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Tag: Innovation

Challenger Brands: A Primer

Posted on by Emotive Brand

Are you up to the challenge?

Starting today, we’re launching a three-part series on challenger brands—who they are, how they behave, and why your brand could benefit from adopting their disruptive mindset. As this is the first blog in the series, let’s start with the basics. The beginning, as they say, is always a good place to start.

What is a challenger brand?

“A challenger brand is defined, primarily, by a mindset—it has business ambitions bigger than its conventional resources, and is prepared to do something bold, usually against the existing conventions or codes of the category, to break through.” —The Challenger Project, by eatbigfish.

Even if you’re not familiar with the term “challenger brand,” you’ve certainly experienced its narrative cousin: the underdog story.  It’s David and Goliath. It’s Rocky. That oft-romanticized vision of a plucky innovator running a business out of their garage and taking down the big guys. Think of Ben & Jerry’s vs. Haagen-Daz, Sam Adams vs. Budweiser, or Apple vs. Microsoft.

Category is the new challenge

While in the beginning being a challenger brand often meant slaying one particular dragon—Pepsi vs. Coke—modern challenger brands are more focused on what they are disrupting instead of who. It’s not about me versus you; it’s about me versus the category, the industry, and the expectations of what a customer experience feels like.

From Airbnb to Blue Apron to Warby Parker, challenger brands are redefining the ways we travel, eat, shop, and more. As Adam Morgan says, “Being a challenger brand today is less about business enmity, and more about an often mission-driven desire to progress the category.”

Criteria for challenger brands

To be clear, there are no rules set in stone about what makes a challenger brand. By definition, it’s a fluid position. You might start out a challenger and be so successful at taking out the competition that you become the next target on top of the hill. It’s a Shakespearean cycle of ascension and dethronement that leaves only the most innovative companies standing.

“A challenger brand can take many forms; it’s more of a mindset than a specific set of rules,” says Kohlben Vodden, founder of StoryScience. “These brands tell stories that by proxy make us feel empowered. They tell us real success lies in breaking away from the pressure of social norms, challenging authority, and being disagreeable. These brands represent character strengths that we humans universally hold up as positive and admirable qualities—bravery, perseverance, fairness.”

In essence, to be a challenger your brand needs to:

  • Be somewhere in the middle of the market. You’re not first, but you’re not last. You have enough experience and validity to get in the ring and start punching above your weight.
  • Have an insatiable hunger and big ambitions that go beyond hitting your numbers. You and your employees need to share a fundamental belief that you are unlike any other company on the planet.
  • Understand what it takes to close the gap between good and great. When you talk about something as aspirational as a company’s vision for the future, you should never limit yourself to making something merely good. This isn’t a task to work on; it’s a shared vision to work toward.

Culture is the lifeblood of challenger brands

All things considered, this is as much about emotion and personality as it is about strategic priorities. If there’s a straight line through challenger brands, it’s the infectious culture they cultivate and maintain through the ups and downs. And how do you shape culture? Through your mission, vision, beliefs, and behaviors. “Clarity around what a business believes in, and what change it’s trying to bring about, acts as both inspiration and filter for the kinds of disruption it will pursue,” says Mark Barden. “Without that clarity, disruption becomes chaos pretty quickly.”

To continue reading our three-part challenger series, check out: Part two—Challenger Brands: B2B Challengers & Part three—Challenger Brands: Design that Disrupts

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

Adopt a Growth Mindset to Drive Business

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Growth vs. Fixed Mindset

We believe an organization that adopts a growth mindset can position itself to thrive. But what exactly defines a growth mindset?

At Emotive Brand, we define a growth mindset as a set of attitudes and behaviors that reflect the belief that an individual’s talent is not set in stone. Talent can be developed. Intelligence can be fostered. Creativity and innovation can be strengthened. Leaders can emerge. People hold potential.

This means every employee within an organization has to have the ability to develop, grow, and learn. And organizations who believe this seek out individuals who show a capacity for such growth. And we believe that the companies who work to help each of these individuals progress, advance in their roles, take on more leadership capabilities, and constantly evolve their skills and thinking will thrive as a whole.

Growth Mindset Is Key

Strong leadership, continual learning, and innovation are key to thriving business today. And not just amongst the C-suite or those in designated leadership roles. Leadership and learning must be fostered throughout an organization in order for that organization to really progress. Although this often starts at the top, it must ring true throughout an entire business.

A fixed mindset – unlike a growth mindset – does not encourage any of these ideals. Nor does it allow employees to grow and new leaders to emerge. And less risk-taking, less freedom, less collaboration, and less acceptance of failure – all behavioral symptoms of a fixed mindset – can be detrimental to business.

Adopt a Growth Mindset to Drive Business By:

1. Seeking out learners

Often times, in business, as expertise increases, individuals struggle more and more to see new solutions or ideas.  Learning stalls and this leads businesses to get stuck in their thinking.

