perceived.

The challenge is that psychological safety isn’t easily measured or implemented. There’s no simple formula for ensuring it, but communication, empathy, and connectedness definitely help to foster it.

Google discovered one easy and effective tactic for establishing and fostering psychological safety: emotional sharing. When people share something personal and human, they create authentic human bonds. In any human relationship, professional or personal, when emotional discussions become the norm (frequent, comfortable), the relationship becomes more successful.

So don’t just jump into the subject of the meeting. Start a meeting by asking how people are doing or feeling. Share something about yourself and show a little vulnerability. Be human. You are human. We all are. Why should that be different when you’re working with a team?

Experience > Optimization

Most business goals tend to focus on optimization. But Google’s research finds that team success actually hinges upon the experience of the team effort itself, not on optimizing team productivity.

How do people feel about the project? How do they feel about the future? Do clients trust their agencies? Do employees feel safe enough to share opinions and thoughts equally with peers? Lots of aspects of a business can be optimized, but a person’s feelings most definitely cannot. If you really want to succeed, don’t try to optimize teamwork; humanize it. By approaching team building in this way, you will create a naturally optimized environment.

All in all, it makes sense that an organization as performance-driven and innovative as Google would make such a strong effort to understand how teams work and how to make them work better. But the surprising takeaway is that the latest technology and careful planning don’t necessarily accelerate successful teamwork. The thing to do – and this fits in well with our experience at Emotive Brand – is to be human and emotive and learn to enjoy the experience.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy firm.

Stronger Brand Building: Why Emotions Matter

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Our brains encode emotional memories more forcibly than other data.

Looking for the keys to stronger brand building? Want people to remember your brand in deeper and more enduring ways? Wish they would act more deliberately on your brand’s behalf? According to brain science, emotion is the key.

I’ve long been preaching the idea that brands should generate a specific emotional aura as part of their every day brand experiences. I have urged them to evoke these selected positive emotions across the many interactions they have with people.

My thinking has been that by evoking emotions within the brand’s experiences, you are building the foundation for more positive and beneficial relationships with all the people that matter to your brand.

Furthermore, I’ve always sensed that emotion is the force behind our more enduring life memories. I’ve translated that thought in the branding context to mean that a strong, emotionally based connection will last longer. As such, these emotions are at hand during subsequent interactions with the brand – you might say “the pump is primed”.

Finally, I’ve long assumed that there is a compound effect, as subsequent interactions reinforce and increase the strength of the emotional connection.

The brain science that explains why emotion matters in brand building.

In his great book on empathy, Wired to Care, author Dev Patnaik explains how this connection works within our brains:

“The limbic system draws together many different elements of the brain to form an overall structure for handling emotional information…the amygdala is devoted to processing our emotions and those of other people. The hippocampus is essential in the formation of long-term memories. Together, the two regions serve to help us form long-term emotional connections with other people.

As it turns out, the more emotionally charged an event is, the more vivid it feels to our amygdala, which then helps our hippocampus to hold on to the event for the long term. That’s why our most emotional memories are also our most vivid ones. Our brains literally encode them more forcibly than they do with other data.”

How do you want your brand to feel to people?

There is a vast range of positive emotions that a brand can adopt as its own. For some brands, these can be very ambitious (e.g. fired-up) or very subdued (e.g. understood).

In our work, we’ve identified over 301 positive emotions. And for every brand we’ve consulted, there has always been a natural selection of four emotions that, when blended with the brand’s products, people, heritage, and ethos, have created something that is truly unique, clearly differentiates the brand, fosters meaningful brand building.

Which specific positive emotions would transform the way your brand reaches out to people, and the reasons that people happily respond back to your brand?

Download our white paper on Transforming Your Brand Into an Emotive Brand

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy firm.

Why Good Listening Matters in Business

Posted on by Paige Lansing Valle

Listen Up

There are a lot of differing opinions about what good listening really means, let alone what it can do for your business. In one camp, good listening simply means not speaking over others when they are talking. While others think listening is about verbal acknowledgement.  And there are those who wait until the speaker is done, then promptly repeat everything back to them. But are any of these really impactful, productive ways of listening?

Falling Short

This kind of one-dimensional listening falls short for many reasons. It isn’t what great listeners are actually doing – good listening is more than a one-way exchange. Saying “I understand” sometimes just isn’t enough. Especially in a world ripe with distractions. In fact, many argue that technological advances have made impactful listening increasingly rare.

Face-to-face conversations aren’t as common, and people’s levels of attention, engagement, and interaction have decreased because of constant emails, texts, and other device-produced distractions. Even when two people find themselves face-to-face, they are often not fully engaged.

But good listening – dynamic, thought-provoking, empathetic, free of distraction – is powerful. Giving energy to people, encouraging creativity, learning, innovation, problem solving, strengthening relationships, and helping people see things through a different lens is key to business today. Here’s why.

How We Listen

At Emotive Brand, our work requires effective listening. In order to get to the heart of our client’s business problems and help get leadership teams aligned around an impactful strategy, we need to be great listeners. It’s how we understand a business, its current situation, where it needs to go, and why. It’s also how we work effectively as a team to collaborate and create the most impactful strategy that will move our client’s businesses forward.

Here are some practices we’ve adapted that help foster good listening:

1. Asking questions:

Productive listening is about creating a two-way dialog. And this requires asking questions. Asking questions can generate new ways of thinking, foster creativity, challenge long-held assumptions, and fuel real, transformative change for businesses.

