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Tag: Meaningful Brands

Emotional and Meaningful Brand Connections Matter Right Now

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

The Time for Emotion and Meaning Is Now

Battling the arduous winds of COVID-19 will take more than a shift in your communications. It will require a real change in behavior. Right now, people are experiencing a whole slew of complex and contradictory emotions. Some of these feelings are ephemeral and are changing every day; others like uncertainty are staying around for the time being. So to truly connect with people where they are, you have to speak their emotional language. That’s why having your brand behave in a more emotionally charged way and putting the focus on building truly meaningful experiences is what really matters right now.

At Emotive Brand, we’ve built our methodology on our belief in the power of emotion. Our methodology has never proved more important or relevant than now. Emotive brands forge emotional and meaningful brand connections by caring deeply about people and aligning their actions and communications to the deep-rooted human needs, desires, and aspirations of all those important to the brand.

We see the keystones of such connections as empathy, compassion, and mindfulness. In our seminal white paper, “Transforming your brand,” we introduce these key drivers of thinking in this way:

“Emotive brand strategies use empathy to better understand and address the needs, values, interests and aspirations of people, both within and outside of your business. As such, we take your brand’s positive attributes and match them against what we know about the ideas and ideals that people care about, connect to, and that can change their behavior. We also encourage our clients to adopt new behaviors that are more empathetic toward both their employees and customers, and to use the insights they gain to identify ways to make their workplace and offerings more personally relevant and emotionally important in the moment.”

Why Empathy?

Empathy is being able to vicariously experience how another experiences something. It’s not actually having the same experience, but rather allowing yourself to see the world from another’s perspective. For example, you don’t have to be blind to understand what life is like without the key sense of sight. Empathy is an innate trait (children are naturally empathetic), and simply needs to be sourced from within. We take an empathetic view of your audiences and then assess how your brand addresses their deepest needs. The results are sometimes unexpected, but always gratifying to our clients, and cultivating empathy is especially essential in navigating uncertain times like these.

Why Compassion?

Compassion is putting the insights you gain through empathy into practice in a helpful way. This is the essence of problem-solving. You come to understand another’s needs and then redesign products, experiences, and communications accordingly. This means greater creativity, innovation, and a continually broadening perspective. We turn to our compassionate nature to translate the unique intersection between your brand and basic human needs into actionable practices that bring the resulting meaning to life.

Why Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the practice of being more aware of the surrounding world and more alive to its inherent possibilities. It is about having a broader perspective and a universal respect for others. It is recognizing that more unites us than separates us. It is about being humble, feeling connected, harnessing and using energy in new and more gratifying ways. When you employ a mindful attitude in everything you do, you enable a mutually-beneficial balance between your tangible business needs and the intangible meaning that will help your brand thrive in a COVID-19 world and beyond.

Every brand strategy we develop embraces the practices of empathy, compassion, and mindfulness. Through this we are better able to match your brand’s attributes with what truly matters to people today on deep and meaningful levels. At the same time, the brand behaviors we develop aim to promote these factors on both leadership and organizational levels.

Making Meaning A Way Of Doing Business

Organizations and leaders are often overwhelmed by circumstances and respond by turning inward both as individuals and on an organizational level. A state of mindfulness enables organizations and leaders to rise above the immediate situation and to turn outward to others on a deeper and more personal level.

Brand behavior that promotes an empathetic, compassionate, and mindful culture helps ensure that your brand will evolve into the most meaningful state possible. As a foundation for your brand culture, these vital traits also make sure that your brand’s meaningful way of being is sustainable and enduring.

As brands seek to confront the challenges of this new world, it’s only natural that they turn to meaning. But it is important to remember that it’s one thing to claim meaning, and quite another to continuously create meaning both within and outside your brand organization. When empathy, compassion, and mindfulness inform the organization, drive its decision-making, and shape its vision, meaning goes beyond being a buzzword and becomes a way of doing business.