In order to adopt a growth mindset that can fuel your organization forward, you must focus on people’s capacity and not their pedigree. As such, recruitment should value people who show a real commitment to learning. These people will help build a learning culture, develop independently, collaborate successfully, and be able to adapt to whatever challenges arise.

Individuals that value learning, and show a capacity and passion for continual knowledge have a natural growth mindset that can move any business towards success.

2. Allowing employees to step out of their daily work

Creating a growth mindset means enabling each individual’s work to be more than just their job. Developing new skills – even if they shift outside of someone’s current daily work – is always valuable.

We believe that understanding and learning other roles than your own can help promote empathy, collaboration, and encourage new ways of approaching things. And setting aside time to build skills such as collaboration and leadership is key to making your people more productive and inspired at work.  

3. Building a culture that is willing to take risks and accept failure

An inevitable part of growth is failure. And adopting a growth mindset means accepting the chance that, in the end, you might fail. But innovation, creativity, and fueling a business forward wouldn’t be possible if people weren’t willing to take risks.

And often, this starts at the top. Leaders should set an example but also allow all employees to take on leadership roles – giving individuals the independence and freedom to try things, fail, and learn from their mistakes.

Taking on challenges is key. And organizations who view their people as capable of taking on challenges – even if it means failing – position themselves for success.

4. Driving commitment, determination, and innovation

Employees at growth mindset companies feel more committed to their work because they feel they have the potential to grow, learn, and thrive within it. They also feel more motivated to do their best because they know that their personal development and hard work is valued.

In fact, research has shown that employees at growth mindset organizations pursue more innovative projects. They also behave more transparently, cut fewer corners, and work more collaboratively. And these authentically motivated people will drive innovation and fuel business. Goals and Objectives

Any business that wants to position itself to meet goals and objectives, set new ones, continually move forward, and advance needs to adopt a growth mindset to succeed.

It’s all about developing, advancing, expanding, and seeing the opportunity and potential in every moment, individual, failure, and success. A growth mindset will move your business forward and position your business, its brand, and its people for growth, profit, and success in the future.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency in Oakland, California.[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]

Embrace Constraints to Unleash Creativity

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Breaking the Conventional Wisdom of Creativity

Creativity is often idealized as something that flourishes within a boundless environment and thrives under a lack of regulation. As creative thinkers ourselves, we’ve often fallen into the trap of dreaming of empty days with nothing to do but create, no person or particular task or restriction to attend to, no strict directions to follow…Without rules and impediments, the world of creativity and innovation would be our oyster…right?

But, contrary to popular belief, constraint can actually power creativity. HBR, based on 145 empirical studies, found that people, teams, and companies benefit from the right dose of constraints. Similarly, psychologists have found that limitations force new perspectives. And Tess Callahan, in her TED Talk, calls the relationship between constraints and creativity ‘an unexpected love affair.’

This data and research have huge implications for teams, companies, and brands leaning on creativity and innovation during this year where change has established itself as the new normal. Constraints, when embraced and leveraged, can be productive, enlightening, and even exciting.

Creativity Within Our Studio

When we moved our studio to remote work in March, we were unsure of how we would continue to create with the agility, passion, and creativity that’s always lived within our studio walls. At first, it was easy to think only in terms of new limitations and unwelcome rules. Lack of in-person collaboration. The inability to meet clients in person. The pressures and constraints from forces of disruption all around us: economic and beyond.

Now, months later, creativity within our studio is thriving. We can see that the constraints of ‘stay-at-home’ have forced us to rethink how we work and why we work that way. We’re thinking outside the norms to figure out challenges like collaboration, building client trust, and workshopping strategy, and creative work through emotive, digital experiences.

Our Clients’ Creativity is Soaring Too

We’ve seen in real-time that our clients have been pushed to think differently as well. The value of creativity is skyrocketing and teams are relying on creative, strategic problem-solving, and solvers more than ever before. HR teams that have relied on in-person college fairs to recruit are building immersive, digital experiences that compel candidates further, with less budget. Product teams are using their data technology and applying it to solve new problems like health, wellness, and virus tracking. C-suite executives are embracing this time of transformation, using it to reassess their position and establish relevance in a market that values trust, purpose, and empathy more than ever before. 

Creativity in the Brand and Business World at Large

The world is watching as today’s brands prove their creativity under dynamic constraints. Dyson saw a need, identified a capability outside their usual application, and brought 15,000 ventilators to the world. Small, local restaurants are reinventing the dining experience with QR codes and other technology. Technology companies like Whoop are working with researchers from leading health organizations and universities to help populations with earlier detection of the virus, repurposing their fitness tool as a detection tool.

Although we might not hope for the continuation of many of these limitations or challenges, embracing them as mechanisms for change, seeing things anew, and pushing what’s possible forward is proving to be one of the silver linings of these challenging times.

