Growth Archives

How to Launch a New Brand Category

Posted on March 4, 2019 by Tracy Lloyd

Launching A New Brand Category

The decision to join an existing category, or to launch a new brand category is not an easy decision. Evaluating your product maturity, the product roadmap, and overall market maturity is critical. Once the decision is made, the strategy shifts to creating the right budget and plan to launch the new brand category. Building momentum is paramount to both the category’s success, and by proxy, your own brand’s position as the category leader.

As we’ve previously discussed, timing is critical for launch. You need to consider factors of competition, messaging, production and market forces. And when the light is green, launching a new brand category with your brand as the de facto leader means getting buy-in, quickly. Building momentum for your new category, attracting important users and creating buzz necessitates its own strategy, one that has to be developed concurrently with defining and naming the new category.

Why New Brand Category Launches Fail

Just because you have a brilliant name doesn’t mean your category will be adopted. In fact, most fail. Lack of preparation, especially when it comes to budgeting, often results in categories that fizzle out. Businesses are often so focused on designing, manufacturing, and promoting their own product that they postpone the effort needed to market a newly developed category. And before they know it, it’s too late. The new category launch needs to lead your brand into the arena, not the other way around.

Common mistakes for launch include not creating enough context for the category, making claims about the category that fall short, failing to create enough distinction from competitive categories, missing the mark on customer education (people just don’t get it), or jumping the gun on timing. Creating a new brand category requires the same rigor as launching a new brand or new product.

When developing your strategy for launching a new category, these five tactics are key.

1. Be Consistent with Messaging

Just as you’ve developed and tested messaging around your brand, developing the messaging around your new brand category is equally important. Consistency is everything. In order to build traction, you’ll need competition, influencers, and customers to grab onto a clear and concise message. Everyone needs to be on the same page about what the category is, why it’s better than the alternative, and why it matters. It may be tempting to embellish the messaging with claims that make it sounds remarkable, but don’t. You’ll need messaging that is repeatable, authentic, and true to your brand in order to be picked up by your audience. Test the category messaging, and assuming it’s working, stick to it.

2. Generate Competition

It may sound counterintuitive, but when you are creating a category, competition helps legitimize a market and increases the size of the pie. Your brand will actually benefit if others are spending their marketing dollars to help popularize the value of what you are doing. The key, however, is to be first to market (see #1: owning the messaging around the category) – and continue to find ways to elevate yourself above the crowd, while maintaining both a product and thought leadership position.

3. Tap Into Influential Early Adopters

The snowboard surpassed the snurfer as a category when Burton came onto the scene with a posse of well-known surfers and skaters who were early adaptors of the new sport. They were not only the target audience for snowboarding. They had enough cultural clout to make snowboarding popular. When launching a new category, finding ambassadors with strong reputations will help raise awareness for and substantiate your category.

4. Popularize

Otherwise known as PR. Keep in mind that the category is the focus of the PR efforts, not your brand. Focus on cultivating buzz around the category in an authentic way. This requires some restraint on behalf of your brand. Drawing too much attention to your brand right out of the gate is a misstep. This is because people won’t yet have a way of talking about it. So create context first. Then, generate conversations around the category with a strong media presence (industry influencers, bloggers, press, and social media should all be activated). The buzz around your brand will follow.

5. Educate Customers

Host conferences and events – both in person and online – that use the category name. Educating customers about the category should be the central driver for marketing. Build your reputation without overselling yourself. Establishing industry user groups with digital meetups are powerful ways to spark conversations and create groundswell with a wide audience. With enough momentum, your brand’s leadership will be in position as a thought leader. And further embedding the category and subsequently your brand in customer’s minds.

The Rewards of a Strategic Category Launch

Identifying a new category and building it from scratch can serve as a powerful path to growth for your brand. And the effort involved pays off. Category creators experience fast growth and receive high valuations from investors. Creating a new category, your brand will be in a solid position to surpass the competition. Or break into a flooded market. On top of that, your brand will be positioned to own the category as the de facto leader. Category creation is nothing short of a game changer.

This post is the 4th in series on brand category creation. Learn When to Create a New Brand Category, How to Create a New Brand Category, and Naming a New Brand Category.

Download our White Paper on Brand Category Creation.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy firm.

The Value of Investing in Your Brand to Drive Long-Term Growth 

Posted on January 8, 2019November 22, 2024 by Chris Ames

Attention Span Is Dead, Long Live Attention Span

For years, we’ve been told that our attention spans are shrinking. There is so much information, so many channels and devices vying for our attention, that we couldn’t possibly focus on anything for too long. Combine that with economic pressures, shareholder expectations, and the race to keep up in the digital age, and you get something called short-termism.

Fueled by our fixation on metrics, short-termism is a concentration on quick wins to move the needle. It posits an immediate, attention-grabbing impact over strategically driven, brand-building initiatives that have a higher long-term ROI.

Shorterm-ism Is Shortsighted

This type of thinking is contagious because for those who are tasked with moving the needle – whether it’s sales, marketing, or social media analytics – the pressure to demonstrate an uptick in growth is relentless. While you may signal towards growth in the short-term, this strategy erodes the underlying brand equity and robs you of a chance at something sustainable.

