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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.

Talking Marketing Strategies in a COVID-19 World: Interview with Joshua Schnoll, Marketing VP

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

An Interview with a VP of Marketing: Marketing Strategies, Growth, Innovation, & Teamwork in a COVID-19 World

We sat down with Joshua Schnoll, VP of Marketing at AppDirect, a subscription commerce platform that gives businesses the freedom to grow, to talk about marketing strategies in a COVID-19 world and beyond. Joshua shares insights and thoughts on how strategy has shifted, the implications of this time on growth, brand, innovation, and teamwork, as well as what kind of mindset leaders should be adopting as this crisis continues to unfold.

Obviously, our world has been greatly altered in the past months. How have your marketing strategies changed with it?

Most importantly, we’re hyper-focused on empathy. Empathy for everyone: teams, customers, future customers…even vendors. When we renegotiated with the hotel where we consistently do AppDirect’s Engage event, we approached it as a mutual decision. How can we do the right thing, for each other?

Just because COVID-19 has changed everything doesn’t mean we’ve stopped marketing at AppDirect. We’re just thinking about marketing strategy within the context of the moment. Our subscription commerce platform helps large telcos offer SaaS and IaaS solutions to SMBs. So, we immediately pivoted to create solutions and content for remote work. Zoom might be the application that most associate with remote work, but the reality is much broader. Security, document management…we’re helping firms understand what they needed to make the full transition and providing those solutions to them.

Clearly, our event strategy has also changed. We’re taking a conservative approach. Larger events (around 50 people or more) won’t be back until a vaccine is found, shifting us to a full digital strategy. That means weekly webinars, small virtual executive discussions where non-competing customers can discuss strategies, and virtual customer round tables that host a broader audience.

Do you think these shifts will last long-term? Or prove to be more ephemeral changes?

I was having this debate with some of my friends, asking the question: will the conference world rebound after this threat has passed? I believe that as social creatures our nature is to want to be around other people. When you get out of the office and travel to a different place, even if it’s a few blocks away, it’s enriching in a way that virtual events simply are not. The serendipitous meeting that occurs in the hallway, the session you mistakenly walk into that proves to be amazing, the great food you eat while meeting customers…those are simply impossible to replicate digitally today. As many collaboration tools are out there, collaboration is never more productive than when in person.

That being said, I do think that the number of in-person visits will reduce and 25-30% of what we used to do in-person will be remote. There will be more virtual events, as everyone builds that muscle in a way they hadn’t before.

As a marketer, you’re inherently interested in how your consumers, your people, are connecting with your brand…engaging, buying…how do you think today’s marketers should be thinking about connecting with people/users in relevant, compelling, meaningful ways?

I think it’s important to keep your long-term strategy in mind and not lose that. The context customers engage in has changed radically, and we need to react to that – but with an eye still kept on the strategy. Think holistically about the customer experience. Your company strengths are the same, but customer needs may have shifted and the world in which people live is altered. How can you meet them where they are today? I think patience is big here. This is a scary, uncertain time for people. Be relevant, be empathetic, and be patient. That’s where I’m focused.

Let’s talk digital. As you know well, the business world was already moving there. Will COVID-19 accelerate or transform the shift to digital? In what ways?

It’s funny – we help firms transform their digital commerce and our greatest competition has always been the status quo, not some competitor. In fundamentally changing your business, shifting to subscriptions, and enabling digital solutions, fear and risk are often what hold businesses back. And COVID is like a wrecking ball to the status quo. Things we once considered unimaginable are the current reality. We’re seeing a number of clients that had slow-rolled digital transformation efforts now fast-tracking them, if they have the resources. I’d say it helps to be partly down the road. Take K-12 education. If a school district hasn’t even thought about what learning platform they’d invest in and now they have to transition to fully digital, that’s going to be difficult. The more work you’ve done, the easier this is.

A lot of businesses who were previously thinking in terms of growth are now thinking about security, stability, staying afloat…do you think it’s possible to drive growth during this time? How?

It really gets back to the hierarchy of needs. For firms that are suffering devastation from an immediate shutdown of their sector, I’m not sure they can think much about growth. Other sectors are different. I think we all need to have patience for growth. Don’t lose those growth ambitions, but be patient.

How does brand play a role? Do you see the role or importance of brand shifting as well?