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

Photo Credit: https://icons8.com/

Innovation: You’re Thinking About It Wrong

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Let’s Reimagine How to Innovate: A Thought Piece by Robin Goldstein, Part 1

Robin Goldstein has been a part of some great teams learning and thinking about innovation and disruption at companies like Apple, Zoox, multiple startups, and now, the Stanford Byers Center for Biodesign. In this series, she offers her accumulated wisdom around how to reimagine innovation, shift your mindset from ‘what and how’ to ‘why and who’, build the right team, and create a future that isn’t simply the past with fewer bugs. This week is the first installment in her feature. Please keep posted each week for new sagacity from Robin.

You’re Thinking About It All Wrong

I come back to this concept a lot. I’ve encountered it everywhere: Apple, Zoox, startups, Stanford…amazing, bright, well-meaning people who want to disrupt and change the world for the better. But, they all begin the design process by imposing limitations, overly constraining the problem, encumbering themselves with needing to know “all” the facts, and subsequently restricting the space and freedom they allow in formulating their approach, ultimately curbing the promise of developing a truly impactful solution.

I remember one meeting at Apple where I got to be a fly on the wall. The presenter, someone Steve really respected, began talking and Steve looked at their first slide, walked over, turned off the projector, and said, “No, no, no…you’re thinking about it all wrong.” I reflect on this a lot; the power of simply shifting your perspective.

One day, pre-COVID, I was hanging out with some Biodesign students in a Stanford innovation class where they’ve been kind enough to allow me to be a mentor. The prescient topic was ideating a solution to increase the flu vaccination rate among at-risk populations. Everyone’s answer? “We have to make people smarter. More education from the employer, the insurance company, the doctor…” As I listened, my comedian’s mind conjured up a fantastical image and I said, “I don’t know anything about this, but if I wanted to inoculate more people, I might try sneaking up behind them at the McDonald’s drive-through. They’ve already got their arm out the window, and as they’re grabbing their fries, BAM!” Everyone stared. One of the folks said, “That’s a terrific idea!” and I said, “It may be a horrible idea, but it suggests perhaps we’re thinking about this all wrong.”

A different way of framing the same problem can unlock a ton of creativity and inventiveness. Where can we reach people when their arms are already extended? (Which is really a way of saying how can we reduce friction to adoption?) And yes, at first it may lead to terrible (though amusing) solutions. But, when I’m working on a problem with, as I like to say, “the confidence of an idiot unencumbered by facts!” and offer an idea, the words I most love to hear from a colleague are, “yes, maybe not that, but…” In other words, that’s silly, but what about…? This mode of thinking opens up a whole series of questions leading to truly innovative solutions that would never be found by simply trotting the traditional track.

Start by Standing in The Future and Imagining the World You Want to Exist

On my last day at Apple, after 22 years, a young engineer introduced herself and asked me what was the most important lesson I had learned. That was a big question that I wasn’t sure I could answer. I thought for a bit and then walked over to a whiteboard and wrote,

“The future should not simply be the past with fewer bugs.”

When most people think about innovation, they stand in the present and try to peer into the future. And what do they see? They see problems: technical, economic, social, regulatory—problems that lead to a model of innovation that works best at creating a better/cheaper/faster version of what already exists. But I noticed something while working with true innovators…disruptors…the crazy ones. They stand in the future and look around and imagine the world they want to exist. The experiences they want to enable. The kinds of products that lead users to say, “I didn’t know I needed this, and now I can’t imagine living without it.” They don’t start with cool technology and try to figure out product/market fit. They imagine the world they want to live in, the way things would work if a magic genie granted them wishes, and then they look ‘back’ to today and start figuring out what problems they need to start solving now in order to make that future a reality.

If you listen to people talk about a driverless future, you’ll invariably hear them say something like, “and then when you want to go somewhere, you’ll pull out your phone and launch an app and…” No, no, you’re thinking about it all wrong. What if we imagined a future where transportation was as frictionless and ubiquitous as water or electricity? What would a daily commute look like in this world? I leave from the same place and go to the same place at about the same time most every day. I’ve allowed my life to be instrumented with a smart thermostat and a smart speaker with access to my calendar and a connection to my smartphone and toothbrush and toaster. So, in the future I want to live in, my transportation ecosystem will confidently predict where I’m going, when I need to arrive, and the best way to take me there.

In this future, I really only need to launch an app when there’s an exception to my routine that isn’t obvious from all the signals in my life. Take a moment and think about how much time and energy (mental, physical, and emotional) you spend on your daily commute. Worrying about when to leave, where to park, which route, Waze, or Apple Maps? The stress. Now, think about mobility in 10 years as being a ubiquitous and frictionless experience, there when you need it, no worrying required. Do you want to live in that world? Can you imagine someone saying, “I didn’t know I needed this and now I can’t live without it?” Great, now what problems (technical, economic, social, regulatory) do we need to start working on solving today so when the future arrives we’ll be ready for it?

Keep posted for more insight on innovation from Robin next week in Part 2.

Emotive Brand is an Oakland based brand strategy and design agency.

Why Curiosity Fuels Business Innovation

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Where’s the Curiosity?