Beyond being unsustainable, it sets up a false dichotomy – that short-term growth and long-term brand building are mutually exclusive ideas. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Investing in your brand is the easiest way to drive – and most importantly, maintain – growth.

Play the Long Game

McKinsey’s research covered more than 600 large and mid-sized publicly listed companies in the U.S. over the preceding 15 years. They found that firms with long-term strategies had 47% more top-line growth than other companies, 36% higher earnings, and added an average market capitalization of $8.67 billion.

Similarly, a U.K. study by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), which analyzed 500 effectiveness case studies over 20 years, showed that long-term campaigns were three times more efficient than short-term campaigns, three times more likely to drive market-share improvement, and 60% more likely to deliver profit improvement.

Brand Building Is Worth the Burn

So, if long-term brand building is much more conducive to growth, why do so many people fall for the trap of short-termism? Because brand building is difficult. We demand everything from brands. Consider this excerpt from Barbara E. Kahn’s book Global Brand Power:

“A brand must be elastic enough to allow for reasonable category and product-line extensions, flexible enough to change with dynamic market conditions, consistent enough so that consumers who travel physically or virtually won’t be confused, and focused enough to provide clear differentiation from the competition. Strong brands are more than globally recognizable; they are critical assets that can make a significant contribution to your company’s bottom line.”

That’s a tall order, but it’s a necessary one if you truly want to grow. A focus on long-term brand building doesn’t mean you can’t have quick wins. Sometimes, quick wins are necessary to boost morale or capitalize on a time-sensitive trend. It just means that each endeavor needs to ladder up to larger brand strategy.

In a conversation on brand building, Angela Richards, KFC’s Group Marketing Director, discussed the importance of creating lasting emotional connections, even when the immediate goal might be a short-term tactical one.

“We have a really big innovation funnel and a really strong retail calendar, but for us more recently, that functional retail calendar has morphed so the brand directs the retail calendar – and the brand’s job is to create that emotional connection,” she said. “It’s okay now to say we are less reliant on new product development to drive those sales, because that emotional connection of the brand leading the retail calendar is driving core sales and core growth.”

The Magical 60:40 Ratio

The big challenge for CEOs and CMOs is finding the perfect balance between the short and long-term. Unsurprisingly, the aforementioned IPA study highlighted the fact that long-term brand building campaigns and short-term activation campaigns worked best in synergy. Strong brands had better results from their activations channels and strong activations, in turn, drove more sales for the brand. On average, they found that “effectiveness seems to be optimized when around 60% of the communications budget is devoted to brand building, and around 40% to activation.”

Whether it’s the mad rush to keep pace with the digital era, the lure of immediate ROI, or simply a lack of education around the importance of brand building, many companies are sacrificing an enduring market share for quick wins. As McKinsey and IPA have demonstrated, correcting this balance is essential if you want your growth to last.

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

Sales: The Critical Element of a Growth Company’s Brand

Posted on October 25, 2018 by Sara Gaviser Leslie

Sales and Brand: A Connection Worthy of Discussion

Sales teams exist to grow revenue and keep customers happy. They’re also brand builders and the face of the brand to many customers.

They hear what customers want and keep a pulse on the market. When it’s easy for sales to share their observations with product development and marketing, their feedback spurs product improvements, brand definition, and growth. The first step in this process, though, is for sales to provide a clear explanation of the problem their product solves.

Recently we caught up with Pier Barattolo, a sales leader with decades of experience in technology companies, to learn how he makes sure the market understands what he’s selling and why they need it.

Interview with Pier Barattolo, CRO at Density.io

First, can you tell us a bit about your previous roles and your current gig?

My first quota carrying job was in 1996. My current job, Chief Revenue Officer at Density, is my third CRO position. Our sales team is small, handpicked, and focused on building the foundation for high growth and scale. As CRO, I am responsible for partnerships and business development and although I do not directly own marketing, I have a strong voice and influence on all marketing related activities.

When you join a company, you tend to be a founding member of the sales team. Tell us where you start.

Yes, I’m usually one of the first—if not the first—sales person at a company. I work very closely with the founder / CEO to establish product-market fit and put in the processes to scale the business. I start by thinking about the critical messages we need to develop and then what will get prospects to talk to us and, eventually, purchase. I ask myself, “Who should care about us?”

It’s about keeping things really simple. At a previous company, I didn’t take the time to really define our reason for being and this left the sales team to do their own thing and had to figure it out on their own. It did not work out very well for us. Now, I always work to identify and focus on the problem we solve and put it in simple terms so that everyone can articulate and explain it.

Messaging is, obviously, easier when the problem is familiar to people. But it isn’t always. Have you ever worked at a company that was in a new product category?

Category placement is really important. You have to be really clear which category you’re in so others can place you. It’s hard to sell something to a company that doesn’t have any budget allocated to that product/solution. I’ve found that when a category is particularly new, education is really important. This is often a big issue for platform companies.

So how do you create a platform brand?

You can’t depend on the enterprise to understand the power of the platform. It’s the selling company’s job is to educate the enterprise on the platform’s potential, the specific applications and how it solves a specific problem for a specific executive / buyer. Unless widely adopted, companies do not go out and look for platforms.

