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Tag: Marketing

The Right Ad, Just When you Need It: Talking “Moment Marketing” with Randy Wootton

Posted on by Sara Gaviser Leslie

Randy Wootton and Moment Marketing 

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

In this post, we speak with Randy Wootton, former CEO of Rocket Fuel, a past Emotive Brand client whose positioning project resulted in a major acquisition for the company. In this interview, we talk about the evolution of marketing and advertising today and why brands poised for success are focusing in on what Randy calls “Moment Marketing.”

Below, we discuss his book in-progress and hear what he has to say about one-to-one marketing, audience segmentation, AI, and the future of advertising. Could advertising ever be truly helpful for consumers? Even welcome? Randy says it’s possible. Read his interview below:

Tell me about your book-in-progress, Moment Marketing?

First, let me clarify what I mean by “moment”. When I use that term, people often think about big moments in their lives: the groundbreaking discovery, a wedding proposal, or solution to a difficult problem. But 99% of moments are banal. Moment marketing means you reach the right person at the right time, at the right place, in context.

Last weekend, for instance, I sat on my couch and watched the Raiders with my 11-year-old son. He played a Disney game on his phone. I checked email. It was a perfect opportunity for Disney – or a similar advertiser – to create a wraparound experience. If they could push an ad to me for a 20% discount on my next trip while also placing an ad in my son’s game, chances are the advertising would be a lot more effective than a Disney billboard I pass on the way to work.

If we’re targeting individuals, is that the end of audience segmentation?

I think it is. Segments can be helpful but they also limit you. Think about one of the popular segments: soccer moms. Marketers make many assumptions about this group and target based on age, gender, and location. But segments don’t capture the robustness of individuals. They don’t describe individuals; they don’t tell you that one mom has other kids who do baseball and guitar but hate soccer.

When you track individuals’ actions, interactions with brands, and purchases and then target them one-on-one, you can be much more precise. What’s even better than that, though, is engaging them at the right time, in the moment.  

You have said that consumers could eventually welcome advertising. Really?

Think about Amazon today. When you look for a book, they suggest other titles you might enjoy as well as reviews of those books. When you get this data at the right time, in context, it improves your experience. Consumers aren’t opposed to advertising, they are opposed to bad advertising!

In a world of Moment Marketing, what will stop advertisers from hounding me with ads for the pair of shoes I didn’t buy?

Online advertising today is disruptive and interruptive. Moment marketing requires companies ingest lots of data in near real time and take action in less than 20 milliseconds. That’s where AI comes in. You need insight engines to mine all of this data or you’ll get overwhelmed and drive your customers and prospects crazy. AI can help us discern the relevant data and then deliver advertising at the right time, in context.

Do you think marketers are ready for AI?

Right now, we are still in early innings of understanding the possibility of data. Think about when people first rode in cars. It probably seemed very dangerous. People named cars “horseless carriages” because the only way they could conceive of the future was through lens of the past. We are going to see computers make decisions more and more often. Marketers will have to surrender control and trust results. Otherwise, they’ll stand in the way of progress – and higher conversion.

How does this affect non-digital commerce? Brick-and-mortar stores?

It will be the end of those flimsy circulars we get in the mail, for sure. I see marketers getting really good at combining offline and online. Holiday shopping, for example, will be defined by mobile. When I go Toys R Us to shop for Christmas presents, that’s when I want to know about the hottest toys and receive a discount coupon.

The opportunity to stitch online and offline together thru predictive marketing is radical. When marketers understand individuals and context, they create more meaningful experiences. Companies that successfully do this will differentiate themselves in the market and, ultimately, capture more than their fair share of revenue.

Stay tuned for what both Randy and Emotive Brand do next.

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

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

Posted on by Carol Emert

Can big data build brands better?

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

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

What is machine learning?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Emotions and empathy

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

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

Creativity

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

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

Insight

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

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

Aspiration

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

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

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

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

Disruptive Technology: Paving Cow Paths or Breaking New Ground?

Posted on by Dann Wilkens

What is disruptive? Is it the company that reinvents a category, or the one that creates an entirely new category? In the case of cities, London’s road system was based on paving ancient pathways, while Washington D.C.’s grid was laid out in advance of breaking ground. Both are great cities today, but their structures came from entirely different ways of thinking.