Download White Paper

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

Image by Alen Pavlovic

Adopting a Human Mindset

Posted on by Peter Antonelli

Over the past weeks, we’ve transitioned to a new life at home, the place where everything now happens with little exception; a blurred, ever-shifting diagram dividing work, our relationships, family life, and rest. In this way, coronavirus has become the great equalizer. The pandemic has also clarified the differences between how we live our lives and the support we’re able to receive, or not. It has swiftly and single-handedly altered our needs as people. It has forced us to prioritize what matters most and accept what’s out of reach.

As a result, we have competing practical needs; dependable information, access to income, food, childcare, the ability to help others, and new skills to help ourselves navigate what we used to rely on services for. These are all now top of mind—a moving target of priorities with a different urgency than we’re accustomed to.

Our emotional needs, though, don’t have to be as elusive. Despite social distancing and self-quarantine, we have the ability, the responsibility, to turn towards one another, even if remotely. The opportunity to listen, to help where possible, to empathize, be optimistic, to relate—the opportunity to tap into a human mindset is now. It won’t cure COVID-19, but a human mindset is among what we need most to stay afloat. Simple practices that elevate our spirit and connect us to others can go far and don’t need to compete with priorities or put us in harm’s way.

The same opportunity is true for brands.

If you are a leader within an organization, consider this: What is the mindset of your brand during this time, and how might your brand tap into the human qualities necessary to meaningfully connect with your audience?

Here are four considerations to get started.

Adopt an ethos of service.

Whatever industry your brand is in, now is the time to adopt a service mentality. Consider the resources you have available and imagine how they might be used to contribute to the needs of your customers and beyond. Identify an opportunity to help and make it happen.

Human mindset

 

In the world—An early example of adapting an ethos of service is LVMH who transformed their perfume and cosmetics factories to produce free hand sanitizer in France.

To consider—What service is your brand uniquely positioned to offer people during the pandemic? How might you activate it within the next week? At a local scale? A global scale?

Send a virtual care package.

Finding opportunities to extend the spirit of your brand to people who are homebound is a simple way to stay connected and provide respite from news alerts. Success isn’t measured in dollars spent, rather in feelings felt.

In the world—Scribe, a wine producer and vineyard in Sonoma known for its casual warmth and strong sense of community, has sent patrons its winery playlist so they can recreate a little bit of the Scribe experience in their home.

To consider—Identify a feeling that reflects the soul of your brand. How might you extend that feeling to customers virtually over the coming days?

Provide immediate, material relief.

For reasons beyond the current pandemic, trust is at an all-time low and people are craving honest, results-oriented leadership more than ever. In the truest sense, today’s actions speak considerably louder than words. By reflecting on the emotional and practical needs of your customers and taking decisive, immediate steps to support them, brands are positioned to forge stronger relationships than ever.

In the world—One example of note is Unilever’s effort to ease financial instability, by pledging early payment for their most vulnerable small and medium-sized suppliers.

To consider—What tangible actions can your brand put into motion today that will solidify and communicate commitment to your customers?

Initiate conversation, then let others do the talking.

Despite social distancing, helping people feel that they are part of a community is a powerful thing. By enabling the voices, experiences, and perspectives of people to be heard, not only is a forum to contribute established, but the potential for impact is broadened.

In the world—At the local level, Nextdoor’s #icanhelpchallenge is activating communities by providing a forum for neighbors to volunteer their time in support of others.

To consider—How might your brand elevate the voices, stories, and needs of your customers? What grassroots initiatives can your brand enable or strengthen?

Today, everything counts. Every behavior, gesture, and message, however small. Whether you’re an individual, a two-person startup or a Fortune 100 corporation, the opportunity for meaningful connection is the same. It starts with prioritizing people and embracing a human mindset.

Peter Antonelli is Chief Creative Officer at Emotive Brand in Oakland, California.

Making Your Brand an Intuitive Choice

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

The power of intuition

We can all easily recognize our own powers of intuition.

They are there whenever something immediately makes sense to you – think of children playing with iPads.

You also feel these powers every time your social radar sends alarms – think of all the times you’ve meet someone and immediately had a foreboding feeling.

Some people are more intuitive than others.

Some don’t trust their intuitions (until they back them up with “proof”).

But we all have them, and they play a dominating part in our decision making, including our decisions about brands.