At my current company, Density, our technology allows enterprises to measure occupancy by counting people passing through a doorway. We position ourselves as an analytics platform, driven by occupancy data. On its own, that doesn’t mean much to most people! We need to define the platform and also give examples of the things the platform can do and the problems it solves.

So how do you do that? How do develop a value proposition for each customer?

You need to get clear on what you do, how you do it, and begin to develop the proof points as quickly as possible. At Density, we have a device we install above a door that measures people going in and out of a space. The problem we solve really depends on the customer. When we talked to our initial customers, we looked for underlying trends and recurring problems. We identified initial applications that were common and valuable to our target audience and focused on those “use cases”: security tailgating, office space wastage, facilities management, and conference room and cafeteria planning. We give executives the necessary data to enable them to make better decisions.

Let’s talk more about brand. You’re in a very early stage. Do you focus at this point on the brand?

Brand recognition and brand awareness help potential buyers understand who you are as a company. You’ve got to invest when you can. When I join a company, I first focus on the problem we are solving and then how we solve it in a way that is differentiated and valuable to customers. That might not be the flashy brand stuff people see but it makes a big impact on the sales cycle. The better you define the problem and the solution, the easier it is to sell and the stronger your brand becomes.

Speaking of sales, what’s your approach to scaling the sales team?

I tend to make sure that I have a strong foundation that can withstand high scale—but at the right time. It doesn’t make sense to scale before you have a clear and repeatable product-market fit and go-to-market strategy. Although our technology is applicable to every Fortune 1000 company we’re targeting companies that align best with the use cases we are focusing on today. Once we see a repeatable process, we will add reps and allow them to apply the recipe many times across many accounts.

How can the sales team impact brand building?

First, arm them with what they need. Content is king. We make sure sales has the content – data sheets, pitch decks, case studies – they need right away. The content doesn’t have to be perfect but they need something. We iterate on and refine this content over time.

Speaking of iterating, our reps are key to our ongoing learning process. They are out there hearing about how customers see our brand, how they use our solutions, and how we can make it better. You have to use every customer interaction to learn. Then you bring that feedback back inside and adjust. And then you go out again.

Any closing thoughts?

I’d just say that when you start to think about how your brand matters to people, it’s overwhelming. I really try to stay focused. If we can do everything, it’s hard to do anything. Take it step by step and get straight on fundamentals first.

Pier makes it sound easy. But finding product-market fit and defining your value isn’t always simple. If you’re struggling to articulate the problem you solve or develop the use cases that communicate your value proposition, we want to hear from you. Emotive Brand understands the connection between positioning and messaging and sales. Let’s talk about how we can help you make your product more relevant to your customers and drive revenue.

Emotive Brand is a B2B brand strategy and design agency.

Business Growth Strategies for a Brand Turnaround

Posted on October 9, 2018 by Tracy Lloyd

Business Growth Won’t Last Forever

Business growth should never be taken for granted. Even when things look promising, your business could still be at risk for falling into a slump, or worse, taking a dive. It’s impossible to deny that the market is volatile and unpredictable. Competition is abundant, and all businesses lose market share at some point.

When revenue hits a speed bump, it’s common for leaders to anxiously ride it out. But when business growth really slows down, denial isn’t going to get you out of the rut. Leadership may react with a mad scramble to redirect the sinking ship: new products, new markets, or new acquisitions can transpire overnight. But if these changes occur in a C-suite silo, there’s a high probability your employees and core customers will feel left in the dark. And employees with varying ideas about the future and customers, who no longer feel connected to your business, can easily derail a growth strategy.

Misalignment only leaves more opportunity for your competitors to encroach on even more of your space. And when that happens, employee morale can sink deeper, recruiting becomes more challenging, and share prices may plummet as investors abandon ship. At this point your options are clear: execute a thoughtful, agile turnaround strategy or risk becoming obsolete.

Bringing Your Brand Along for the Ride

Some of the most common approaches to a turnaround strategy include increasing growth through new market penetration, tapping into new markets, pursuing alternate sales channels, developing new products, or expanding your customer base. Regardless of which avenue you follow, transforming your business without preparing your brand to adapt alongside it can jeopardize your plans for growth.

Consider the recent news of Tesla Motor’s offer to acquire SolarCity. With Tesla shares dropping 16% over the last year, Tesla turned to the acquisition as a business growth strategy. They could no longer afford to burn through the $2.2 billion dollars of the last 4 quarters. The acquisition was an obvious attempt to turn around Tesla’s business. The problem was that Tesla took the leap into solar energy without fully considering the consequences of the brand, and more specifically the people the brand matters to. And shares have plummeted even further since the deal’s announcement. What’s the cause? Apparently, investors aren’t on board with the idea of buying solar panels. Tesla misunderstood its target audience and will now have to backtrack to renew brand loyalty. Although this example shows long-term vision, business growth without a parallel brand strategy may have insurmountable long-term consequences for Tesla and SolarCity.

