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Tag: Leadership

Girl Scouts: Embracing a Purpose Bigger than Cookies

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Girl Scouts

Girl Scouts have always been bigger than the cookies they sell. In fact, Girl Scouts of the USA is currently the world’s biggest organization dedicated to girls. Founded in 1912, a long list of prominent women today were Girl Scouts – Celine Dion, Venus Williams, Nancy Reagan, and even Michelle Obama (a big fan of the organization and its impact).

Slipping Membership

The organization currently has 1.8 million members, a drop from the 2.1 million members three years ago. And many are asking why the drop? Slipping membership can be explained in several ways. The organization may be losing girls to other activities – sports, arts, school work, or even, in today’s day and age, social media. A decline in parent-volunteering may also be a cause. Some families have voiced complaints about wanting more activities and outdoor experiences and less cookie selling. The organization has also been criticized for its lack of diversity. Two thirds of current members are Caucasian and there is low membership among minority populations.

It seems that at the heart of the slippage is the perception that Girl Scouts is simply old-fashioned – behind the times of what girls want today and what guardians want from the organizations who support those girls.

Shedding The “Campfire Image”

The organization responded to slipping membership and recently revamped its brand for the first time in decades. Because we’re interested in brands and how they are positioning themselves to succeed in today’s world, this rebrand caught our eye. Here’s why.

1. Focus on experiences

The recent rebrand is shifting focus away from the products and materials classically associated with Girl Scouts – think thin mints and badges – and towards the valuable experiences girls can gain from membership. That being said, the organization is by no means ending cookie sales (they bring in about $800 million in annual sales). But instead, repositioning the sales around the experiences and skills girls can gain – business experience, money management skills, knowledge about successful collaboration, and the overall confidence to tackle any project head on.

Similarly, the organization plans to move away from the long-standing tradition of badges. By introducing a new curriculum, called Journeys, they aim to create a learning environment tailored to help girls build a foundation for success down the road.

Girl Scouts is presenting themselves as a more modern brand by focusing in on experiences, and we predict this to serve them well down the road. Powerful, personal, and meaningful brand experiences tailored to the people that brands and businesses are trying to reach, are the future.

2. Fostering diversity  

The organization was smart and dug a little deeper into who their audiences really were. What was the demographic of the girls and families who joined and supported Girl Scouts? And even further, where was brand awareness and reach weak? Like many businesses today, Girl Scouts realized they weren’t reaching some groups of people that had the potential to connect meaningfully with their purpose and what they had to offer girls – leadership skills and a foundation to go and get whatever they set their mind to, taking risks and innovating along the way.

A key group that was getting left out of the conversation were girls of immigrant families. These girls represented a population that had the potential to find great value in the new program meant to transform girls into confident, savvy leaders and connect them with other girls in their communities.

When the team in charge of the rebrand conducted focus groups, it was revealed that many immigrant parents weren’t aware of Girl Scouts in the first place. And those that were didn’t find it to be the right cultural fit. Many parents didn’t feel comfortable with the concept. Amelia de Dios Romero, the Multicultural Marketing Manager, notes: “Selling cookies, to them, meant going door-to-door to strangers and camping was sleeping in the woods with danger there.” Some parents even thought the organization might turn out to be more of a party influence. 

So Girl Scouts’ newly appointed brand manager (in fact, the organization’s first ever brand manager), Laurel Richie, went out to change this. With Richie in charge of building the brand the team envisions, Girl Scout leaders have started to meet one-on-one with mothers to explain how the program might help their children adapt and feel comfortable in their new home or community. By listening to other perspectives and opening up a new conversation, the organization is beginning to foster the kind of culture they want to build – diverse, aware, welcoming, and connected. And as a result, embracing diversity and reaching a group of urban and minority girls who they have failed to reach in the past is more easily seen as an authentic, genuine goal of the organization.