How do you get your brand to be an intuitive choice?

There is no easy answer here. So much depends on the particulars of your brand’s market, products, image, reputation, and the related and specific needs, interests, values, and aspirations of people your brand depends upon.

However, I can say that whether you have a bright new start-up brand to unleash on the world, or if your are managing a venerable and well-known enterprise brand, there are certain elemental practices that can positively shift your brand’s intuitive nature.

A brand’s intuitive nature

First, connect with people on a higher-plane than you are now. What is it about what you do and how you do it that makes life, society, and/or the planet a (even slightly) better place? What can everyone inside and outside your organization connect with that helps them see the meaningful nature of what your organization does.

Second, think about the emotional signals your current business practices, people, and communications are sending. In an ideal world, think of how you’d want people to feel after dealing with your brand.

Third, make the higher-plane connection (your brand promise) the guiding light of your organization; and the emotional aura you seek to create the new people-centric and empathetic values that drive your brand.

Finally, bring this new thinking and energy to your people. Engage them around these ideas. Show them how they can act upon, and benefit from, these ideas. Demonstrate how to use this new platform to revamp business processes and brand communications. Encourage, applaud, and reward efforts by people to change the underlying behavior of your brand so that it better embraces and reflects both its purpose-beyond-profit and its emotional aura.

Creating a smoother, more comfortable way into your brand

People, both inside and outside your business, connect intuitively to meaningful ambitions that they share. Hence, if your brand conveys a distinctly relevant ambition, the path into your world is smoother.

People are intrinsically emotional. Hence, if your brand evokes a distinctly appealing emotional aura, the path into your world is more comfortable.

Being an intuitive choice means shifting the platform from which your brand operates. This is a platform that people find more accessible, easy to board, and creates a great starting point for an enduring and meaningful relationship with your brand.

Why are Feelings and Purpose so Important in Business Today?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Feelings and Purpose-led brands

Why are purpose and feelings so important now for brands? A meaningful brand is the persona-driven presence and experience of an organization that has proactively decided to orient itself around an authentic purpose. Such brands do so with the intent of emotionally connecting to people on a deep level, by addressing core human needs. Most significant, a meaningful brand strives to forge these attitude and behavior changing connections both inside and outside their organizations.

To summarize, a meaningful brand is:

 – Proactively meaningful across all brand touchpoints and experiences

 – Driven by a purpose that is embodied in a brand promise that reflects the positive personal, social, and environmental outcomes of the brand’s products and activities

 – Successful because the organization behind it takes a holistic and organic approach to change that addresses both the internal and external aspects of the organization

Why is the concept of becoming a meaningful brand important?

Very few brand owners can afford the luxury of simply leaving things the way they are. Turbulence abounds. Competition is relentless. Commoditization is rampant. Disruption is commonplace. Add to this the fast-changing attitudes, preferences, and behaviors of both customers and employees.

Brands simply cannot stand still. They need to take a proactive stance, create a solid, yet adaptable reason for being, and think of their brand strategy not in terms of whipping up icing for their cake, but rather as initiating the chemical reaction that turns raw materials into a new and exceptionally desirable cake.

They can do this by adopting the principals and practices of emotive branding. Working out from a purposeful brand promise, meaningful brands fundamentally change the way people within and outside the organization think, feel, and act. This is because a brand’s promise is coupled with a plan to transform the attitudes and behaviors that drive both the organization as a whole, and all the people within the organization. Throughout this transformation process, emotive brands evoke a distinct emotional aura that forges more heartfelt and enduring connections.

Why are purpose and feelings even important to a business?

After all, one could argue that it’s always been important to matter to others. The question is, at what level does a brand need to take it to matter now: at a superficial and vulnerable level, or at a deep and heartfelt level?

The past is full of brands that mattered by being, “better, faster, or cheaper” than their competitors. But most brands today find it hard to identify a clear and compelling competitive advantage. This leaves them resorting to bland, highly contrived, and readily mimicked points of differentiation, that easily get lost in the noise.