Map Brand to Business

Aligning your brand to your business as it undergoes a transformation is the best way to create a roadmap that is tailored for business growth. The vision for the business needs to guide all business decisions. By bringing your brand and business together, you’ll ensure that your business stays true to who you are, what you do, and why you matter. As you position your business to grow, respecting the underlying vision of the company will ensure that the growth is in line with what the brand stands for.

Brand strategy will address your key target audiences, your value proposition, your positioning, your narrative, and your go-to-market strategy. With these elements adjusted to reflect the business transformation, your brand will be prepared to roll out a strategic marketing plan. To really change the tide of business growth, the strategy needs to incorporate long-term goals with a short-term action plan. It needs to be measurable, too. Identify the key indicators of business growth and hold the business accountable as it transforms. A turnaround that shows improvement to employee engagement, brand perception, NPS, and customer loyalty will ultimately affect sales. And increasing top line revenue increases market share and for some, stock price.

It’s All About Execution

But that’s just the plan. Executing the brand strategy as the business shifts requires agility in the changing market. Too often, companies take a year to develop a strategy and by the time they’re ready to implement it, the market has shifted. Testing and iterating in real time will allow your business and brand to adapt quickly so that it remains relevant. It’s critical to develop a flexible strategy with participation from your sales and marketing team. They will provide necessary, immediate feedback from the people on the front line of your business. Their buy-in and shared responsibility creates alignment from the top-down. As the business turnaround happens, the sales and marketing teams drive the messaging to make sure your target audience is on board, too.

Achieving Sustainable Growth

Growth strategies are never achieved without a brand that is strong enough to weather the tides of change. Whether you’re looking to grow through market penetration, market development, alternative channels, product development, or expanding your customer base, your brand needs to lead the way. And change doesn’t happen in a vacuum. An agile, measurable approach that stays true to the long-term vision is key to turning around your company’s trajectory. Grow your brand and grow your business.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy agency.

Business Growth: Steps to Success for the Mid-Market

Posted on September 26, 2018 by Tracy Lloyd

Leveraging new data about business growth from the National Center for the Middle Market, Emotive Brand identifies three key factors that make all the difference.

Business growth is always good. But sustained, consistent growth is always better.

Data from the National Center for the Middle Market shows that the best indicator of company’s financial future is not how fast it grows, but how often it grows.

Those that expand incrementally are more apt to survive, thrive, and outperform. Companies that grow consistently are more adept at aligning their organizations’ people and practices around what can seem to be competing priorities:

They execute effectively in the present. Growth companies get today’s business done.
They are more agile. The have processes that help them evolve quickly and shed unproductive practices, ideas, models, and attitudes that have lost their relevance.
They consistently originate more fresh ideas and convert them into new sources of savings, differentiation, and profits. They innovate continuously.

These growing companies display key differences from their stagnant or sporadic growth peers. Unlike firms that stagnate, they do not attribute their fate to external challenges, such as the loss of a major customer, shifts in customer needs, or organizational challenges.

Rather, they focus on delivery factors including innovation, process improvements, and restructuring. They focus on the fulfillment or execution of their purpose-infused vision.

Our white paper captures key findings from interviews, client engagements, and extensive data review in a succinct white paper entitled “Purpose: The Pathway to Sustained Growth.” We invite you to learn about the practical steps you can take to achieve consistent, sustainable growth.

Download White Paper

Emotive Brand brings more than a decade of work developing purpose-led business and brand strategies. Our team works with c-suite leaders at high-growth startups, global enterprise technology companies, consulting and professional services firms, and with mid-market companies.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy firm helping CEOs and their business thrive.

Aligning Business Strategy to Brand Strategy for Long-term Growth

Posted on August 13, 2018 by Tracy Lloyd

Planning for Tomorrow

We’ve written a lot about the importance of aligning brand and business strategy. But many leaders dismiss the business strategy as something necessary for the brand strategy. However, without understanding where the business is going, the brand can’t help the business grow in strategic ways.

Aligning Leadership

It’s obvious to work with the marketing team when developing a brand strategy. But gaining clarity on the business strategy can’t happen in a silo. You can’t develop a coherent brand strategy without internal alignment around the business strategy. That means bringing together the product, engineering, operations, sales, marketing, and HR leaders alongside the CEO to align on the direction of the business.

Aligning executives around where the business is headed helps us create the right brand strategy to achieve the strategic goals for the business strategy. Facilitating intensive executive interviews and running workshops within the leadership team goes a long way. With clarity around the business strategy, we are in a better position to ensure that the brand strategy we develop is tightly and strategically aligned to business goals and objectives.

What Your Business Strategy Should Answer

It’s important that when aligning leaders around a shared and articulated business strategy, you answer the following questions. The answers to these questions help us do the strategic work for you.

What are the short- and long-term goals for the business? Is there an exit strategy? A merger or acquisition in the future?
What are the revenue and growth expectations? Are there specific target revenue goals the board is looking for? Your investors? Wall Street?
What is the growth strategy? What is your pricing model? Are you selling products or solutions?
What’s the human capital plan for achieving the desired business goals? Does that involve recruiting a different and higher level team in order to execute?
What is the product road map? Are you entering into new markets? Developing new products? What are you building vs. buying to enhance your product offering?
Is your business set up in the right ways to achieve your goals and objectives? Do you need to shift your organizational structure? Are you ready to hire in a C-suite team? What do they need from the brand?
How should you allocate resources in order to accomplish these goals?