The same is true of companies and brands.

Innovation is swirling around the financial sector today with companies reinventing ways to buy, sell, get paid, lend or borrow money, and finance companies. But for the most part, they are bringing their new thinking and technology to incrementally improve existing mechanisms. Even virtual currency is a new take on an old idea.

The practice of medicine is as old as civilization, but ongoing innovations in pharmaceuticals, medical technology, and data mining are enabling new predictive insights and treatment options that did not exist before.

Cloud services that leverage the connective tissue of the Internet are replacing old-school paper and obsolete digital records in every industry, speeding the availability and quality of information. Is this disruptive enough to stand out?

How can you stand out?

Of the roughly 6.3 million patents filed in the U.S. between 1999 and 2013 (2,481,795 granted), 53% were in computer technology, digital communication, telecommunications, semiconductors, electrical machinery, medical technology, pharmaceuticals, chemistry, biotechnology, and measurement sectors.

But 47% were in a category called “other.” So innovation is everywhere.

With that many innovations pouring out each year, how can a company differentiate its technology enough to stand out? Brand strategy can help.

Brand strategy and branding can help

Brand strategy is a process that helps business people identify what’s important about a new technology, product, or service. Why it matters, who stands to benefit from it, and who might stand in its way.

Brand strategy, especially emotive branding techniques, also defines how to communicate the most important facts about a new concept to people in a way that connects on a deeper, more emotionally meaningful level. It helps companies scale and grow product lines, penetrate new markets, and spread globally.

No matter what you’re inventing or reinventing, brand strategy can put it into a meaningful context that people can understand and identify with. It works for incremental advances in existing categories – paving the cow paths – and for brand new ideas that don’t fit into a conventional category.

See how we’ve helped many disruptive technologies launch, grow, and thrive.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency

 

Meaningful Millennials: On Millennial Advertising

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Millennial Advertising

We’re back with our ongoing installments of “ Meaningful Millennials ,” where we interview millennials on a variety of different subjects that are top of mind for us in the studio.

As a brand strategy firm, we work with a lot of clients who are looking to reach, connect, and engage with millennials in productive, positive ways. Millennials now represent the largest group of consumers within the U.S., and thriving brands today are highly aware of this. When millennials are wielding over $170 billion per year in purchasing power, there’s no ignoring us.

I heard fourteen millennials’ thoughts and here’s what I learned:

Millennials have higher expectations, bigger demands, and greater criticisms of the brands who target them. We want more efficiency, better innovation, and greater convenience and quality. We care that the brands we choose to buy from are transparent, authentic, purpose-led, and dedicated to social giving. We’re wary of pushy brands who feel like they know us a little too well, but at the same time, want brands and their advertising to be highly personalized and feel unique to us. That’s why the brands that are succeeding with millennials are finding new ways to seamlessly weave themselves into our lives – creating meaningful experiences while maintaining a hard-to-get aura.

Read more about what millennials have to say about millennial advertising today.

“I do my best to avoid advertising. I don’t listen to the radio or cable. If there’s an option to pay more to opt out of commercials, like on Hulu, I do it in a heartbeat.

That being said, it’s impossible to avoid advertisements all together. I have found a lot of brands associated with marriage or children advertising at me. But I’m not engaged. I’m not pregnant. I have no children. I’m a 27-year-old single woman. I find the fact that these ads are wrongly targeted at me highly obnoxious and presumptuous.

However, I do see a lot of Facebook advertising for clothes and makeup that I actually am interested in. I’m pretty sure most of those are suggested because of my Google and browser history, which is kind of creepy, but also, kind of genius.”

Amy Muller
Business Owner and Tattoo Artist

“Any advertising that casts its net so broadly to target “millennials” isn’t doing the best it can to be relevant or targeted. My concerns, situation, and interests are very different to those of a high schooler. Gen X, boomers, and millennials are useful tools for describing large, fuzzy age cohorts, but aren’t a good focus for marketing. I often take millennial targeted advertising to include things like using memes, which can go horribly wrong very easily. Just look at brands that continued to use Pepe the Frog images in an effort to be fresh or relevant after that image had been coopted by white supremacists, not realizing what it had come to represent.”