Children thrive on curiosity. People grow up asking questions. Many young children ask “Why?” almost excessively, wanting explanations for everything—unafraid to ask, always curious, and fiercely inquisitive. Why? They are in a phase of intense learning, absorbing information, and widening their capacity for new information at a rapid pace.

But studies have found that curiosity peaks at around age four or five and takes a steady decline from there. As people grow up, they become more self-conscious, more fearful about asking questions, and are increasingly inclined to display confidence and expertise over curiosity and inquisitiveness.

It’s no surprise we see this phenomenon at play within many workplaces. People have a tendency to consider their role as fixed and an organization’s way of doing things set in stone. Many employees and even leaders solve problems by asking minimal questions. They accept their task as it is assigned and work simply to finish it—not questioning the process or asking about overall goals.

Employees are often afraid to voice options and raise questions because they don’t want to bother others, or are worried they may be seen as incompetent or difficult. And many of the most intelligent, skilled, and capable employees and leaders are simply not asking enough questions, ignoring the great power in asking “Why?” and “What if?”

Why Is This a Problem?

To compete in today’s dynamic and ever-shifting markets, employees and leaders have to ask questions. Accelerating change and clouding uncertainty demand it. It’s no longer enough to fall back on long-established ways of doing things.

As a result, businesses that are unable to adapt and keep pace with change simply cannot survive today. And many who have relied on mere expertise in the past are now faltering because they don’t have the tools, practices, or mindsets to adapt, be flexible, innovate, or disrupt.

The speed of things requires companies to be constantly learning, adopting new practices and perspectives, asking the right questions, and anticipating how they will be able to compete today and tomorrow. As a result, curiosity and inquiry are gaining increasing value for businesses today.

The most innovative companies today search for people who are willing to admit things they don’t know and show interest in what they can learn. That’s because innovation and business growth rely on people who ask questions, challenge established assumptions and ways of thinking, and strive to always be learning, progressing, and moving forward.

Why Innovative Companies Are Winning

Think about some of the top business breakthroughs of our time, many of which are today’s most innovative companies.

Facebook didn’t come into creation because people accepted the status quo.

Uber wasn’t developed because people were afraid of changing the game.

Amazon isn’t successful today because the business was unwilling to evolve with the times. In fact, innovation throughout time has relied on asking hard questions like “Why?” and “What if?”

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, says: “We run this company on questions, not answers.”

The Director-General of the BBC goes to every meeting with employees and starts with the question, “What is one thing I could do to make things better for you?”

Asking questions can generate new ways of thinking, challenge long-held assumptions, and fuel real, transformative change for businesses.

So, how do you create an environment that asks the disruptive, transformative, and productive questions that fuel innovation?

1. Lead by example

When leaders ask questions, everyone within an organization feels more comfortable doing the same. Leaders who are open to asking and answering questions help foster an environment that is naturally inquisitive, increasingly engaged, and overall, more productive. But these practices have to begin at the top. Leaders that are stuck in their ways and resistant to different perspectives are less likely to lead their business to new heights. And this is often due to halted innovation. Be open to everyone’s perspective. Recognize what you don’t know and what you could do better and ask others to help. Be attentive, observant, and model curious behavior.

2. Ask why and use hypotheticals

Asking “What?” is often necessary. However, “What?” has no value to your business unless people ask and understand “Why?” Sometimes, when brainstorming within the workplace, it’s quite useful to ask the question “What if?” This question can open people’s minds to possibilities and can remove constraints on creative and innovative thinking. “How might we?” is also a good way to phrase a question about a company’s goals or objectives. It introduces the possibility that not every answer has to be entirely rational, plausible, or doable. Creativity often happens within the process. Sometimes, it’s the unrealistic questions that lead to innovative, doable answers. Hypotheticals force people to think big and create a new starting point.

3. Don’t fall into groupthink

By bringing different teams and individuals together, different perspectives can create breakthroughs for a business. So, try asking a marketing team a question about product design. Ask designers to weigh in on strategy. Encourage your engineers to review a blog post. Outside perspectives bring fresh eyes and different strengths. And often, a question from someone with a different point of view is just what an individual or team needs to move a project forward or tackle the challenge at hand.

4. Reward curiosity and learning

Curiosity fuels productive business today. So, make sure you foster an environment that looks for, recognizes, and rewards people who strive to ask questions, learn, and grow. These people will be your best innovators. And your business needs innovative people and teams to compete in today’s world. Build an environment where people feel that their role can grow. Help them understand the positive impact of their questions, work, and curiosity.

5. Be empathetic

Put yourself in other people’s shoes. Think about the questions employees, customers, stakeholders, and investors would ask when considering your business, products, brand, and marketing strategies. By looking at things through a different lens, you can better understand how to reach out and connect with the people who matter to your business.

Questions have great power for businesses today. Building a meaningful workplace culture that encourages asking questions can be of great value to your business. Employees and leaders who ask the right questions are more engaged, think more creatively, and in the end, have the ability to power innovation.