These questions are integral for shaping the brand strategy – helping to guide your business toward its goals and objectives in the most efficient manner.

Clear Goals Enable a Clear Business Strategy

With the plan for the future of the business clarified, the brand strategy will answer:

What category do you fit into?
How do you define market fit?
What is the competitive landscape?
What is your positioning in the marketplace?
Who are your top target audiences?
What is the value proposition?
In what ways is your brand unique?
How does your brand look and feel?
What voice does your brand speak in?

Business strategy and brand strategy need to work together. Aligning the brand strategy to your business strategy makes your brand better positioned for success. As a result, you will differentiate your brand and make it more meaningful. Defining a clear business strategy makes it easier to create a roadmap that is tailored toward your brand’s short- and long-term growth.

And most importantly, leaders who see the value in sharing their business strategy and long-term vision for their business will get far more value and a stronger ROI from a brand strategy.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy agency.

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The Role of B2B Messaging and How to Get it Right

Posted on May 15, 2018 by Tracy Lloyd

Disruptive and Transformational Technologies

Technology is advancing like never before. With disruptive technology advancements in AI, machine learning, iOT, analytics, and so much more, it’s becoming more and more difficult for businesses to keep pace. Industries are being transformed and the world we live in is changing before our eyes. So how can you develop more compelling and differentiated B2B messaging for marketing and sales teams?

As an agency, we work with many tech clients who are in the midst of this change – racing the clock to get to market before the competition. And while many have worked tirelessly to build the best technology in their realm, they struggle with how to position and message their product or solution to their target audiences.

Messaging for Disruptive and Transformational Technology is Hard

Disruptive technologies require a different approach to messaging and positioning. Discussing features and benefits isn’t enough. In order to be truly disruptive, these companies need to change the perception of what is possible. Their messaging needs to articulate why potential customers should believe in their solution and how the technology will enable a different future. As such, B2B messaging needs to:

Articulate that there is a problem with the status quo of today
Ignite a shift in perception around about why customers should believe in a transformational way of thinking
Position the product or solution in a way that both rationally and emotionally articulates the value proposition directly to key target audiences
Clearly show audiences how your offering can transform their way of doing business

These are challenges we often see our clients having a hard time knowing how to integrate brand-level messages that center on the “why” piece of messaging the story. Instead, they lead with the “what” and “how.” When things are so complicated and are so transformational in nature, the messaging needs to be holistic in nature and incorporate the entire story – a story centered around the customer, not the technology itself. This departure from product takes courage.

Our role involves helping our clients make the complex simple. We find a way to unpack the technology and what it enables customers to do, and put it in more human terms. We make it easy for people to understand how the technology will help their business be more successful. Even the most innovative technology in the world will never see the light of day if people don’t understand know how or why to buy it.

The Role of B2B Messaging

To be successful today, tech companies have a lot to achieve. Selling product, influencing prospects, inspiring investors, building categories, building market share, and driving revenue. Marketing teams are on the hook to deliver meaningful and differentiated messaging platforms to help support sales and ensure the brand presents a unique offering. This means B2B brands need a strong narrative and compelling messaging in place to cut through the noise.

In our work with high-growth tech companies, we’ve seen first-hand how the role of messaging can drive change. Because of this experience, it has become more important than ever to get it right. There is a growing need to differentiate complicated technology products into easy to see “value” in the form of solutions that meet target audience needs.

Seems easy? Not so much. Much of our work is alongside CEOs who come from strong engineering backgrounds. They feel immense pride in the products they have worked so hard to engineer and develop. And naturally, they want messaging to lead with product. They see features and benefits as the only way forward.

However, we know this isn’t the only way. My background is in selling technology. I know first-hand what sales teams need to be successful, and I see the role of messaging as critical to the sales organization’s success. I have sold technology on three continents and bring this sales-led approach to every client engagement by adding a unique of understanding technology, how to position it, and how to create a brand narrative and messaging – messaging that addresses the big idea of why the technology matters while demonstrating how it solves a customer’s business problems.

That’s why, at Emotive Brand, we believe strong B2B messaging is about hitting the sweet spot between brand, sales, and marketing in a way that excites, resonates, and activates buyers.

Getting it Right

Getting messaging right is a real challenge. Most often, messaging is an output of a larger brand strategy. As such, it has to crystalize what you do, why you’re better, and what you can do that no one else can. It’s not easy to articulate these values to your target audiences in both rational and emotional ways that activate them to do something.

It’s old news that a lot of B2B messaging – especially within the tech world – sounds the same. But there is a larger problem at hand – a problem we’ve seen happening for a while now. A lot of messaging used by B2B companies isn’t aligned with what the customers or the businesses they are trying to reach really value. What companies are missing is the articulation of something more than features and benefits: true opportunity, values, and meaning.

Supporting Marketing and Sales

We’ve talked again and again about the role brand strategy plays in supporting and driving business strategy. So when the time comes in the brand strategy process to develop messaging, it needs to align and support two major functions within a company: Marketing and Sales.