Alex Gray
Director, Global Solutions Consulting

 

“I’m always looking at ads with a critical eye and asking myself: What are they really selling and how are they trying to get me to buy it? So it’s hard to think of an ad that I genuinely connect with or like.

A lot of advertising that targets millennials seems to sell a product by selling a feeling or experience. I’ve also noticed a lot of companies putting out ads that make it seem like they’re socio-politically conscious. While it’s great to see constructive ideas being promoted and normalized, it’s problematic that those very ideas are being aestheticized and commodified. Pepsi’s latest ad that aestheticizes activism and thus trivializes the struggle that many people face today is a clear example of that.”

Julia Kwon
Visual Artist

“I think millennial advertising has the potential to be more meaningful and more informative than any advertising before it. Take, for example, the Quip toothbrush whose ads constantly run on my social media feed. Quip’s ads are simple, visually pleasing, and easily digestible.”

Carolynn Langsdale
Psychologist

“I find that millennial advertising today is way too entrenched in social issues. Many advertisements disregard their actual product or value in order to appeal to people with a certain social view. I enjoy an advertisement that focuses on the actual product and the value it is going to add to my life, instead of a brand that aligns itself with a certain social view or popular way of thinking in order to appeal to people’s opinion of the company and how it’s run.”

Dominic Morbidelli
Associate at Transwestern

“I feel like most millennials, myself included, really loathe traditional ads – we don’t like being overtly sold to. I know it’s always about selling, but the minute it feels like a pitch, it’s a turnoff.”

Denise Christie
Marketing Communications Manager

“Brand loyalty is not as common as it once was. It can be difficult to entice us with new and upcoming products. Becoming the next “big” thing can be a trying venture when competition is high and your consumers are always looking to be trendy and time efficient. Also, thanks to social media and technology, we are more informed than ever and our generation has really high expectations.

Lately, I’ve felt like I just don’t connect with millennial advertising. The Mountain Dew Kickstarter commercial left me wondering what the point even was. It had no direct connection to my life.”

Michelle Cooley
Horse Trainer & Social Media Marketer

“As a millennial, I like advertising that’s a little illusive. I like the idea of selling a lifestyle. I like when brands give back to the community. I like brands that use models of all sizes, ages, nationalities, and attractiveness in their advertising. I like brands that support the same social & political views I do (or, that don’t make those views known).

Recently, one ad that has stuck out to me is the Secret commercials. The featured women look like every day women, obviously successful and intelligent. That’s what I want to see promoted more. That’s what I connect with.

The best experience of advertising I’ve had recently is the Super Bowl Lumber 84 commercial. It told a story, an important one, and made me start to build brand loyalty without knowing anything else about the brand or who they were.”

Megan Peterson
Charter Sales Analyst

“Many of us do not read the Sunday newspaper, collect paper coupons, or even shop at a mall. Marketing had to change in order to reach and resonate with us.

Now, I find myself watching sponsored videos on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. I follow influencers on different media platforms and keep my eye on products they use.

For example, for an upcoming trip, I came across some sponsored Instagram ads from Revolve clothing. It was crazy how spot-on they were. They totally fit the look and trip I wanted to have, so I made an order.”

Juhwi Kim
Media Analytics Research Analyst 

“I can no longer watch TV because I don’t have the patience to sit through ads. Instead, I stream my shows through HBO, Hulu, and Netflix.

Sponsored ads celebrities post on social media also upset me. I feel like I am being lied to. That these celebrities don’t actually believe in these products. It’s just all about money.”

Hana Fleek
Lab Manager, Mechatronics, Embedded Systems and Automation (MESA) Lab

“Millennials have grown up in a social media world where a lot of us feel the need to share our lives constantly. Successful brands today are creating content that provides an opportunity for us to become a part of their brand story.

Toms is a prime example. By making each purchase equal to a charitable donation, consumers feel as if their purchase has a purpose beyond just getting new shoes. I don’t want to support “evil corporations”. I want to feel like I’m making a difference. I want my purchases to go towards something good.”

Jon Lawhead
Structural Project Engineer, 4STEL Engineering

“I find that hyper-targeted advertising can be too aggressive and feel overwhelming. I don’t like feeling like brands have a constant presence in my life. And often time it’s like no matter what I’m doing or where I am, they are there – whether I like it or not. I’m torn because sometimes what they throw at me is spot on, but at the same time, most of them just never leave me alone.”