Like we’ve discussed, this is bringing long-term implications for marketing, messaging, sales…. And brand must lead and play a role. Ask: how does the brand want to show up in the world? And use this strategy to guide how to move forward. Letting brand lead right now is really important. It’s not necessarily about optimizing for revenue, it’s about optimizing for a long-term relationship… and if you focus on making the brand relevant in a new context, and act appropriately, you’ll reap the benefits.

Interestingly, with constraints often comes newfound innovation… Do you see your business, and others around you, adopting more creative, resourceful, or innovative strategies?

AppDirect was founded in 2009, at the height of the Great Recession. Sticking with the status quo never works. This is a time to be more creative and resourceful. Think of ideas like “Goat-to-Meeting” – the animal sanctuary that started offering virtual tours and goat or llama cameos for company or school virtual meetings – that would have never been invented in a pre-COVID world. They’re finding new ways to connect with people and keep their not-for-profit farm going. Just the other day, our team was planning on how we can meaningfully connect with customers over a nice dinner. We’re looking at how to get meals and wine delivered to make a virtual dinner session feel real and special.

What mindset should a VP of Marketing be taking on during this time? What kind of thinking is working for you? What kind of thinking is working against you?

The productive mindset right now is a creative, strategic mindset. And I think, importantly, an optimistic and hopeful mindset. I don’t think this is the time for pessimism. It’s about the art of the possible. When you adopt a mindset of possibility, things get interesting and innovative. COVID has erased the separation between work and home, work selves and personal selves. And there’s something in embracing that informalness, that connection, that authenticity. And lastly, I think gratefulness for what we do have. For me, a great team of people. A company that is able to weather things. Health. Family.

How are you keeping morale up amongst your team and employee base?

We’ve gone through phases at AppDirect. When we first shifted to remote, we were really focused on making sure everyone had what they needed and were safe. We ran daily team stand-ups, we checked in regularly, we over-communicated on purpose. Once people started to realize that we were in this for the long haul, our approach shifted. It was clear that the most valuable commodity to our employees was their time. So to keep morale high, we enabled people to control their own time. We reduced the number of check-ins and increased flexibility so that people could have more time with kids and significant others. At the same time, we’ve been prioritizing team recognition. Acknowledging and celebrating the great effort everyone is making with small rewards like care packages for home.

If you need help adapting your marketing strategies, your brand, business, or culture during this time please reach out.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency based in San Fransisco, California.

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.

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Five Ways a Meaningful “Why” Creates a Compelling Workplace Experience

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Our experience shows that many brands have been crafted with only the customer in mind and that the resulting “customer experience” does not in any way parallel the “workplace experience.” As a result, the brand – as it is now articulated – is relatively meaningless internally.

We believe every brand has a meaningful “Why” hidden within.

This hidden “why” is powerful because it can do as much internally as it can externally. Our job is to dig that out and shed new light on it, all with the ambition of delivering these five benefits.

1. Increase Motivation

When your employees believe in your brand, there’s a natural increase in morale and productivity. If employees feel good about the company they work for, the brand their efforts support, and the work they do, those positive feelings translate directly to a positive impact on your company overall.

What makes people “feel good” about their employer and the work they do? We think it’s when they see what they do as meaningful. What makes work meaningful to an employee? When there’s a personally relevant reason why it’s being done (i.e. the company has a compelling reason for being).

2. Increase Personal Accountability

If employees understand the brand promise that they work to support and how their efforts directly affect the brand’s success and fulfill consumer wants and needs, they’ll develop a stronger sense of personal accountability. In other words, they’ll take greater pride in their work and they’ll want to deliver better results. In a nutshell, they’ll care.

People care when they feel cared for. And this is not just about holding hands. It’s about caring what people care about. People care when there’s a direct link between what they’re asked to do and their personal needs, values, interests, and aspirations.

3. Increase Word-of-Mouth Marketing

If your employees believe in your brand, they’ll be more likely to talk about it to friends, family, and anyone who will listen. They’ll advocate the brand online and offline to anyone who will listen, and they’ll guard it against naysayers. You can’t buy that kind of dedication, support, and positive publicity.

A solid “why” becomes a “social object,” or something that can be shared, talked about, and celebrated. It becomes “what” people talk and tweet about. At its best, the mere act of sharing and talking about a meaningful “why” reinforces its personal relevance and emotional importance to all parties.

4. Increase Communication

When employees feel like they have an important place in the brand’s success and they’re truly part of something greater than themselves (i.e. meeting consumer wants and needs), they’re more confident in sharing their thoughts and ideas. This increased level of open communication can lead to fantastic new innovations and opportunities for your company. It can also help to raise potential red flags before they turn into disasters.