It’s about driving two workflows within a company. Marketing needs B2B messaging to build out a go-to-market strategy and create sales enablement programs. Sales needs messaging to know how to talk to customers, position the product or solution, and close deals. If the messaging isn’t strong enough, marketing teams struggle to fill the funnel and convert leads. Sales has a hard time responding to RFPs and closing deals. In short, it’s detrimental to both teams’ success.

Smart B2B messaging can drive marketing and sales forward, positioning you to better reach and connect with the businesses who matter to your success. To do so, make it:

1. Customer-centric

A shift needs to happen from product-centric to customer-centric. This means increased focus on articulating the valuable, unique opportunities you can offer your target audiences. In the B2C world, it’s easy to focus on consumers.

The mistake a lot of B2B companies are making today is thinking that the businesses they are trying to reach are only making rational business decisions. And while B2B does require a high level of rationale, it’s important to remember that there’s also a lot of emotions at stake for B2B buyers. Many businesses today feel that they have an important to role to play. They are mindful of cost, aware of how things are going to play together, and passionate about finding the right solutions fit to their business.

2. Research-led

In our client work, the tightest and most meaningful messaging we’ve developed for clients has involved some level of research – both quantitative and qualitative.

There’s a lot of value in talking to people one-on-one. It gives our team the ability, as a third party, to gain direct access to customers, prospects, and even lost deals to understand the audience’s needs first-hand. This level of empathy enables B2B messaging that can truly connect with people – with their rational needs on the right emotional dimensions. That’s why getting to the heart of their motivations, pain points, and needs is critical and can be the difference between thriving and failing.

3. Top-down

Like many strategic elements, messaging has to start at the top. This means the leadership teams must be involved. Moving messaging beyond features and benefits is a process, and key leaders have to buy into a more customer-centric approach or it will never be fully embraced.

Once top execs are on board, they can work to align the sales and marketing teams at the highest level. This reinforces the messaging systems you’ve built by ensuring that people are talking about your business in ways that align with it across people and platforms.

The sales force is then equipped to utilize the B2B messaging in powerful, dynamic ways. They become more willing to provide feedback to marketing about what is and isn’t working. The collaboration between these two groups makes both the messaging stronger and the impact of the brand stronger. Driving ROI and sales.

B2B Messaging as a Driver of Business

Messaging can drive brand awareness, equity, and buying decisions by bringing your value proposition to life for your key audiences. With strong B2B messaging in place, your business can then develop a powerful corporate narrative that brings all aspects of the business, brand, and vision together.

In B2B, messaging can be a vital solution in humanizing your brand and business. It can make it easier for your sales and marketing team to connect with your future clients in important ways that will fuel your business forward. The transition from solely rational to a blend of both emotional and rational can be a challenge. When you take the lead and embrace the process of identifying what really matters to your audiences beyond just the functional elements of your product, sales will take off, marketing will start to pay-off, and your business will be positioned to stand out and thrive.

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

Brand Is the Best Foundation for Growth

Posted on May 8, 2018 by Chris Ames

Emotive Brand Experts #6: Kelly Morgan

Continuing our Emotive Brand Experts series, we’re interviewing past and present Emotive Brand clients to discover what they do better than anybody else — and how that expertise can be used to embolden your brand today.

Kelly Morgan is Head of Marketing at Lyra, a startup that’s transforming behavioral healthcare. We’ve been working with Kelly to rebrand Lyra, and they just launched their new brand last week. In addition, they’ve secured their next series of funding! Kelly spoke with us to discuss key learnings from the rebranding process.

What was the catalyst for the rebrand?

When I joined the company, I was overseeing designers, communication teams, and marketing assets. It became very challenging to do all that without real brand guidelines. Of course, we had some things, but not the mature and robust set of design tools you need when you go to market. We were inventing everything from scratch. We had a core that we loved, but the look itself wasn’t that modern and it didn’t reflect what Lyra is all about.

When you think about what we’re trying to do, we’re bringing technology to a space that is somewhat tech-averse and not that sophisticated in terms of modern convenience and simplicity. We felt as though our look didn’t accurately reflect that we’re a high-tech and a visual company. As I dug in further with other stakeholders and the management team, it became clear that there was a real appetitive for this. Not just a new visual identity, but for equipping our team with the right tools – messaging, positioning, a unified elevator pitch, and a cohesive way to describe what we do as a business.

What were some early successes in the process?

I found myself a great executive sponsor. We developed a solid business case not only for “Why?” but for “Why now?” We’re a relatively young company, and before we start investing, it’s great to have a solid foundation to build on. These things are easier when you’re smaller. It’s not as disruptive or confusing to the market. The overall timing was a big part of making that case. Having an executive sponsor can help garner alignment internally when people are having a hard time seeing the bigger picture. Change is hard. It’s difficult to imagine how it’s all going to come together when you’re only seeing pieces at a time. It’s challenging to understand the impact of those decisions when you’re so comfortable with something you already have.

What would you describe as the biggest challenge of a rebrand?