Brands that matter today take a different tack. They don’t work from the inside out, but rather work from the outside in. They use empathy to see their brand’s value through the eyes of the people they impact. They then develop a way of behaving that taps directly into deeply felt core human needs. Exposure to, and experience with, such brands positively changes the way people think, feel, and act.

This is because people are hungry for more meaning in their lives. Why? Among other things, people have been alienated by our aggressive consumer culture, feel stunned by the economic meltdown, and are increasingly aware of our social challenges. At the same time, they have started absorbing more and more different kinds of information that are making them feel ever-more distant from the institutions, including brands, that surround them.

Brands that are purpose-led and which evoke positive emotions stand apart because they directly and intentionally address the needs that result.

Why both B2B and B2C should take note

The issues that are prompting people to seek meaning aren’t exclusive to consumers. Every employee and business decision maker arrives at their desk each morning carrying the same concerns and deep-rooted needs. These needs operate below the surface and don’t enter into everyday conversation, or find their way into research studies. But they are there in the background, informing every decision and action, and shaping every mood and motivation.

So purpose, meaning, and feelings are equally important regardless of the market thrust of your brand, or the apparent lack of meaning inherent in an offering. Indeed, we believe even the most basic and dry offering can be elevated by seeing it through the lens of meaning.

What kind of leader is advocating this approach?

The leaders that are championing this shift toward meaning are united by a single trait: mindfulness. Regardless of their relative level of “charisma”, these leaders recognize the value of defining a “North Star” ambition for their brands and leading their organizations to it by listening to, appreciating, and directly addressing the core human needs of the people vital to the brand’s success.

These are leaders who want to be more than mere figureheads. They employ the personal power that comes from being purposeful and empathetic, rather than the dictatorial power that comes from their position at the top of the org chart. They bring people along by building belief, establishing trust, and making the needed changes both personally relevant and emotionally gratifying to every person involved.

By being human-centric themselves, these leaders create the human-centric brands that outperform their increasingly outdated and irrelevant competitors.

To learn more about the tenants of emotive branding and creating a more meaningful brand, download our paper below.

Download White Paper

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and design firm.

Brand Evolution: Keeping Greatness, Adding Appeal

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

What is brand evolution? I think I found a solid example. I recently came across these photos showing two models of the classic Porsche 911.

50 years separate the two models, yet the clarity of the design concept are obvious in both generations.

It is a brand “evolved”.

Emotive Brand is about taking what is good and great about your business and brand today, and evolving it for a new generation, a new audience, or for the addition of a new product.

It is about transforming the presence and feeling of your brand to make it more relevant and appealing, given how the rest of the world has changed.

Just as Porsche has integrated new technology over the years, a meaningful brand integrates new insights about what matters for people in the 21st Century.

Meaningful Brands

Meaningful brands add a new, higher-level purpose to what they do – something that goes beyond simply going from A to B.

They also find ways to evoke positive emotions throughout the brand experience they create.

They still imagine, design, build, market and service their products, but with a new intent.

They still manage processes, have meetings and make sales calls, but with a new attitude.

They still do the business of business, but with a new, and more meaningful behavior.

They still create and design product, but with a renewed empathetic view of what people want, need, and desire.

Emotive branding doesn’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

It evolves what is great about your business and brand, and transforms it to be more relevant, meaningful, appealing and differentiated for the future.

If you are interested in a recent brand evolution project, please visit our work.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy firm.

The New Measurements of a Successful Business

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

What does it mean to be a successful business?

In the new age of meaningful business, it’s time for more inclusive forms of value. It’s no longer enough to measure financial impact. Companies, brands, investors, entrepreneurs, and consumers are asking: what’s the social impact of your business? What’s your environmental impact? Your emotional impact? In other words, people are asking: Why should I care? Why does it matter? And they are also wondering, can you communicate the value of these impacts to me quantitatively?

In any successful business, there is value outside the actual venture. Endless factors play into the success of a business, and these factors differ from company to company. In other words, measurements of success for one brand may not apply to another. This makes finding a universal measures quite difficult.