We like to think of a brand’s “why” as the launchpad for all sorts of conversations and collaborative actions. It not only focuses thinking on what to do but also helps people vet ideas that go against the brand’s meaningful ambition.

5. Increase Talent Recruitment and Retention

Who doesn’t want to work for a company where the employees are motivated and happy? When your employees speak highly and openly about your brand, your company has a better chance of increasing retention rates and attracting new talent.

What could be more powerful than employees who believe in, and express, the why of your brand to the colleagues, family, and friends? When the endorsement of a workplace is heartfelt and genuine, it communicates far more to people seeking work. It not only helps draw the right people to the workplace, but it also means they’ll more readily become welcomed and productive members of the team.

For further reading on creating a more compelling workplace experience, download our Meaningful Workplace White Paper.

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

Five Challenges Brands Must Overcome in 2019

Posted on by Chris Ames

As 2018 comes to a close, we at Emotive Brand can’t help but reflect on the trends and forces that defined the year. The Golden Age of subscription services continued to shine brightly, bringing personalized eureka moments to thousands of people. Politics seeped into everything, with brands either choosing to walk the line or pick a side. And our data, once seen as merely a byproduct of business, has continued to become the engine of business itself.

Looking ahead to 2019, we examine five challenges that brands are facing right now – and how to overcome them using a transformational business strategy.

1. Incremental change is fine – just not if you want to be a market leader

“Anything you can do, I can do better” is a mentality shared by many brands and vengeful siblings, but it misses a key point. Your biggest competitor is not another brand, it’s the category you’re in. There will always be another company offering a similar service. The way to differentiate is by fueling big idea innovation. The most innovative companies look for transformation everywhere: in new channels, communications, value propositions, and more delightful experiences. Airbnb is not a slightly more affordable hotel, it’s a thoughtful reconsideration of what it means to travel. Lyra is not a slightly better employee assistance program, it’s a smarter approach to emotional health.

2. Strategy is (and always will be) your strongest weapon

Before brands can delight or amaze, they first need to understand. Knowing what your customer needs, wants, expects, or desires should not only be the foundation from which your product is built, it should drive growth initiatives and resource allocation. For a great example of a brand capitalizing on customer insights, look at Wayfair. Buying furniture online is nearly frictionless – except knowing exactly how the piece will fit in your house. “View in Room 3D” is a brilliant use of augmented reality, allowing people to use their smartphones to precisely visualize how that sectional will look in their living room. The brand strategy informs and enables the business strategy.

3. There’s no real excuse for communication breakdowns anymore

Now more than ever, there’s a glut of communication tools to foster collaboration and eliminate silos within your team. It’s your responsibility to discover how your team works best, and then equip them with the right tools to win. Maybe it’s a matter of personality, and it requires facilitating a workshop to identify your preferred working style. Or perhaps it’s a matter of product, and something like Slack or LogMeIn will streamline your processes. Either way, your internal communications should be treated with the same urgency and gravity as your external ones.

4. Creating a consistent brand experience is worth the headache

Recently, our design team had the pleasure of visiting the Letterform Archive, a non-profit center for typography and lettering in San Francisco. In the archive, we flipped through Coca-Cola’s advertising manual from 1948 – and we couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy at the simplicity of the media sphere. Radio, newspaper, print. That’s it. Now, of course, we live in a hyper-fragmented landscape where a mixture of screens and devices vie for our attention. If you’re selling soda in 2018, you somehow need to have a mastery of Snapchat and smart refrigerators, in equal measure. This is a nightmare for brands as they attempt to optimize the customer experience. But you can’t afford to ignore a social media channel or device aspect ratio if you want to remain relevant. For guidance, look to Netflix. Regardless of device or account, user preferences are seamlessly remembered and transferred. At the end of the day, people don’t care about the medium. They just want results.

5. In this age, only emotive brands are remembered

Here in the office, there’s a certain Maya Angelou quote that gets said often.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

In all your interactions for 2019, you should be asking yourself, how does this make our customers feel? Our partners? Our employees? The branding process can be obtuse. There’s jargon, terminology, workshops, and processes that everyone, especially those in the C-suite, might not be familiar with. But that’s the brilliant thing about emotion – it transcends language to hit you right in the heart. You may not know everything about your brand, but you know how you want it to make people feel. That emotional impact is your compass. Let it guide your decision making and it will undoubtedly lead you to a place of business and brand transformation.

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

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.