3. Embracing a larger purpose

At the heart of this rebrand is the greater embrace of purpose. The GIRL initiative – standing for Go-Getters, Innovators, Risk Takers, and Leaders – exemplifies this purpose. Ms. Aceveo voices the larger aspiration: “letting girls know we are the premier leadership organization for them.” Strategically, all the changes that Girl Scouts has initiated so far have stemmed from their larger purpose of helping girls become leaders and connecting with each other. The new anthem, the new public service announcement featuring Girl Scouts playing different leadership roles (“I’m prepared…to lead like a Girl Scout”), their promise of partnering with more community-based organizations, the announcement of their Girl 2017 gathering, and their digital fundraising effort echo this purpose.

Like any rebrand, there’s always a risk. Gender roles have shifted so much since 1912, when the organization was founded. And many worried that the rebrand might be too progressive. Others worried it might not be progressive enough. Strategically, the organization rebranded itself in a way that created a brand open to flexibility. Leading with purpose created this ability to shift and create new programs that still ring true to the heart of the new brand.

Focus on Brand

In many ways, the shifts of the rebrand were subtle, especially design-wise. The new logo added bangs to the profile, attempting to give more life to the girls and making the girls appear more contemporary within the playful, familiar shape. The switch to lowercase aimed to make the organization seem more approachable and welcoming. A recent review of the rebrand noted “this project is a great example of what can be called a revitalization, breathing new life into something a lot of people are familiar with.”

But in other ways, the organization made some major shifts – towards experiences, diversity, and a greater purpose. And above all else, Girl Scouts appears to have embraced the power of building a strong, clear, meaningful brand. They signaled this shift when they hired their first-ever brand manager last year. We, at Emotive Brand, will stay tuned for what’s to come with the Girl Scout brand, and it’s more than cookies.

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

Today’s CMO: What It Takes to Drive Growth

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

We work with CMOs every day, developing strategy and positioning businesses to enable growth and build brand strength from within their organizations. We have seen a role shift for CMOs over the past few years and have deep empathy for these leaders as they look to keep pace with an ever changing set of skills – more complex and more digital by the day.

Because we have a front row seat of today’s CMO, we see more and more of our clients responsible for delivering both top line revenue and profit. CMOs are not only expected to keep pace with the changing digital landscape, but also deliver the insights that ensure they are maximizing that landscape for growth and impact. At the same time, CEOs must maintain a deep understanding of the shifting customer experience and continually deliver superior service. In short, today’s role of CMO is not an easy gig.

So what does it take to drive growth as a CMO?

Some of the most successful CMO’s who have driven growth within their organizations adapt a growth mindset to begin with. By working closely with their c-suite counterparts, they develop the right brand strategy to support business goals and objectives. They  are relentless in nailing the right positioning and messaging to target the right target audiences. These tools then inform GTM strategies and sales enablement programs.

Through our work, we’ve seen a few tactics from CMOs who t successfully drive growth for their organizations. To really make an impact:

Get in the driver’s seat:

96% of CMOs today recognize the importance of disruptive growth when looking to drive revenue. And because you act as the brand guardians of your organization, you are best positioned to drive such growth. Your deep understanding of the people the brand is trying to reach (customers, prospects, and the wider market), and your authority over the data to prove it, puts you in the perfect position.

So leverage your knowledge of what customers want to build a strategy. A good CMO has the extensive persona research and access to customer behavior data to build a strategy around a targeted audience. And you wouldn’t have been hired for the job if you didn’t have the skills, tools, and knowledge needed to step up and own growth. By leveraging your closeness and deep knowledge of the brand you can identify growth opportunities and navigate these opportunities – growing reach, engagement, and loyalty by focusing on the right people at the right time.

Dedicate more time and budget to disruptive initiatives:

Many CMOs worry that their marketing budget may be at risk if they aren’t delivering the needed results to move their business forward. Driving into growth mode often means stepping away from traditional initiatives and toward disruptive initiatives. And this means getting key people on board. Building a business case for these disruptive initiatives is a challenge and taking this risk in an informed manner requires a deep understanding of the brand – who it needs to reach and how. But when driven by a deep and thorough understanding of your brand, dedicating marketing budget to growth initiatives is bound to pay off for your business.