I think it comes down to educating your team on what brand really is. You hear those hallway conversations of, “Oh, new logo, new colors,” but it’s so much more than that. This is something that’s going to align with your business strategy and make it easier for you to sell, to communicate, to stand out – brand is everything. That misunderstanding can manifest itself in different ways throughout the course of the project. It could mean that someone is not investing enough time in reviewing something until it’s already live on a website. A rebrand involves soft skills — feelings, emotions, perceptions. Everyone has a different function in the organization and so it’s sometimes hard for people to see why the brand will matter to their piece of the business. A rebrand also has a fair amount of feelings and emotions, something that not everyone easily connects to in how they approach work. It took me a while to understand how important it was to get everyone aligned, but more so, how much time I needed to dedicate to education, understanding different perspectives, and gaining consensus. It could mean someone not investing enough time in reviewing something until it’s already live on a website.

A personal challenge for us was that we don’t have a team of in-house designers or Creative Directors. Representing Lyra in the rebrand discussions, I found my own limitations and wished that we had someone who had a visual design background. That’s where the value of bringing in an outside agency comes in. Contractors and freelancers can get you pretty far, but an agency has the talent and insight you’re missing. Plus, they can see the life of the brand over time and evolve and implement everything seamlessly.

To make things even more interesting, you are also in the process of changing offices during this rebrand. How is that going?

It’s true! We’re moving in June and building out a new workspace tailored to our employees. I think it will make a great impression and help employees feel even more tied to our mission and our values. To carry the brand to the employee experience, we will have vinyl decals of our mission statement, powerful testimonials from people whom we’ve helped, and wall art that showcases our creative marketing campaigns, monitors displaying business analytics and KPIs.

You only just launched your new look last week, but have you noticed any behavior change as a result?

It is early, but next week is the HLTH Future of Healthcare conference in Las Vegas, which will be the first real test of our brand. Needless to say, we’re super excited. Our new brand makes us look more polished and mature, but still has that fun, vibrant startup feeling. It brings us much more confidence in delivering our elevator pitch, as well as unifying the marketing and sales teams together around the same story.

What key advice would you give to other companies about to embark on a rebrand?

Well, the first real challenge is, “How do you evaluate an agency?” The best advice I got was that I needed to directly meet the people I would be working with. That sounds obvious, but many agencies have a great portfolio – impressive customer list and endless examples of nice looking things – but often that’s the sales team or some top-level Creative Director. You need to understand the difference between who is selling you and who you are going to be working with. You must meet the project managers, the copywriters, the people who are going to bring this thing to life for you.

The second challenge is rallying your own internal team, and that’s the part that often goes to the wayside. In that whole project planning phase, you need to carve out time to get internal feedback, but also to keep enthusiasm up throughout the entire process. We had an internal kickoff with a catered lunch, which served as a great opportunity to explain what brand really means to the company. I wanted everyone to understand what it was, why it mattered, and how they are a part of it.

This isn’t just a logo. When you’re at a cocktail party, when you send an email out, it’s all an expression of the brand. This isn’t just a marketing thing, this is about behavior. Of course, the first question anyone will ask will be about swag, but those little delighters are important, too! It takes a lot of effort and energy to do a rebrand, and the success of the whole thing can come down to enthusiasm. There is bound to be friction and bumps along the way. If management sees that their employees are excited, they will hold up their end of the bargain.

What’s next?

Having completed the brand project, the exciting thing now is how poised we are to refocus on our growth strategy. We’re in such a good position to move forward. Not only did we launch a new brand, but we launched it on a new website, on a new platform, with all sorts of robust marketing tools built in. We’re ready for whatever comes next.

To view the Lyra case study, click here.

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

Marketing Strategy That Fuels Growth

Posted on April 10, 2018 by Carol Emert

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More than ever, CMOs are being looked to as the primary growth drivers of their companies. But what if you seem to be doing everything right and growth is still falling short? You have a strong brand strategy in place, a good sales team, and your marketing strategy is being executed on time and on budget. What then?

Chances are good that, if you’re experiencing a disconnect like this, the problem lies in the connection between your brand and your target audience. You may be reaching them. But how successfully are you really connecting with them?

How can you identify the problem? And what can you do to nurture your target audience while giving your sales team the support they need to drive growth?

Marketing Strategy That Drives Growth

At Emotive Brand, we find that the diagnosis for this condition virtually always comes from the outside.

The area where insiders typically have the least insight is the hearts and minds of their target audiences, which are so easily obscured behind the company’s own view of where its value lies. Companies often also find it challenging to stay on top of new developments in communications when their core competencies lie elsewhere.

Cue your agency. It’s the agency’s job to:

Understand your brand, products, and services in a new and exciting way, through the eyes of the people who can make it grow.
Use customer, marketplace, brand, and contextual insights to define strategic shifts that will win them over.
Create the right message and present it creatively to get their attention and rekindle the connection.
Identify existing and emerging channels that will best support your message and resonate with your audiences.
Tie it all together in a marketing strategy that drives growth.

Rebooting Advertising and Marketing Strategy

We’ve been working with a Silicon Valley client whose technology is so smart it inspires us. This company has been in business 15 years. It has a crack product that’s unique in the market. The product should be selling itself.