Shannon McGuire
Analyst, M Powered Strategies

 “I really like the campaigns from Harry’s – the razor company. The brand conveys their brand story in a compelling way, making it simple and witty. On the other hand, the recent Pepsi ad that majorly backlashed totally missed the mark with millennials. I think they were actually attempting to connect with us by picking an issue they felt this generation really cared about. However, they did it in an inauthentic and inappropriate way. It was clear that they didn’t really care at all.”

Andrew Dewey
Associate Consultant, WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff

“Most recently, the ad for Pepsi that co-opted the BLM movement really missed the mark. In terms of appearing authentic, the Coca Cola ad that aired during Super Bowl 2017 was riveting because it blended individuals together without forcing a narrative.

A trend I’m not too comfortable with in millennial advertising is that personal data is becoming a commodity. I hope that in the future, advertisers can come up with other ways to target individuals and micro-communities.”

Nathan Lacy
Environmental Permitting Assistant, Kinder Morgan

Here are our top-line findings from these millennials.

  1. Our generation articulates a general distrust for millennial advertising. Many millennials feel wary of the lines crossed collecting personal data. Others feel many brands are just in it for the money. Most question brands authenticity when it comes to targeting millennials. So it seems winning over millennials requires brand behaviors that will help foster trust and articulate authenticity above all else.
  2. Millennials want to hear from brands that fit perfectly to our personal image, style, and needs, integrating seamlessly into our lives without feeling like we are being advertised at. Pushy, aggressive advertising doesn’t resonate well. Instead, we prefer content and experiences that add something meaningful to our every day. That’s why brands that tell compelling stories and bring consumers along on the journey (often digitally) are winning with many millennials.
  3. Many feel that “millennial advertising” casts too wide of a net. We want to be seen as unique individuals and not be lumped into such a big group. That’s why fit and personalization are really important to millennials today. When a brand resonates with something we feel is unique about us as an individual, it already has a leg up against other brands.
  4. When millennials feel as if a brand genuinely stands for something good, they are more likely to spend money and dedicate more time engaging with it. Having a purpose beyond profit isn’t an advantage, but a requirement for millennials today. But authenticity is key. When brands try to latch on to ideas just because they think millennials will connect with them, many notice the inauthenticity. And that does not bode well for those brands.

We understand that we have only polled a small group of millennials. Please add to our discussion. Comment your thoughts about millennials advertising, and keep posted for more Meaningful Millennial posts to come.

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

Consider This Before Developing Your Go-To-Market Strategy

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Preparing to Develop Go-To-Market Strategy

Developing a strong go-to-market strategy (GTM) is hard to get right – especially for any startup in high-growth mode. The right GTM requires bringing together all of the strategic assets that address your business and growth strategy: sales, marketing, product, channel, brand, and vision. The benefits of developing this kind of strategy are huge, but a lot of pieces have to come together in order to properly prepare and ready your organization for investing in it.

Bringing in experts to help create a GTM strategy brings both a strategic and a valuable outside perspective to the table. It can also help evaluate if you have all the necessary strategic components in place. And also extremely important, that those components are tightly aligned to each other, laddering up to your business goals and objectives.

Evaluating Required Critical Components for your Go-To-Market Strategy

Most times, when a company looks to develop a go-to-market strategy they are pressed for time and looking to execute now. They don’t want to take any detours to evaluate readiness. But this kind of evaluation is a critical step — one that separates a winning GTM from one that falls short.

Developing a GTM strategy requires an evaluation of readiness of the following strategic assets:

1. Category:

What category are you in? Are you developing a new one?

2. Customers:

Who are you selling to? Who is your target customer? What markets are you considering?

3. Positioning:

What unique value do you offer in relation to your competitors?

4. Brand Promise:

Why does your brand matter?

5. Messaging:

Does what you are saying to each target audience to ensure your brand resonates and connects to the business problems they are seeking to resolve?

6. Narrative:

Do you have a strong story that articulates what you do, how you do it, why you matter, and what people can expect from you in the future?

7. Channels:

Where do your target customers buy? Where will you promote your products?

8. Product Offering:

What product/service are you selling? And what unique value do you offer to each target customer?