Recognizing the power of questions and fostering behavior that encourages curiosity and inquiry can help your business compete in shifting markets, and even help ready your organization for growth. So, use questions to fuel innovation and design your business to thrive in today’s world.

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

Image credit

Enabler Brands Are Inspiring, Too!

Posted on by Chris Ames

Disruptor vs. Enabler Brands

These days, disruptor brands get all the attention. Companies like Airbnb, Netflix, and Uber have each skyrocketed into popularity by rattling the industries they came from. We get it. There’s something inherently inciting, even American, about the idea of taking down the big guys with your off-kilter vision of the future. It’s easy to root for.

But here’s the thing about trailblazers — if everyone blazes their own unique trail, customers are faced with a dizzying network of singular (and often incompatible) solutions. In the course of one day, a person might bounce back and forth between ten different technologies, all of which claim to take the hassle and complexity out of life. I want to find a photo, but I’m not sure if it’s on my phone, my external hard drive, or one of my various clouds. Have you seen that popular new show? It’s exclusively on one of the streaming networks — but not the one you have. 

Don’t Downplay the Power of Unification

More and more, we believe there’s a strong case to be made for the power of enabler brands. The ability to bring everything together in a way that’s secure, contextual, and delightful is nothing short of a magic trick in this ever-shifting technological landscape.

In our work in the B2B sector, too often we see enabler brands limit the inspirational nature of their work. Whether it’s customer case studies, presentation decks, or collateral design, enabler brands can sing with the same sparkling brilliance as B2C disruptors.

While every company has its own unique challenges, here are some general thoughts on how enabler brands can elevate their impact.

Hone in on the results of the technology, not the technology itself.

Granted, your technology needs to be world-class and should always have a technical click-through for the nitty-gritty. But at the highest level, people are more interested in what new worlds you’re opening for them. That’s your role: to engineer what’s possible. Think of Dropbox’s recent redesign. They went from just a place to store your files to a living workspace that brings teams and ideas together.

How does this look in practice? Look at the imagery in your decks. What are people seeing? Is it moments of authentic human connection that wouldn’t be possible without your radiant technology? Or is it computer generated graphics and stock photography? During the next big conference, which one do you think will unite your team more?

Productivity is its own kind of delight.

Most enterprise tools aim to improve productivity. That might mean managing information, storing data, tracking issues, sharing updates, whatever you need to get the job done. But just because something is functional, that doesn’t mean it can’t be beautiful. Look at Slack. They have taken something often regarded as a chore — communicating with your co-workers — and made it, dare I say, fun? On their design blog, they discuss the importance of bringing humanity into the product. By putting people (not features) first, they have built a brand people love to experience.

Building a community is more rewarding than growing users.

As Scott Cooper writes on his blog, “The Changing Role of Brands,” enabler brands have the unique opportunity to empower the communities behind the technology. “Look at your audience with new eyes, in terms of community,” says Cooper. “Listen for the ideas that they believe in deeply or identify with. Let go of any preconceptions about your roles as a marketer and the relationship your brand has with people. Now ask yourself: how you can contribute meaningfully?”

When building your customer success stories, ask yourself what communities are truly benefiting from your technology? How can you champion their voices? There’s nothing inherently emotive about a 3-D printer, but whether it’s creating prosthetic limbs or affordable housing, people are using them in inspirational and innovative ways every day.

The biggest mistake you can make is thinking these efforts are somehow separate from the real work of your technology. If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times: people make decisions with their hearts. Investing in the human aspects of your brand is not fluff: it’s a holistic way to equip your sales team with better tools, attract and retain top talent, and foster a healthier, more productive culture. Instead of giving your team something to work on, you give them something to work toward.

So, enablers, remember this. Disruptors will always hog the spotlight, but sometimes nothing is more exciting than being given the right environment to thrive.

Category Creators: Creating a New Brand Category to Drive Growth

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Category As A Frame Of Reference

A brand’s frame of reference is the foundation of its positioning. It will determine the points of parity the brand has to meet in order to be considered a legitimate player, and highlight opportunities to differentiate. As such, your brand needs to fit into the framework of a brand category that people understand and relate to in order to really ‘get’ your brand. As UC Berkeley Professor George Lakoff explains, a frame of reference is absolutely essential, get it wrong and your difference may be ignored: “Framing provides a mental structure that shapes the way we see the world. If a strongly held frame doesn’t fit the facts, the facts will be ignored.”

It’s human nature to want to fit things into a category. The more innovative and disruptive your offering is, the more it needs a frame that people can relate to. If your brand can’t easily be defined, people often push it to the margins and leave it there. This is because its complexity is easier to ignore than to figure out.

People hold on tightly to their established understandings of what a category is and what it offers. Choosing the right category is about defining, or framing, what people are buying in such a way that your value shines through. The goal is to identify the best category that will help your customers “get” your value and make it relevant to them, while putting your competitors at a disadvantage.