Purpose

Oftentimes, measuring purpose is ignored, put in the “aspirational” box, and left to sit – separated from business, undervalued, and never quantified. But we can’t separate aspiration from business. The two are intertwined and, in fact, hinge on each other. Alignment of purpose within a business energizes and focuses the brand towards success. Clear, strong, and inspiring purpose differentiates and gives brands a needed competitive edge. It empowers employees to do more valuable, impactful work and encourages a collaborative leadership team – a purpose-led business.

A purpose-led business helps everyone who is key to the business become aware of the impact they are creating each day. By measuring purpose, the “whys” become clear and tangible: why you go to work every day, why your work matters, why each individual’s contribution matters to the greater success of the company and the world at large. Focusing on purpose pushes the people who are integral to your business to take risks, think creatively, and dedicate themselves to their work each and every day.

Measuring Purpose

We wish we could tell you exactly how to measure the purpose of your business. The fact of the matter is that in order to quantify purpose for your specific business, first, you have to fully grasp and align your business – understand all the factors, emotions, and components of why you do what you do. In order to break down your purpose, you must approach it from all angles. What are your key values? Your main aspirations? How do you measure each of these tenants and promises?

In his article, “Measuring Purpose. The next key business imperative,” Hilton Barbour proposes ten potential questions that might help Nike measure its purpose: “to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.” We believe Barbour’s questions are a great example of how any business might measure and quantify their impact, be it innovation or inspiration, like Nike, or any different purpose.

  • What do we define as inspiration and what part do we play in that inspiration?
  • How many inspiring products do we sell (and therefore who do we inspire and to do what)?
  • What did those products cost to develop?
  • What do we make from them?
  • To what extent are we making money from products that continue to inspire vs. those that are re-inspiring vs. those that will inspire into the future?
  • What is the “inspiration” contribution of our product vs. that of the sponsored athlete, high school jock, and weekend warrior wearing it?
  • What innovations have we introduced in the last year for athletes?
  • How many of them have we sold?
  • What’s still in development and what are the projections for those products in the business case?
  • How quickly is our innovation cycle being realized in terms of saleable goods and what effect are those innovations having on our bottom-line?

We agree with Barbour that this introspection about measuring purpose is not only worth it, but necessary to do doing meaningful, purposeful, and impactful business.

Your brand’s purpose warrants measurement and time dedicated to building a personalized system for your business. Ask questions and believe in your purpose to the extent that quantification and qualification of it matters, that it truly does drive success both internally and externally. Build a measurement system that can be explained and communicated to all the people that matter to your business’s success.

One that:

  • Inspires and keeps your business moving and looking forward.
  • Demonstrates possibility and generates potential. That’s what purpose is all about.

To learn more about why meaningful brands should measure their positive impacts, check out our blog “If You Want a Meaningful Brand, Make a Meaningful Impact.”

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Rethink How Your Brand Makes People Feel

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Emotions and feelings

Right now your brand is making the people important to its success feel one thing or another. The question is, are those feelings a help or a hindrance? If sales are slipping, good employees are leaving, loyal customers are defecting, or it’s getting harder to recruit top talent, it’s time to rethink how your brand makes people feel.

Feelings and emotions lie at the heart of emotive brand strategies. In our most recent white paper, “Transforming your brand into an emotive brand”, we explain that emotions and feelings are key drivers of our approach to brand strategy. Here we explain why.

Understanding the two levels of feeling: “feels right” and “feels good”.

The first goal of emotive branding is to get people to say that your brand “feels right”. This happens when they consciously realize and internalize your brand’s purposeful promise. The second is to get them to sense that they “feel good” when they reflect on the emotional experience of dealing with your brand, your products, and your people.

Meaningful brands seek to operate on both levels:

– First, they generate positive, heartfelt feelings that flow as people realize new levels of purpose and meaning in their lives thanks to the brand.

– Second, they also actively create feelings that surround their brand with a distinct emotional aura that draws people in, and makes them want more.

The first level flows from how well your brand adds to the emotional, physical or spiritual lives of people, and/or the collective wellbeing your brand creates for society and the planet. Helping people feel they are part of this goodness will fill them with significant feelings, and change the way they think about, feel for, and act on behalf of your brand. It is important to note that these positive feelings won’t be generated purely through messages you send proclaiming your good deeds, but from the real and tangible outcomes those deeds lead to. As such, brand-building messages need to be centered more on the outcome than the brand.