9. Pricing:

What is your pricing structure? Are you offering a SaaS model? Do you price differently for different customer types?

Methodically evaluating each component of a successful go-to-market strategy is hard. It is often an emotional process. Leadership teams feel like they’ve addressed these many times. From their perspective, all the elements are interconnected and built upon each other. But taking the time to address each one singularly and allowing outside help to bring them together more cohesively can deliver even greater value and stronger ROI, and actually save time.

Getting it Right

Timing is everything. The biggest mistake we see startups making when they go to develop a GTM strategy is two-fold:

  1. Not having all strategic components articulated and strategically aligned
  2. Not allowing enough time to develop a strong GTM strategy that ladders up to your growth and business strategy

Whether you’re developing a go-to-market strategy internally or working with outside help, allow enough time to systematically and methodically go through the process of evaluating each of the components described above. Evaluate them with an open mindset. More likely than not, some of those components might need adjustments and tweaking. Each are critical individually and work even harder for you as a set. They are hard to get right. And it does take time. But when they are truly working together, you are really ready to develop a rock solid and winning GTM.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco strategy and design agency.

For further ready, try: https://www.emotivebrand.com/demand-generation/

 

Product Design and Brand Strategy?

Posted on by Dann Wilkens

Product Design and Brand Strategy?

Too often marketers and product developers don’t see the connection between product design and brand strategy. We’ve noticed this trend, especially with technology companies. Products can suffer growing pains if they are conceived, gestated, and born into the world without the guiding hand of the brand. On the flipside, brand strategy can have an enormously reassuring influence on the design of a product. In fact, our brand strategies exert positive influences on the product designs of most of our clients, in direct and indirect ways.

Here’s how.

Empathy

Brand strategy always starts with a thorough study of target audiences, which means understanding what makes them tick. Their needs, expectations, pains, and joys. When a brand really gets their user base and absorbs their point of view into the planning process, they can design more meaningful, more successful products.

Brand Promise

Brand strategy synthesizes a company’s business strategy, purpose, and product positioning into a distinctive promise that informs everything the brand stands for. Who the brand serves, what the brand brings to the table, and why it matters to people. Over the long months it takes to build a product, it’s tough to stay true to the emotional impact you hope your product will deliver. The promise at the core of your brand strategy is the beacon you can follow, with constant guidance to help you build a brand-appropriate product experience.

Brand Voice

How your product meaningfully connects with people matters more than you might suspect. You want the product to inspire meaningful feelings like excitement, amazement, or delight. Brand strategy sets the tone by establishing a voice that’s consistent with your promise. Brand voice is a delicate thing, which can include words, sound effects, and music. It doesn’t just fall out of the sky. It’s developed through a rigorous brand strategy process. It’s explored. It’s discovered. It’s developed. It rarely comes from QA engineers writing error messages.

Dialog

Ever make a mistake using an app? How can it be a mistake if you happen to press the wrong button in a confusing UI? Ninety percent of the time, when a user gets derailed in an app, it’s because the app itself is too complicated or the navigation is deranged. In other words, it’s not your fault, Citizen User.

So is it ever appropriate for a sensible brand to write the word ERROR in a dialog box? The clue is the term “dialog.” A product is a dialog with a user. A human being. A person. A person like you does not need a product to waggle a finger and issue a stern warning. If the product needs to help the user make a better decision, it’s called coaching. Encouraging. Extending a helping hand. Dialog. Not an error warning. Not lecturing. Not accusing. Not criticizing. Brand strategy provides guardrails for voice and behavior so your product doesn’t veer off track.

Once you’ve built a product with your brand strategy firmly in mind, you’ll wonder how you ever built anything without it. And whether you’re building an app, an online service, a mobile device, a piece of electronic hardware, a wearable gizmo, or any product that a human being touches, you’ll never build anything without a brand strategy again.

Emotive Brand teams up with clients to ensure that the brand strategy finds its way into the product experience to make a meaningful impact on users. To experience brand strategy the Emotive Brand way, give us a call.