When Your Brand Category Isn’t Serving Your Brand

If you are looking to grow your business, make sure the brand category you align with is still the right one for the brand. For some brands, the category they originally aligned with stops serving their needs. If you meet any of the following criteria, it might be time to break out of your current category and become a new breed of category creators developing new markets with innovative technology and products.

  • You are altering your strategic direction and your business model is shifting.
  • Your product or offering is misunderstood by prospects and partners.
  • You have created a significant innovation or proprietary advantage.
  • Competition is stifling your ability to grow.
  • Your current category prevents your key differences from standing out as ‘must haves.’
  • Your category is in crisis or has fallen out of favor.
  • You are ready to extend your brand beyond current customer segments.

It’s Time to Create a New Brand Category

Creating a new brand category might be the best way to position your brand for success. But, creating a new category is incredibly hard. For most companies, it’s hard enough to explain what your product does and how it’s different from your competitors. And the task of explaining and defending a new product category can be too much for many companies to take on.

However, the rewards of creating a new category are great. High0companies that created their own category accounted for 74% of incremental market capitalization growth from 2009 to 2011. Category creators experience much faster growth and receive much higher valuations from investors than companies bringing only incremental innovations to market.

Category creators must be fearless and confident in their ability to lead the category, build momentum quickly, and maintain a reputation as the category leader over time.  Before creating a new category, consider whether your business has the resources and time available. Don’t just define a new category for your brand, but brand the category itself. In the end, creating a new category can be transformational for your brand and business if you do it well. Look for the best practices for defining a new category and what mistakes to avoid in our upcoming post.

Category Creators

This is the 1st in a series. Check to How to Create a New Brand Category, Naming a New Brand Category, and Launching a New Brand Category by downloading our White Paper on Brand Category Creation.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy firm working with high-growth technology companies.

Disruptive Brands: How to Challenge the Status Quo and Succeed

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Disruptive Brands Are In

We’ve talked some about disruptive brands, why challenging the status quo and presenting information in a fresh way is an important driver of successful businesses today. Millennials value disruption more than any generation before. Many brands and businesses today are thriving because they aren’t afraid to do something new and make a splash. Companies everywhere are trying to figure out how to be the next Uber, AirBnB, or Amazon of their industry – innovating faster than their competition, hiring the most creative people out there, and doing something that’s never been done before.

Innovation and creativity are becoming more and more valued by employers today. Businesses realize they need new perspectives and people who are unafraid of bringing new ideas to the table, in order to drive their business into the future.

The Challenge of Always Challenging

Although disruptive brands are at the center of much of the media around successful business today, it’s not an easy job being a truly disruptive brand or business. Challenging the status quo and succeeding at it is a challenge in and of itself.

A new, change-driving idea isn’t enough. You have to actually make that idea come to life, and that’s a huge task. There are a lot of disruptive companies with innovative ideas who simply don’t make it.

For some, it’s overwhelming and seemingly impossible to prioritize ideas – focus isn’t appropriately distributed and impact gets diluted as a result. Succeeding at being a disruptor requires intense resiliency. Timing is always a challenge, as is getting others on board. Some visionaries have trouble seeing the value of incremental change and quick wins, coupled with their larger vision and greater creative energy. Others underestimate the importance of having a strong and unified team to make their vision a reality.

In the end, successful disruption requires not only a desire to challenge the status quo, but a clear vision, comprehensive research, planning, backing, and endless perseverance.

So successfully challenging the status quo hinges on:

1. Balancing vision with the now

Implementation is hard work, even with a clear vision of what’s ahead. It’s important for disruptors to remember the value of incremental change and quick wins. In the end, it’s all about balancing long-term goals with short-term practicalities. Your larger vision should be what drives everything. But disruption doesn’t happen overnight. It takes planning and prudence to make it work. Big ideas need small ideas to back them up (and sometimes, check to see if they are even feasible). Big steps and big splashes need preparation.

2. Building a stable, resilient team

Balancing these two ways of thinking – small and big – requires a team of diverse thinkers and doers. Because disruption is all about change, building a cohesive, supportive, and aligned team is key. In fact, disruptive thinking itself often thrives in collaborative settings filled with different perspectives and ways of seeing. You need people who are willing to challenge each other – different backgrounds, different strengths, and yet a unifying charge to create and produce change.

Working as a team helps advance ideas for change. When a group feels like they have joint ownership over an idea, it’s more likely to become a reality with everyone rallied behind it. Even someone who challenges the idea can bring up important flaws and help frame the concept for people who might doubt its impact.

3. Knowing your market inside and out

One of the main challenges of behaving as a disruptive business, is the entrance of new competition. When a new idea catches on – and it often does like wildfire – you find others piggy-backing on some version of your idea. Suddenly, you don’t stand out as much. Think Uber and Lyft. Being there first can be both a benefit and a barrier, and differentiating and continuing to say something that resonates and keeps you ahead of the curve hinges on knowing your market inside and out. How can you continue to offer something different? How can you continue to challenge the status quo?