Align with the CEO and C-Suite to move faster:

In today’s world, it’s all about moving fast and efficiently. If you don’t move fast enough, you will simply fall behind the competition. So it’s important that you align the goals and objectives of your job with other goals and objectives in the c-suite.  Getting backing from the CEO, and the C-Suite all aligned and rallied behind growth initiatives can ensure that you can work efficiently to get your organization kicked into growth gear and keep a sustained growth pace moving forward.

Be a culture warrior:

As CMO, aspiring to be a ‘culture warrior’ is one of the best things you can do for your role and your business. Invest in your people. Behave with empathy, lead with purpose, and focus on strengthening connections within your organizations. CMOs should be the drivers of widening perspectives, breaking down silos, taking risks, and fueling productive change and groundbreaking innovation. These are the things that drive growth. Research has found that 67% of CMO’s who act as ‘culture warrior’ will exceed top-line targets by more than 10%, and 50% of ‘culture warriors’ will exceed targets by 25% or more.

Assuming accountability and leveraging your unique, deep knowledge of your business, your brand and the industry, will all help position your business for growth.

Female CEOs We Admire and Why

Posted on by Paige Lansing Valle

The Gender Gap

It’s no secret that gender disparities and inequalities still exist. And gender inequality in the workplace today goes beyond the pay gap. The wage gap has narrowed to less than 5%, but this isn’t enough. 59% of women still feel like they have fewer opportunities because of their gender. 88% of women say they feel as though they are addressed differently than male colleagues. And only 4.2% of CEOs in America’s Fortune 500 are women. And as a company with two female CEOs, we are acutely aware of this and believe in closing this gap.

We thought it’s a fit time to celebrate some of our favorite fellow female CEOs.

1. Kamakshi Sivraramakrishnan, CEO of Drawbridge – For Being a Disruptor

Sivaramakrishnan didn’t build one of the fastest-growing women-led companies on the Inc. 5000 (6th overall on the list) because she was afraid to shake things up. She recognized that there was a large opportunity for her to innovate and disrupt, and that she could do it faster if she left Google and started her own organization.

The number of women leading AdTech is dismal, and Sivaramakrishnan is fully aware of this. She notes leading as a female in this industry requires her to “focus on what I have to say, rather than how I look or how I say it.”

At Emotive Brand, we believe driving growth as Sivaramakrishnan has done at Drawbridge hinges on an organization’s ability to disrupt and drive growth. We recently predicted that 2017 will be all about disruption and admire Drawbridge’s CEO for recognizing the power of disruption early on. Kamakshi and Drawbridge are also a client of Emotive Brand.

2. Maria Eital, CEO of the Nike Foundation – For Demonstrating Social Responsibility

As a female CEO, Eital has dedicated the Nike Foundation’s mission to gender equality. All her initiatives are focused on creating a better life and education for girls age 10-19 who live in the developing world. From encouraging a full education for girls in Zambia, to helping young girls avoid early marriage in Ethiopia, or building rural learning centers in Bangladesh, Eital has turned the Nike Foundation around. The Foundation demonstrates a strong commitment to creating change and helping girls play an active role in their future. And this dedication to bettering the lives of girls around the world is admired by us at Emotive Brand.

3. Miki Agrawal, CEO of Thinx – For Challenging the Status Quo

Thinx, led by changemaker, Miki Agrawal, is a prime example of a brand that is unafraid of challenging the status quo and inspiring a new conversation. By approaching what was a taboo industry from a new angle, Agrawal has built a brand that has re-written the expectations of the industry – empowering women, making periods powerful, and addressing the societal issues that surround menstruation globally. No more flowers and sunshine. Not only has she won over millennials, she has become an international icon for feminism and socially-conscious business today as well as one of our favorite female leaders of the year.

4. Jennifer Rasiah, CEO of Givesurance – For Leading with Purpose

For us, Jennifer Rasiah, is the epitome of a purpose-led leader. With 15 years of experience in the insurance industry under her belt, she decided she needed to make a change – a meaningful change. Identifying an opportunity to leverage her deep knowledge of the industry and her innate desire to give back, she created Givesurance and changed the insurance industry as we knew it.