To read more on this subject: Brand Strategy and the Value of Creative Design 

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Building the Business Case for your Rebrand Project

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Recognizing the Need for a Change

Why build a business case for your rebrand? You know when your business needs one. There are lots of warning signs that indicate the need for a new brand. Whether it’s new, high-performing competition, an outdated look and feel, uninspired employees, dropping engagement and productivity within the workplace, trouble recruiting or retaining top talent, or a brand that’s simply fallen behind its own positioning, you need a change. Often those in HR and marketing are the first to notice the need for a change. The current brand is just no longer doing the work it needs to do to move your business forward, outperform competitors, and attract the best-fit talent to your company. And your business is faltering as a result.

Gathering Support from Leadership

But the fact is, in order to change your brand, you need backing and leadership support. The top of your organization is only going to invest in a rebrand if they are confident it will pay off for their business. And tight budgets and an uncertain economy make it even harder to make the case. That means it’s even more important to build a strong, clear case that persuades decision-makers that the investment in a new brand will, in fact, position the business for success.

Often, people don’t realize the true connections between brand and business – that the way the brand lives and functions changes customer perception, shifts behavior, and impacts the overall financial performance of a business. At Emotive Brand, we understand that a thriving brand = a thriving business. But how do you communicate this value and persuade the decision-makers in the room to get on board?

Building a Strong Business Case For Your Rebrand

Because this is a large decision with large impact, there are a lot of questions surrounding the potential impact of a new brand. Questions like: How can we position the brand for long-term success? Will the brand architecture shift? How much do we need to invest? What’s the value for customers? For employees? How does the brand change impact brand behavior? Revenue? ROI?

Of course, every business is different and therefore demands a different case to answer these questions. So make sure you tailor your case to your business’ specific concerns, visions, goals, and objectives. Internalize where your business is struggling, where it could go, and how it could get there. Here is some general advice for building a strong business case:

1. Identify what’s at stake.

Clearly articulate the need for a new brand. Quantitative and qualitative measurements are not mutually exclusive. Use both to paint a picture of the current state, where the brand is faltering, and where it could go. Often, mapping the current brand to business goals and objectives can demonstrate how off kilter the two really are. Don’t forget to inject an emotional appeal as well. Since the people you are speaking with also work at your company, they will empathize and understand the story you are telling.

2. Do your research.

Identifying competitor companies or other organizations with previously similar problems can help bring the value of a rebrand to life. Show how a change in brand has transformed like-minded businesses to demonstrate how a new brand could do the same for you. Using your potential brand strategy agency’s case studies might be particularly useful here. Point out untapped audiences your brand might help you capture, or draw attention to outdated brand behaviors that are stalling business. Make sure to do internal research as well. Listen to people’s concerns and internalize top leader’s greatest worries. Make sure you focus on these concerns and explain how a new brand might address them.

3. Spell out connections.

Like we said, for many in the room, the connections between brand and business may not be clear. When building a business case, you have to make sure that the brand’s potential impact on business is explicit. Communicate and demonstrate how the two are not mutually exclusive or hardly connected. In fact, they are interconnected, each driving the other, and potentially thriving as a result. Brand strategy is mapped directly to business strategy. Help people understand the ways in which a brand can change things like purchase behavior and customer perception and how these shifts then ladder back to business performance.

4. Look to the future.

Although current obstacles and problems should be addressed, your business case must also look forward. The potential future of your business is what will inspire and motivate. A new brand is a step forward for a company and should be addressed as so – a fresh start, a new opportunity, untapped territory for success. So get people excited about the future.

5. Outline the payoffs.

Even though you are making a business case, it’s not just about hard ROI (although this is most definitely a large part of the story). Focus on every way in which in the brand might add value.

Increased ROI:

A strong, emotive brand will lead to increased sales and revenues. Marketing and advertising will be better positioned to increase the lifetime value of customers in your target audience. And you will waste less money on marketing to customers who do not connect with your brand. Examining how your brand impacts financial results is important to maximizing your business value, maintaining competitive advantage, and increasing profitability in the long-term.

Successful recruitment and retention efforts:

Employees should be your greatest brand champions. Building a brand that everyone can rally behind, makes top employees less likely to leave and the right employees more likely to come to your company.

Aligned leadership:

Brand strategy is one of the surest ways to identify where leaders are misaligned. These discrepancies might be stalling business and keeping you from moving forward in pace with a competitive market. Getting leadership on the same page with a shared vision, and a way of getting there, is one of the best things you can do for your business.