In-depth research and awareness of your audiences and potential competitors is key. Being one step ahead of the game can go a long way. And staying fully informed is key to making sure you have the right timing with the right people – a large part of the equation.

4. Fostering a culture formed on disruption

It’s important to consider how you can maintain the disruptive spirit of your business, even years down the road. Building a culture that is open to fresh perspectives, change, and embraces people who ask questions, challenge ideas, and show an innate curiosity, is key.

Disruptors are often restless. If you want to be a truly disruptive brand, you have to embrace this restlessness. Allow employees to find novel ways of creating, thinking, and learning. New information always drives new perspectives. Be transparent and create a culture of trust where people feel comfortable challenging each other and voicing their opinions in constructive, productive ways. Be open to seemingly bad ideas as well as the good ones. Work with each individual to make sure their voice is heard – helping them learn, grow, and continue to challenge even their own thinking.

Keep Disrupting…

At the end of the day, being an authentic disruptor isn’t dependent on a single idea, product, or breakthrough. True disruptors and truly disruptive companies continue to think and are, in essence, constantly and continually disrupting.

These companies build their entire culture around innovation and new thinking. They constantly work to recreate the chaotic, creative, disruptive, and innovative spirit that led them together in the first place.

Companies who continually challenge the status quo are never satisfied. These brands and businesses are open to change and thrive off of it. The status quo is always changing, and with their oath to challenge it, so are they.

Competitors might (and most likely, will) enter and adapt a version of their original idea. But the winners will always be one step ahead – never part-time, never half-in, never done. True disruption is about constantly shaking things up – challenging even the status quo you yourself have created.

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

Read our recent post on Messaging for Disruptive Brands

Autonomy and Accountability: A Balancing Act That Fuels Innovation

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Higher Demands for Innovation Today

Across industries today, businesses and brands are realizing the need to embrace an innovative mindset in order to compete. In today’s shifting times, agility has never had so much value. And brands who want to be positioned to thrive need to be able to move fast and smart enough to stay ahead of the competition.

This hinges on having motivated, inspired, and productive people behind you. Innovative businesses today are fueled by people who believe in their purpose, are given the freedom they need to experiment, take calculated risks, and work creatively in order to move things forward.

Out of Balance  

Because of the increased demand for innovation, creativity, and higher engagement from employees today, many businesses are embracing a less hierarchical approach – moving away from rigid organizational structures and towards a more flexible approach.

However, giving more freedom to employees can sometimes be a double-edged sword. Yes, increased autonomy can drive creativity and engagement. And yes, it can empower people to innovate and experiment. But unchecked autonomy can easily lead to inefficient methods of doing business, lack of clarity surrounding business goals and objectives, and even organizational mayhem.

The key is finding the perfect balance – giving people the freedom to feel empowered in their own work, while also building the guardrails, systems, and check-points that keep people accountable and moving towards common goals and objectives. You want to give people the optimal amount of freedom to drive productive behavior and business results. And this balance is a challenge for businesses today.

Embracing Autonomy, Maintaining Accountability

Here are some ways to find balance – driving business forward with clear direction and the freedom needed within it to fuel innovation forward.

1. Clarity of purpose

Clarity and alignment around purpose is key. Your people should understand your driving motivator of business and be able to stand behind it proudly. When future aspirations come into focus and purpose is strategically established, it’s easier to be smart about what goals and objectives really matter and who is going to get you there.

Purpose allows people the freedom to work in different ways and experiment and innovate autonomously with a clear future in mind – a future everyone is working towards. The workplace becomes open to different working styles, ways of learning, and methods of creating. And this diversity drives innovation and productive collaboration.

So be transparent about the purpose of assignments and how they relate to the larger purpose of the business in order to set clear expectations. Being transparent and clear will help people find productivity within freedom and flexibility – bringing your business closer to its larger vision.

2. Agile structure

It’s no longer enough for brands and businesses today to be innovative. They have to be fast – moving quickly, always innovating, and outpacing the speed of competition. Businesses who want to compete today need to be agile and this often means they need a more flexible structure. Think smaller teams, dynamic workplace cultures, and efficient collaboration. Teams have to be adaptable, dynamic, and willing to flex and shift. Working in cross functional ways is of great value.

And leaving outdated organizational structures behind means that leaders have to give up some control, which is hard. But empowering employees to self-organize, work cross functionally, and collaborate is one the best things you can do as a leader. Focus on alignment and fostering an agile mindset in order to help autonomous employees do the work your business needs.

3. Build a culture, make it personal

Like anything in business, how you want to be perceived from the outside must shine authentically from the inside out. Culture plays a large role in innovation. In order to fuel a constantly innovating business, you need to build a culture that values freedom, experimentation, and creativity. But it also needs to be a culture that values accountability, transparency, and trust. An experiment-friendly culture or a risk-taking culture only functions to your advantage if you have people who are going to get the job done no matter what. This means meeting deadlines, motivating towards goals and objectives, and striving towards a clear purpose.