Instead of spending 50% of commission on acquiring and retaining customers through agents, Givesurance leverages the company’s established partnerships with charities to pass along donations to non-profits. Essentially, Givesurance users can help the world at no additional cost to them. By supporting a diverse and constantly expanding range of causes from global development non-profits to local food and clothing banks, Givesurance produces a personalized sense of giving for both individuals and businesses.

When we interviewed Rasiah, she noted that as a purpose-led leader, she “can’t stop until she’s made the difference she needs to.” And this commitment is something worth commending.

5. Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin, CEO of theSkimm – For Keeping Us Informed

Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin are a female duo worth looking up. They noticed how indigestible and overwhelming news and the infinite news sources at our fingertips can be – especially for busy people today. This drove them to create the theSkimm, a daily email blast that delivers news in a punchy, easily digestible way, giving millennials (their target market) everything they need to know.

For us at Emotive Brand, we know first-hand how important it is to be connected and informed about what’s happening in the larger world is. It matters to our business and how we create strategy as well as how we behave as individuals in the world as a whole. We’re thankful that Danielle and Carly created a way for us to go about our busy lives and still have time to stay informed.

We hope that celebrating these female CEOs and the many other women who are closing the gender gap one step at a time will inspire others to take lead with purpose, be bold, and make a splash in the world today.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design agency.

The Art of Swift, Smart Decision Making in Business

Posted on by Paige Lansing Valle

Too Many Choices

Business leaders can be gun-shy about making decisions – big and small, important and minute –when it comes to both their business and their brand.

The abundance of scenarios about the unknown can easily feel overwhelming. But effective leadership hinges on effective decision making. And it’s impossible to choose a direction when you’re trying to please everyone and do everything.

To Compete, You Have to Decide

At the end of the day, there’s no room or time for slow decision making in today’s competitive, fast-paced landscape. In fact, businesses and brands in every industry are struggling to become more agile and move fast enough to gain and maintain competitive edge.

And this kind of agility requires quick, streamlined, confident, decision making. Trying to make a decision with too many stakeholders involved will only stall your business from moving forward. This ‘hurry up and wait’ mentality can be crippling to how your business progresses.

So how do you create an environment that fosters quick, informed decision making?  

Because of the accelerated pace of business today, businesses need a strategy for decision making.  The most important thing is to make a decision and stick to it.

Being afraid to put a stake in the ground is only going to hold back your brand and create frustrated, confused costumers, employers, and investors. Bottle-necks are antithetical to brand growth. In the end, following through and rallying everyone around the direction you select is what matters most.

Don’t let perfection stand in the way. It doesn’t exist. There are always going to be alternatives to the biggest and smallest decisions you are tasked with making. But the most meaningful, and powerful choice is a direction you actually follow. And if you have a good team and a good product to back you up, you can build your brand and business in whatever direction you choose.

The best leaders are comfortable making decisions using established, agreed-upon practices and then align the subsequent brand and business paths accordingly.

That’s why a solid brand promise is key. With it as your North Star, everything from your brand’s position to its look and feel will have a clear path to guide your decision making. With your promise well articulated and shared, you are better positioned to empower employees to make their own decisions in line with the direction of the business.  Giving employees this power gets rid of the bottleneck that often accompanies the decision making process (or lack thereof!).

Flexibility and Focus

Effective decision making requires a balance of flexibility and focus – honing the prize, and leaving room to shift along the way, within degrees of reason. It is not possible to please everyone or predict exactly what the future will bring. So choose a direction and go with it. You can always readjust the brand. Being a smart, swift decision maker and empowering others within your organization to do the same can ready your business and brand for whatever lays ahead.

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

 

The Value of Leadership that Inspires

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Leadership Leads to Inspiration

The strength of a company depends heavily on its leaders and their leadership. Successful business leaders have to be smart, hardworking, and able to get things done. But, often, that’s simply not enough to fuel a thriving business. Today’s companies require more than just intelligence and drive. As a result, more and more companies are seeking out and focusing on developing their ability to drive inspiration and motivation. And in modern business, whether a leader can inspire, motivate, and engage employees is what sets one leader apart from the next.