But there’s a problem: the company has under-marketed both its brand and its product. Its sales are lackluster. We identified five primary marketing challenges:

Marketplace perceptions hadn’t kept up with the company, so potential customers had outdated ideas that needed to be overcome before they would even pay attention.
Its advertising and marketing communications were telling an old story that didn’t communicate the product differentiators and reinforced outdated perceptions.
Its communications style was out of date and disconnected from both the brand truths and its audiences.
The client was spending ad dollars against a broad target rather than an audience aligned to its sales target, wasting precious marketing dollars.

We dug into this project to understand the marketplace, the product, and the brand through the eyes of our client’s target audiences. And we transformed its marketing strategy with some fundamental shifts.

Aligning Marketing Strategy with Sales

First, we used creative and surprising ways to talk about the product in advertising. Solidly rooted in meaningful customer insights and up-to-date product truths, the creative is doing a great job at grabbing the attention of sales prospects. Fresh and resonant messaging and design are replacing apathy with interest and engagement.

We also employed account-based marketing (ABM), replacing the client’s broad advertising strategy with a personalized approach. We’re targeting the sales team’s hottest prospects, in the places where they are most likely to engage.

This more resonant, tailored messaging is reinvigorating the company’s sales as well as its brand, making it relevant again and helping nurture prospects who might have ignored a more general message.

If you need fresh ideas for connecting with your sales prospects instead of merely reaching them, Emotive Brand would like to connect with you.

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

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The Business Case for Trust: How Leaders Can Unlock the Full Power of Trust

Posted on February 23, 2018 by Tracy Lloyd

Trust Pays Off

The business case for trust is straightforward and continues to grow. Each year, the data shows that companies with a culture of trust are more profitable than those without it. A culture of trust is not just a “nice-to-have.” It’s good business. Trust culture companies have outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of three, and high-trust companies “are more than 2½ times more likely to be high performing revenue organizations” than lower-trust companies.

Why?

It turns out we come with an evolutionary hard-wired attraction to people we can trust and a visceral aversion to those we don’t.

People are drawn to and prefer to do business with organizations that have earned their trust, which results in greater productivity, higher sales and wider margins. Trust attracts and engages people, says David Rock who focuses on applying neuroscience insights to management. In SCARF: A brain-based model for collaborating with and influencing others published by the NeuroLeadership Journal, he lays out not just the benefits of trust within an organization but a framework for establishing and building it:

“Indeed, the ability to intentionally address the social brain in the service of optimal performance will be a distinguishing leadership capability in the years ahead…

The impact of this neural dynamic is often visible in organizations. For example, when leaders trigger a threat response, employees’ brains become much less efficient. But when leaders make people feel good about themselves, clearly communicate their expectations, give employees latitude to make decisions, support people’s efforts to build good relationships, and treat the whole organization fairly, it prompts a reward response.

Others in the organization become more effective, more open to ideas and more creative. They notice the kind of information that passes them by when fear or resentment makes it difficult to focus their attention. They are less susceptible to burnout because they are able to manage their stress. The feel intrinsically rewarded…If you are a leader, every action you take and every decision you make either supports or undermines the perceived levels of status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness and fairness in your enterprise. In fact, this is why leading is so difficult.”

Building Trust Starts with Behavior

In business, leadership behavior is what matters. The actions of leaders shape expectations. Each decision and action either reduces or builds trust.

We’ve consolidated the factors that build trust from a review of management literature. Through our analysis we found a consistent set of behaviors that trusted leaders demonstrate.

Clarity and transparency: People trust the clear, and mistrust or doubt unnecessary complexity. Be crystal clear about your purpose, expectations, and priorities. Tell the truth in a way people can verify. Be authentic and lean in on disclosure.

Empower with empathy: People learn to trust those that operate beyond their own self-interest; that show respect for others’ points of view, skills and expertise. People want to be great. Tune in to their abilities. Be the leader that lets others be great.

Consistently demonstrate integrity: People notice those who do the right thing for the right reason. Be true to yourself, your purpose, and your values.

Keep commitments and contribute: Few things build trust quicker than actual results. At the end of the day, people need to see outcomes. Empathy and integrity aren’t enough, unless combined with delivering on commitments. Be the most useful person in the room. Be consistent delivering results.

Keep current: People have confidence in those who stay up to date, relevant, and sharp. Stay curious and keep learning. Be an enthusiastic teacher and learner. Be known for seeking out new ways of doing things, ideas, and trends.

Be open and cultivate connection: Trust requires a relationship, and it is through its relationship with you that your team expresses its trust. Openness is essential to build these relationships. If people can’t get to know you, then they probably can’t get to trust you, either. With openness comes the requirement for a certain vulnerability. Be available and present. Be the type of leader that ‘puts yourself out there’ and make the first move to make a connection.

Trust Takes Time

“Every action you take and every decision you make either supports or undermines the perceived levels of status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness in your enterprise.” – David Rock

So take it one moment at a time. Trust can’t be built overnight. It requires time, effort, focus, and consistency. Inspiring trust requires authenticity and effort. But if you think of these elements as skills to work on and challenge yourself to think of every action or decision as an opportunity to demonstrate one or more, you will be on your way to building trust that will drive results and improve both the top and bottom lines.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy agency.