The second level flows from the intentions, attitudes, and behaviors of both your organization and each person working within it. These feelings are only generated as people within and outside the organization experience the brand’s corporate and employee decisions, actions, and gestures. Again, it is not about communicating a promise of making people feel one way or another, it is ensuring that both your brand and workplace behavior leave people feeling something unique, positive and memorable about your brand.

Don’t fear emotions and feelings

Emotions and feelings have been traditionally inhibited within the business world. We like to think that logic and reason are the prime modes of behavior in corporate dealings and consumer decision-making. However, science proves we are essentially emotional beings who are seeking to feel more secure, to feel connected, and to feel as if we’re growing. Brands that take steps to address these core needs through meaning will not only make people think their brand is great, they’ll also make people feel great about being a part of the brand’s world.

Seek to touch more than just brain cells and wallets. Reach out and touch lives in deep, rich, and meaningful ways. And watch your brand thrive.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy firm.

Why Purpose-Led Brands Drive Business Results

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

At Emotive Brand, we believe that the root of many business problems is the gap between what the business requires (results) and what people desire (meaning). So when your brand matters to people, they are more likely to do what your brand needs them to do. Operating as a purpose-led brand, business issues become less of an issue because meaning drives results.

Emotive Branding: A Bridge

Through emotive branding, you build a bridge across that gap between results and meaning. And by better balancing the “give and take” of your relationships with people, they are more likely to be open to what you propose, support what you’re trying to achieve, and appreciate the meaning behind what you’re asking them to do.

Here’s why your most pressing business issues today will be less of an issue tomorrow:

1. Brand Differentiation

Emotional meaning is the most compelling differentiator in today’s competitive environment. Yet few brands have woken up to the power of emotionally meaningful connections with people. They continue doing “business as usual” without seeing that beliefs, values, and aspirations of people have evolved. Today, people are looking for ways to create meaning in their lives. People seek out brands that stand up from the crowd and make them feel their lives are more meaningful. They respect, admire, trust, and turn to purpose-led brands.

2. Purchasing Behavior

People love to have choices. They are proactive buyers. They can quickly and easily assess and compare options. They can instantly find the best price. Look-alike products crowd the shelves and catalogs. Google lists thousands of options. TV and web ads vie for attention. But, at the moment of purchase decision, emotion takes over. If people feel there’s something unique and valuable about your brand, that feeling will influence their choices.

3. Price Sensitivity

A strong emotional platform shifts the “what” a person buys away from the purely logical land of comparison shopping and into a place where what one buys is “greater than the sum of the parts”. People seem quite willing to pay a premium if the purchase also comes loaded with emotional meaning.

4. Loyalty and Advocacy

Brands need people who buy again and again; it’s basic economics. Purpose-led brands inspire people to go out of their way in pursuit of their brand. They also turn people into powerful brand promoters who share their enthusiasm and satisfaction with family, friends, colleagues, and strangers on the web. Personal, heartfelt, and meaningful endorsement is far more credible and influential than traditional brand-driven forms of promotion.

5. Internal Alignment and Motivation

Brands are at the mercy of their staff. The most magnificent branding, advertising, publicity, packaging, distribution, reviews, and commentary can be vaporized by a single surly employee. The energy, focus, and dedication of valuable employees can be shattered by an emotionally dead and meaningless workplace. When unified by a clear reason why they are there and how they can make people feel (themselves, colleagues, customers, partners, suppliers, and the communities they serve) employees lift themselves up to the task with purposeful vigor. They move from being reactive to proactive. They collaborate more freely and productively. They shape and manage the way they deal with people so that every exchange is more emotionally meaningful. They find their work gratifying.