Inspiration not only leads to more engaged employees, but it consistently leads to increased innovation and business achievement. A company that can cultivate the skills that will inspire, motivate, and engage employees across the organization will gain a competitive edge in today’s marketplace. Why? Because motivated employees make things happen.

New Requirements for Leaders

Recent changes in the business world have reshaped the workplace, and therefore reshaped what’s required of leaders. Here are three key shifts that are happening today:

1. Focus on the customer experience

The move from product to customer experience is a major source of competitive advantage for businesses today. While companies will always need to deliver high value goods or services, high customer experience has become just as essential. Thus, customer-facing employees have tremendous influence on the success and future of a business. If employees feel inspired and engaged, they will then amaze and inspire customers.

2. Increased independence

This concerns the nature of the work itself. Today, increasingly more jobs rely on collaboration and independence. It’s become common in the workplace for people to collaborate across departments, do their work remotely, and manage themselves. People are expected to generate their own ideas, and take responsibility more than ever before. Being able to stay motivated and creative, especially with little supervision, requires both dedication to your team and passion for your job.

3. More millennials means = demand for meaning

We can’t forget the millennial generation. While the ways in which we work, and the work itself, have both changed, so have today’s youngest employees. Millennials’ value proposition is not related to traditional motivators. The millennial generation will work hard for a company if they believe in its values and purpose, not necessarily for a larger salary or better title. So creating inspiring and meaningful workplace for this generation is critical to attracting and retaining today’s top talent.

How do you motivate employees in an organization when the classic carrot and stick approach will no longer work?

In order to inspire and engage, leaders must energize those around them and create a climate of trust. Their leadership must extend beyond just their own team and be linked with a company’s strategy and overall workplace culture. While there is no “right” way or one way to be inspirational, these types of leaders tend to have courage and lead with authenticity. They utilize empathy and empowerment. And their leadership style flexes and adapts depending upon what’s required of them in the workplace.

To be a next generation leader, these are the key leadership skills to develop and practice:

1. Individualistic

Leadership is not one size fits all. It takes time to learn and cultivate the abilities, strengths, and motivators of each person. Each person has their own style, motivations, and way of thinking. When you focus on the differences between individuals, you change from trying to build the “perfect” team to building a “great” team — one that will be more productive and engaged.

2. Focus on strengths

Cultivating someone’s inherent talents leaves people feeling authentic, valuable, and empowered. An inspirational leader has a good sense of his or her own self, and therefore, sets a good example by developing their own strengths and offsetting their own weaknesses. When people work in strengths-based environments, creativity and productivity increase. Everyone feels like they can do what they do best.

3. Self-aware

Having a sense of mindfulness promotes better overall health and workplace satisfaction. Being self-aware is the essence of leadership itself – being able to stay calm under pressure, cope with stress, and empathize with others. A leader must be able to reflect on their actions and revise as needed. Remaining open to new ways of thinking and interaction creates a required sense of trust and connection to other people.

4. Optimistic

Remaining resilient and positive in the midst of challenges demonstrates a sense of confidence and level-headedness. Leaders who are optimistic don’t just have a goal in mind, they have a strategy to achieve it, and the motivation to implement their plan. Optimistic leaders are able to inspire people to believe that the future will be better than the present. And furthermore, that they have the power to make it so.

5. Visionary

Orienting people toward an aspirational future creates individual purpose and joy. When people feel relevant, they are more likely to participate and contribute. Proactively developing a culture of “you are part of something larger than yourself” creates a common platform for everyone to make unique contributions towards.

Lead the Employee Experience

In order to deliver a great customer experience, you must deliver a great employee experience. And understanding that employees are looking for more than just a paycheck and a “job well done” is the first step in becoming a successful 21st century leader.

In today’s workplace, the opportunity to be a leader is open to anyone who develops their inspirational skills and combines them with their own unique strengths, enthusiasm for the job, and authenticity. Valuing inspiration throughout an organization teaches everyone to be more aware, reflective, and empathetic. Ultimately, a team that reinforces the core principles of inspiration will have a competitive edge, and a more productive and resilient future.