A lot of our work at EB is about asking questions – especially at the beginning stages. By listening, absorbing, and posing questions that move the conversation further, we move closer and closer to getting to the depth of business problems and creating solutions tailored for success.

2. Creating a supportive environment:

Productive listening hinges on creating an environment where both parties feel safe, especially when conversations are more complex. Making everyone involved feel safe and confident in voicing their individual opinions requires building trust and openness.

Listening becomes more productive the more you do it well. And often, the more someone feels listened to, the more they open up.

3. Making it collaborative, not competitive:

Listening should be part of a feedback flow not a competition about who’s right. It’s important to be willing to disagree as a listener, but it’s not about winning. It’s about coming to the best conclusion together through productive listening.

4. Putting away distractions:

Eye contact can go a long way. Sometimes, it’s necessary to put away cellphones and laptops in order to really be engaged during listening. The gesture itself makes a cue to people that you are fully present and really care about what they are saying.

5. Using nonverbal cues:

That being said, body language is key to successful listening. An open posture can indicate that you are open to listen and engage. On the flip side, cues like crossed arms or wandering eyes do not foster good listening.

6. Showing empathy:

Showing empathy is arguably the most important element of successful listening. It’s natural to disagree, but showing that you are trying to understand something from another person’s perspective can go a long way. You may even expand your own way of thinking. Seeing alternative paths and considering other opinions can foster innovation and creativity as well.

In our work at EB, we strive to get inside the minds and hearts of our clients and all of their integral audiences to really understand what’s going on. And showing empathy while we listen to these different perspectives is key to our success as brand strategists.

The Power of Listening in Business

Depending on the depth of the conversation at hand, different levels of listening engagement are needed in order to be productive. Good listeners know when to pull closer and also when to pull away. Sometimes, an affirmative nod is all that is needed. Other times, it’s more complicated. And knowing when to use these practices takes just that, practice.

Listening is a key part of how we do business, but it applies to every business – internally and externally. Good listening can lead to a more collaborative, productive, and inspired workplace. Businesses who listen to their outside audiences prove to be more successful because they understand their audiences, can adapt according to their shifting needs, and are constantly engaging to make the brand relationship stronger. Foster good listening skills to build a successful business and brand positioned to thrive.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy agency.

 

Is Your Brand Working to Positive or Negative Energy?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Strategies for addressing the energy of your business in good times and bad:

We came across this interesting insight by John P. Kotter in his post entitled “To Create Healthy Urgency, Focus on a Big Opportunity” on the Harvard Business Review blog.

“There are two basic kinds of energy in organizations.

  1. Energy triggered by a big opportunity, can create momentum in the right direction and sustain it over time.
  2. Energy based on fear or anxiety, might overcome complacency for a time, but it does not build any momentum or maintain it. Instead it can create a panic, with all the obvious negative consequences — stressing people out and eventually draining an organization of the very energy leaders wanted to generate.”

Many of our clients are burdened by problems and issues that are holding their business and brand back. Declining sales, unclear vision, an under performing workforce, lack of differentiation in the marketplace, the list goes on and on.

Continue reading “Is Your Brand Working to Positive or Negative Energy?”

Is it Time for Your Business to Embrace the Purpose Economy?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

According to Aaron Hurst, we’ve moved from the Information Economy to the Purpose Economy. He states that this is a natural evolution, which is taking us from the first levels of human organization, the hoe-and-plow Agrarian Economy, through the smokestacks of the Industrial Economy, to the data farms of the Information Economy, and now to the human-centric Purpose Economy. Each of these economies been built on top of the proceeding, and represent evolutions more than revolutions.

In his book, Hurst states:

“When I say purpose, I mean more than serving others and the planet. Service is certainly at the core, but in speaking with hundreds of professionals and reading thousands of essays, I’ve discovered that there are two other key sources of purpose people seek: a sense of community and the opportunity for self-expression and personal growth. In other words, they pursue personal, social, and societal purpose.”

Continue reading “Is it Time for Your Business to Embrace the Purpose Economy?”

Gaining Customer Trust Through Both Experienced and Sensed Empathy

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

Barclay’s Bank wanted to create a more empathetic understanding of customers with mobility issues. In this video, a Barclay’s office manager is outfitted with a special suit designed to recreate the physical world of his own elderly Mother.

The suit includes weights that make it hard for the manager to take steps, or to raise his hands. Goggles dim his vision and cast a yellow light over the scene. Headphones distort his hearing. Electric sensors make him feel the pain of arthritis in his joints. In this way, the manager literally “walks in the shoes” of his mother – and every other Barclay’s customer with restricted mobility.

It becomes vividly clear to the manager that the service isn’t aligned to the needs of the mobility impaired. By living directly through the experience, he shows others within Barclays where the minefields lie for such customers. He helps the people who create forms and devices better understand the role of design, and the people who design the physical structures of the needs of those with impaired mobility.

Continue reading “Gaining Customer Trust Through Both Experienced and Sensed Empathy”

How to Mindfully Lead Change

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Empathy in leadership

In this thought-provoking video, KPCB* partner John Maeda reminds us of the importance of empathy in leadership. He suggests that leadership is a design problem, and notes that the best design comes from people who ask and listen before putting forward their ideas.

Mindful leaders are, by nature, empathetic. They know that failing to listen first creates irrelevant communications and misunderstood gestures from leaders. As John Maeda says, “The people are there in the room, but nobody’s hearing what you say.”

Continue reading “How to Mindfully Lead Change”