A stronger and more meaningful culture:

If your employees live your brand promise everyday, the brand will shine from the inside out, and your business will, in turn, thrive. This is because meaningful culture leads to more inspired leadership and employees, higher levels of engagement, productivity, creativity, and innovation. Businesses that want to compete need employees who believe in their brand and business, and feel validated by their workplace culture everyday. As result, these are the people who give your business the momentum to advance with the times.

Increased brand awareness:

Brand recognition, connection, and engagement are key to a thriving business. When people recognize your brand, your brand is able to grow. And increased awareness of a brand that can emotionally connect with people means increased loyalty, as well as a higher lifetime value for customers.

Big Impact

Building a strong, persuasive, and clear business case that appeals to the worries, concerns, objectives, hopes, and dreams of the decision-makers in the room can help gather the investment and support your brand needs to move your business forward.

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

Readying Your Marketing Budget

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

For most companies, Q4 is a time of strategic planning and where every CMO and VP of Marketing prepares for marketing budget planning for the upcoming year.

Questions You Want to be Asking

It’s important for businesses to start the new year with a strategic framework that sets them up for success. Look beyond your marketing department for alignment within the rest of your organization to help refine and define your marketing objectives for planning purposes.

  • What are the strategic initiatives for your business?
  • What are your top marketing priorities from these strategic initiatives?
  • What mix of strategic and tactical projects will you need to focus on next year?
  • What resources (time, money, people) do you need to accomplish those projects?

Q4 is a great time to evaluate your brand strategy in light of where your business, product(s), recruitment needs, and sales strategy is heading. So make sure you are supporting each of these as strategically as possible within your brand strategy and marketing team.

  • Are you happy with your brand and its reputation in the market?
  • Does it make sense to reevaluate your brand positioning based on any past or upcoming business or product shifts?
  • Is your messaging as tight as it needs to be?
  • Are you in high-growth mode? Is recruitment a top priority for 2017?
  • Are there any strategic creative projects you are looking to complete next year? A website update? A new visual identity?
  • Are you engaging in any merger or acquisition plays in the coming year that need to be considered?

These are great questions to take the time to evaluate when preparing your marketing budget for next year.

So when’s the right time to begin asking these questions?

Now! Be proactive. Do your research. Be strategic. Talk to your team to get their input. Is your marketing and sales teams aligned around priorities?  What’s your agency planning for 2017? How about your PR firm? Be diligent and bring all your external resources into the conversation to help both craft and validate your strategic and tactical needs against the realities of determining a budget.

Ask your agency what they think is important and where they see opportunities. These meetings can shift your perspective and open your eyes to what is possible. And it’s always good to have a third party perspective, especially those strategic partners that truly and deeply understand your business.

As you well know, it’s not an easy task to articulate and validate a budget to the CFO. You’re going to have to go to bat and prepare to negotiate. And if business has been anything less than outstanding in 2016, that’s only going to add to the challenge.

So prepare to show a strong ROI. Articulate how this work can help drive growth. Outline the business case of what you are looking to do mapped against the strategic priorities of the business. Understand how you help support sales and drive top-line revenue. Discuss how to strengthen brand awareness and deepen brand engagement. Be able to articulate the value you are delivering to all parts of the organization from HR to sales enablement to product development.

What can marketers be prioritizing in Q4?

Q4 is often a time when businesses find they have surplus budget. This means quickly determining the most strategic way to spend this money before the year is over. When time is of the essence, it’s important to make sure you are spending your budget in the smartest way – with the largest strategic impact. So if you find yourself with surplus, it’s important to take a pulse of what’s working well today and what’s not.

View this as the perfect opportunity to use your surplus marketing budget for the good of the entire business, aligning everyone around what is most important for the business and brand, while ensuring you are starting off running on day one of Q1.

A quick win for your leadership team in Q4

Getting your leadership team together in Q4 for a facilitated, focused look backward at your business and brand. This is a smart way to take a strategic look forward and determine how to best position the business for success in 2017.

Working together to address the biggest business and brand issues, and getting to the bottom of those problems quickly is a good way to wrap up the year. It is also a great opportunity to create fast and executable solutions that are ready for Q1 across the board.

This is exactly why we created Fast Forward – a quick and agile strategy delivery that happens all within 30 days. It’s for businesses that need to move quickly and make an impact immediately. It’s a way to getting things going and really addressing those pertinent issues that are stalling your business.