Innovative cultures thrive not only when they focus on business goals and objectives, but personal development and growth. Creative, independent people are more motivated when they see their own goals connect to the goals of the business. When it’s personal, it’s more meaningful, and the balance between autonomy and accountability is more easily met and maintained.

Leading and Empowering

Part of the job of being a leader is figuring out the best way to utilize your people to find the best solutions to the right problems. Giving away control, yet working to establish systems that check expectations, keep people accountable, and establish clear goals and objectives is a hard balance to strike, but a necessary one nonetheless. Like anything, it takes practice and experimentation. Think about the best practices your business can follow in order to empower your employees to drive your business forward feeling autonomous and accountable for a future they have true stakes in.

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

Creativity: The New Competitive Advantage for Businesses Today

Posted on by Catrina Morbidelli

The Rising Demand for Creativity at Top Businesses Today

Over the last couple of years, top companies have shifted their mindset about creativity and its value. It’s now clear that creativity drives business success today, and brands who want to stay ahead, foster innovation, and stand out in a competitive marketplace need creativity to fuel their business forward.

As a result, creative people are more in demand than ever before. However, what it means to be creative is hard to define. It’s a wide spectrum. People stay creative and approach creativity in unique ways. And being consistently creative is no easy task – even for the most creatively inclined people in any industry.

We believe part of staying creative — staying imaginative, asking questions, taking risks, having vision, saying something new — is staying inspired. However, finding daily inspiration is difficult.

As a fine artist working in a branding agency, relying on daily inspiration is a necessity — both at work and in my personal projects. Starting a new painting or creative undertaking takes a certain type of mindset, and staying committed to a creative lifestyle allows my work to keep evolving. Here’s how.

Conquering Fear

Many artists spend a lot of time feeling afraid that they won’t find the inspiration they need. This often makes the act of creating feel daunting. I believe there is a balance to how much fear is the right amount. Personally, I need fear to push me forward and drive my energy, but I’ve found too much fear can also limit my creativity. It’s scary to stare at a blank page or an empty canvas. The immensity of the white space feels like it might just suck you in sometimes. It makes you question: are you adequate? No matter how intimidating these natural feelings of fear can be, it’s important that we accept them as a natural reaction to creating something new. We can’t negate fear, but instead need to accept it and use it to fuel our creative energy. That’s where courage comes in.

Practicing Courage

You have to be brave if you want to produce something new. Ideas won’t transform into realities without courage. Part of being an artist is striving to create something different – something that doesn’t yet exist, something you can claim as your own — while also creating something that is accessible to the people you want to relate to your art.

This simply isn’t possible without the willingness to escape our comfort zones and take a risk on ourselves. Inspiration and true creativity stem from experimentation, imagination, exploration, and questioning. Being experimental and questioning established norms and the way you see things or do things isn’t always easy, but it is always rewarding. When we really take risks, we can move forward.

Commit to Perseverance

To keep moving forward and continue to cultivate creativity, perseverance and commitment are key. It’s one thing to have ideas – it’s another to see them through. Creating is an entirely involved process. You can’t be half in, half out. It requires full commitment if you want your ideas to come to life. And though the outcome won’t always be what you envisioned, the process is always valuable.

So commit to living a life that is less routine and more curiosity-driven. Understand that by observing, cataloguing, and pulling from your personal experiences, your inspiration will flourish. I believe the notion that inspiration will “just arrive” holds people back from their greatest achievements. Picasso once said, “When the muse finds you, let her find you working.” Don’t get caught up in the romanticism of creativity. Instead, work hard and act on ideas.

Bring Some Faith

While you constantly work at it, you also have to have faith in the creative process. Trust that through practice new realities can be born. Stay informed about the world and the happenings surrounding us. Pay attention to everything that heightens your senses. News stories, poetry, art, books, movies, sounds, scents, and the patterns of people are great sources of inspiration. We must act on the ideas that appear in order to take them past imagination and into creation. And don’t take things so seriously. If an idea hits a wall, step back and work on something else. Come back to the project only after giving yourself the chance to look on it with a fresh set of eyes and thoughts.

Anyone is Creative

The notion that only certain people have what it takes to be creative needs to be squashed. If we allow ourselves to be open to the inspirational process, so many new and exciting things can happen. And this doesn’t only apply to art. Every industry, business, and calling requires creativity.

Businesses today are worried more than ever about how to stand out and say something different. Industries are crowded with competition. People are constantly trying to find new approaches to learned practices. Talent is never secured. More work, innovation, creativity, curiosity, and inspiration is being demanded in every realm. Fostering creativity – in whatever sphere – will open new doors, create unique possibilities, and unlock hidden capacities as long as you are willing to take risks, be open to suggestions, and are ready to be courageous. Creativity will give your business the competitive advantage it needs in 2017.

Keep posted to hear more from of our team about what keeps us inspired and driven.

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