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

 

The Need for Trust and Transparency with your Employees

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Demands of Transparency

In many ways, we live in a time of extreme transparency. From product reviews and political opinions to knowing exactly what your coworker ate for dinner – not much is hidden. But with so much out there, people are more skeptical and less trusting, constantly questioning: What’s real and who can I trust? As a result, people are demanding more from the businesses they work for and the brands they buy from. People don’t want a sea of information and opinions. They want real, honest, authentic, and transparent brands that ring true at every moment.

The Need for Transparency with Employees

It’s no surprise that employees consider transparency within the workplace as one of the top factors determining happiness and satisfaction in the workplace. People don’t want to risk working for a company that isn’t transparent about what it stands for, where it’s headed, and how it’s going to get there – challenges, obstacles, and admittances included.

And although many businesses and their leaders may get away with not being transparent, more often than not, it’s short-lived. If business is good, people are less likely to ask questions. But in reality, however successful, every business runs into bumps along the road at some point. Markets shift. People make mistakes. Challenges and obstacles arise. Sometimes, things just don’t go your way. And often times, employees are left wondering: How did this happen? Why didn’t someone warn me? Should I look elsewhere? When leaders don’t focus on transparency, even a small blip can leave the people who matter to your brand feeling betrayed and lied to.

This is when transparency really starts to become an issue. So how do you turn around a brand that is having transparency issues? First off, transparency happens from the inside out. It originates with transparent leaders. In order to build a trustworthy brand, you need transparent leadership.

Transparency Takes Work

But being a transparent leader isn’t always easy. Many leaders don’t consider it a necessary aspect of their job. And even when they do, it’s hard to admit you’ve made a mistake, led people astray, or even, just need help. Oftentimes, leaders believe being transparent might distract from their power and control. Other times, leaders think it’s in the best interest of their employees to keep them in the dark. And for leaders who are used to keeping things to themselves, it’s hard to start sharing realities with employees.

Making this shift in behavior might not be easy, but in the end, transparent leaders who share successes, challenges, mistakes, and intentions help create brands that are perceived as truthful, trustworthy, and transparent. And these are the brands that can survive any blip in the road. What makes these brands so resilient?

Transparent leaders:

  1. Build long-term respect, trust, and loyalty. Employees respect and trust leaders who are real with them, even in the worst of times. People are more likely to come together and rally behind a leader they respect and feel has earned their loyalty and trust. Loyal employees are more likely to stick it out during rough times, celebrate during good, and be long-term advocates of the brand to the outside world. And in the end, employees are the most important brand champions you can have.
  1. Create more sustainable, efficient business. When employees are more aware of business goals and objectives, or even challenges, they can work from a place of complete knowledge. Feeling like everyone is in-the-know makes it more likely for teams to come together and solve problems in the most efficient, sustainable way. Leaders and employees become more comfortable sharing opinions, perspectives, asking for help, and taking educated risks if they feel like they work in an open work environment. This leads to increased productivity. It also leads to increased creativity. Productivity and creativity help move the brand and business forward.
  1. Promote an aligned and unified workplace. Transparency is a powerful unifier. Because it decreases the risk of misunderstandings, people are more likely to be on the same page and aligned behind common goals, values, and larger aspirations. Because there is no “hush-hush” or differing levels of feeling “in-the-know” amidst leaders and employees, everyone feels as though they matter and can have an impact.
  1. Decrease the risk of issues down the road. When employees trust their leaders and the direction of the business as a whole, there are less PR nightmares, social media snafus, and HR problems. People who feel like they are part of a brand that they can trust and that aligns with their values are more likely to have the brand’s best interest in mind. When recruiting, transparency can help find the right people to drive your business.

Conclusion

In the end, loyal and productive employees will be your brand’s biggest assets. When employees feel like they are a part of a brand that has earned their loyalty, customers will feel this too – from the way employees interact with customers, to what they post on social media, or how they talk with brands about their work. All these moments matter, especially when trying to turnaround a brand with previous transparency issues.

Brands that want to build a transparent, unified, trustworthy brand need to start from the inside and move out.

When leaders are transparent, your people thrive, and as a result, your business will too.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.