6. Social Standing

Regardless of what you make, how you sell it, or who you sell to, your brand has a footprint. Whether it’s a physical building in a community or something virtual, there is an economic, social, and environmental impact from what you do. How that impact is perceived will be clearly different for a person who is emotionally distant from your brand, and someone who finds your brand to be emotionally meaningful. Purpose-led brands never buy an excuse to do wrong things, but they do accrue significant understanding, patience, and compassion should things go wrong.

Purpose-Led Brands Thrive Today

Brands that focus on building a deeper, more emotionally meaningful connection with their key audiences will thrive in today’s world.

Purpose-led brands are better able to address the needs, values, interests, and aspirations of the people who matter to their business. These brands perform better because their emotional impact is reflected at every touchpoint.

Making your brand matter more to people can transform your business and position it for success. Brands rooted in emotion and meaning win big. The business results show it. So behave as a purpose-led brand and reap the benefits.

Emotive Brand is an Oakland 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.

The Modern Workplace Requires a Revamp

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

The modern workplace requires new ways to connect, inspire, engage, and bond with employees like never before.

Over the past few years there has been quite a lot of research and stories on worker happiness (and the startling lack thereof).

One talked about the story of an employee who, after two decades of service to a financial institution, decided he couldn’t take it any more:

“I felt like no one cared about me as a person there, and finally decided to extricate myself from the grind. I know many of you feel the same way now in your jobs…trapped and unappreciated.”

The modern workplace

The modern workplace calls for significant changes in the intent, attitude, and behavior of business leaders. Here are some observations and recommendations:

  • What makes people happiest in their jobs is all profoundly personal. “Do I work for an organization whose mission and methods I respect?” “Does my boss authentically advocate for me?” “Is the work I do meaningful?” “Am I afforded sufficient variety in my day?” “Do I feel valued and appreciated for all the work that I do?” We know that all these matter more to people than their compensation – and workers generally don’t quit jobs when these basic needs are met. According to a worldwide Towers Watson study, the single highest driver of employee engagement is whether or not workers feel their managers are genuinely interested in their well-being. Today, only 40% of workers believe that
  • People only thrive when they feel recognized and appreciated. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, “Why Appreciation Matters So Much,” Tony Schwartz reminds us that all employees need to be praised, honored, and routinely acknowledged for their efforts and achievements. Consequently, leaders must allow themselves to manage more from their hearts. Our brains are great at building strategies, managing capital, and analyzing data. But it’s the heart that connects us as human beings, and it’s what’s greatly lacking in American leadership today. This is what now must change.
  • Your employees will stay if you tell them directly you need them, care about them, and sincerely plan to support them. Anytime someone quits a job for a reason other than money, they’re leaving in hope that things will be better somewhere else. So, everyone who works for you must be made to feel that they matter. Plan one-on-one meetings and re-discover the dreams each person has at work. Tell people directly how valuable they are to you. To be successful, all your future behavior must demonstrate to your employees that their best career move is to remain working for you.

The value of defining a meaningful position for your brand

A meaningful position is a place between what your business needs and what people want as they strive to create new meaning in their lives.

Operating from this position, your brand is more accessible, approachable and likeable because it reaches out to people in an emotionally meaningful ways.

When a brand has a clear idea of the meaningful position it wants to hold in the hearts and minds of people, it is easier for the leadership to shift the “give and take” of key brand relationships.

Seeing their roles through the lens of meaning, business leaders see how their intent is to inspire a purpose beyond profit. They realize how their attitude toward employees can be made more welcoming, accepting and empathetic. They shift their behavior in ways that focus on creating a distinct set of positive emotions within the workplace.

From this meaningful position, the brand and its leaders, become far more personally relevant and emotionally important to employees.

This, in turn, positively influences the intent, attitude and behavior of employees (as well as customers, partners, suppliers…indeed, all the people vital to the brand’s success).

Employees relate to the brand beyond the job title and compensation offered. They adopt positive, supportive and helpful attitudes toward the brand. They change their behavior by working with greater purpose, remaining loyal and recommending the brand to others.

Meaningful brands use this human dynamic to thrive.

Leaders of meaningful brands use this human dynamic to inspire, motivate and bond with employees.

To learn more about how to create the right strategies for a more modern workplace, download our white paper “The Meaningful Workplace“.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

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