If you have the resources to invest in Q4, this is one of the most strategic ways to get aligned around your business, brand, and the priorities 2017 that will benefit the entire company.

Marketing Budget: Final Thoughts

Nobody enjoys budget season. And nobody ever is happy with where their budgets land. Our best advice is to get outside of your comfort zone and outside of your department to ensure you are tightly aligned to the business. Drive strategic conversations that ensure your marketing budget for 2017 is directly aligned to topline initiatives for the business. Enabling the leadership team to come together will help each department benefit from your projects. And you’ll be better able to drive value inside and outside of your business. By taking this step, you may find your marketing budget increases, and the strategic value you deliver as well.

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

Marketing vs. Brand? Do You Know the Difference?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Marketing vs. Brand

People are sometimes confused about the difference between marketing vs. brand strategy. This is not surprising, because they are not mutually exclusive ideas. They are interdependent strategic activities that feed, inform, and drive each other. The important distinction to make is in the intent and desired outcome of each area.

Brand

Brand defines how people should ideally feel about your business and products. It strives to find how to optimize belief in what you do offer and what you stand for in the world. It is an abstract idea held in the hearts and minds of people who have a connection to your business, either as customers, partners, suppliers, or employees. One way to think about brand is as a “promise delivered”. As such, brand strategy is about defining that promise and explaining how it can come to life.

Marketing

Marketing is about identifying, anticipating, and satisfying customer requirements profitably. It defines the market to be served and the best routes to that market. It informs product development. It defines the price of the product and how and where it is to be promoted. As such, marketing strategy is an assembly of tactics that are very rational and tangible in nature, and highly measurable.

There is overlap between the two disciplines, because the best brand strategies are informed by strong marketing strategies, and the best marketing strategies are driven by strong brand strategies.

Another distinct difference between brand and marketing is their relative scope. Marketing is a highly focused activity that is principally outer-directed. Brand is a broad concept that conceivably touches everyone connected to the brand, both internally and externally. Indeed, the brand’s promise is realized when product development, manufacturing, finance, customer service, HR, and marketing are all being inspired and driven by the brand promise.

The best leaders appreciate both the differences and the synergies of brand and marketing. They recognize the outcome of their brand strategy as a promise the organization will strive to keep, that will help create a brand that is respected, admired, and valued. They see the outcome of their marketing strategy as a set of tools that will actively turn that promise into profits through interest, appeal, and differentiation.

When dealing with brand and marketing strategies, remember it’s not a case marketing vs. brand strategy, and its not “either/or”, but of “both/and”. One cannot work without the other. Each needs to be developed in a focused way, while being fully aware of, and respectful to, each other.

For additional information on our services, including both marketing and brand strategy, take a look at our solutions page.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency

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Does your Business need an Updated Brand Narrative?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Does your brand need a Brand Narrative?

Your brand does if it faces any of these situations:

  • Differentiation: Does your brand have a sober, unexciting, or blurry identity in an increasingly competitive and perhaps commoditized market? Are you able to cut through the clutter in ways that matter?
  • Growth: Is it getting harder to increase market share, drive sales, and improve profit? Are new markets and products growing quickly enough?
  • Talent: Is it getting increasingly difficult for your brand to recruit the talent you need? Is your top talent leaving? Are competitor’s hiring the talent you hoped to hire?
  • Engagement: Are your employees aligned and heading in the same direction? Is your brand being held back with issues around collaboration, innovation, and loyalty?
  • Complexity: Is your business growing rapidly in both size and scope? Have you just acquired a new company? Do you have disparate product lines and target audiences? Are your brand and workplace behaviors inconsistent and counter-productive?

Of course, a strong Brand Narrative will also help your brand even if it’s operating from a position of strength. Successful brands can further establish their preeminence, forge far stronger and harder to break bonds with both customers, prospects, and employees, and increase the perceived distance between themselves and their near competitors.

A good Brand Narrative adds a bright North Star to your brand strategy. It helps you create brand experiences that change the way people feel about your brand, based on the emotional rewards of your brand promise and the way you strive to make people feel in every interaction.

To learn more about the Emotive Branding Methodology, please download the paper below:

Download White Paper

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.