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Tag: Meaningful Brands

An Industry Leader’s Perspective On Meaningful Businesses Strategies

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Meaningful Businesses

John Mackey is a capitalist. He founded Whole Foods and turned it into a massive operation, with over 350 stores. Along the way, he came to realize something about business: its purpose goes beyond profits. This idea is about building meaningful businesses.

As the founder of Conscious Capitalism Inc., and the author of Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business, 
John Mackey is a fierce proponent of a new and more meaningful way of doing business. Conscious Capitalism is “an idea, a movement, an approach to conducting business, and an organization dedicated to advancing all of these. Conscious Capitalism exists to elevate humanity. Conscious Capitalism comes to life as it is applied to businesses, non-profits, and organizations that practice Conscious Capitalism.”

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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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Does Your Brand Exude Meaning?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

An emotive brand can’t simply advertise its way into being meaningful. It has to exude meaning at every opportunity. All too often brands seeking to appear more meaningful rely purely on tactical communications like an ad campaign. We are as likely as anyone to say, “that’s nice” after viewing an emotional commercial or a touching video on a company website. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? Well, there can be.

Sadly, these brands often come off as being superficial. They wear their feelings on their sleeves. And they use advertising to claim to be something meaningful. However, they end up creating emotional dissonance by not being truly meaningful in everything they do. So the warm and fuzzy sensations these brands provoke quickly disappear when the brands act in a way that is inconsistent with their claimed emotional premise.

We all know the drill: the product doesn’t work the way the brand promises; employees of the brand are insensitive to customers; the wishfully “meaningful” brand treat its partners, supplier, and distributors “meanly”. Hence, the problem.

Far better, in our view, is to create a brand culture that exudes meaning, that evokes emotions rather than simply displays feelings, and that transforms every point of contact between the brand and the people vital to its success into a subtle and powerful meaning generator.

Our advice:

Don’t emote, evoke.

Don’t tease, connect meaningfully.

Don’t claim you’re worthy, make it evident.

For more information on the subject of helping your brand matter more, read our white paper Transforming Your Brand Into an Emotive Brand.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Meaningful Brands Keep Promises

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

Meaningful Brands are not so easy to come by

Is your brand strategy working as hard as it could be? Or is it being held back by these all-too-common corporate traits: myopia, narrow-mindedness, and self-centeredness? Does your brand strategy focus only on the “what” and “how” of your offering? Does it mostly talk to senior management in the cryptic language only MBAs understand?

If so, your brand isn’t hitting the right notes in today’s marketplace. Today’s most innovative and successful brands are built upon a different premise. They seek to forge meaningful connections with people, not solely through products or marketing claims, but through the added idea of purpose-beyond-profit. As such, they build their brand strategies out from the greater world in which they operate, not from the deep, dark corners of the C-suite.

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Should Your Business Embrace a Purpose-led Brand Strategy?

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

Purpose-led

The notion of purpose-led  does more than make brands appealing to people – it makes money for the businesses that embrace the concept. So claims the chairman of Deloitte, an active evangelist for the “squishy business attribute” called purpose.

Why invest in a woolly, emotional, and squishy idea like purpose? Won’t it be hard to get everyone in my organization and all my customers to understand and embrace it? What is it really beyond a set of words? What value does brand strategy deliver?

These are the questions I often confront as a proponent of empathy, purpose, and emotion. It’s the question of the never-relenting ROI monster, “What’s in it for me?”

Well, here’s the answer, from no one less than the chairman of the world’s largest audit, tax, and consulting firm, Deloitte.

Majority of employees and executives sense lack of purpose and meaningful impact

In a past interview with Bruce Rogers, Forbes’s Chief Insights Officer, Punit Renjen put it simply: “Our research reveals the need for organizations to cultivate and foster a culture of purpose.”

Deloitte’s research has revealed that 91% of respondents who said their company has a strong sense of purpose, also has a history of strong financial performance. Yet, 68% of employees and 66% of executives believe businesses do not do enough to create a sense of purpose and deliver meaningful impact on all stakeholders.

Walking the talk with a $300 million investment to bring mission and purpose to life for Deloitte’s customers and employees

Punit practices what he preaches, and has invested $300 million to ensure his own firm’s mission and purpose is clearly understood by its customers and its nearly 60,000 employees in the U.S. “It’s not just words on a piece of paper,” said Punit.

“My goal is to change the conversation about what makes companies succeed,” Punit continues. And certainly the mission is good for Deloitte and serves to position the firm as a thought leader in how businesses operate best in today’s complicated, global economy. But perhaps more importantly, as Punit states frankly, “it just feels good.”

From squishy idea to profitable business practice

I believe in the concept of purpose when it recognizes, through an empathetic attitude, the needs, values, interests, and aspirations of people. Not a bunch of corporate mumbo-jumbo, but a clear, heartfelt, and human statement of purpose.

Brands need to create a reason for being that resonates deeply with everyone from the C-suite to the night guard; from the close-in, long-term customer to the distant prospect; and from the most loyal employee to the hungry-for-meaning young recruit.

Oh, and there’s one more thing

Brands need to seriously invest time and money to transform the purpose concept into an active driver of personal ambition, behavior, and gratification. In other words, to do what it takes to create a culture of purpose that goes beyond “just words on a piece of paper”. That is, a culture that creates meaningful impact each and every day. It’s not easy to do, but the rewards are there for the brands that want to stand above the rest. We have authored a white paper entitled The Meaningful Workplace which you might enjoy.

Is it time to kick-start your brand strategy and embrace these ideas? Click here  to see what clients have worked with Emotive Brand to implement purpose-led brand strategies.

Brand Strategy: Why Are Purpose and Feelings so Important Now?

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

Brand Strategy: Why are purpose and feelings so important now?

An emotive brand is the persona-driven presence and experience of an organization that has proactively decided to orient itself around a meaningful and purposeful promise. Such brands do so with the intent of emotionally connecting to people on a deep level, by addressing core human needs. Most significant, an emotive brand strives to forge these attitude and behavior changing connections both inside and outside their organizations.

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How to Mindfully Lead Change

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Empathy in leadership

In this thought-provoking video, KPCB* partner John Maeda reminds us of the importance of empathy in leadership. He suggests that leadership is a design problem, and notes that the best design comes from people who ask and listen before putting forward their ideas.

Mindful leaders are, by nature, empathetic. They know that failing to listen first creates irrelevant communications and misunderstood gestures from leaders. As John Maeda says, “The people are there in the room, but nobody’s hearing what you say.”

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The Language of Meaningful Brands

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

“Actions speak louder than words.” This adage is at the core of our beliefs about great branding. As we say, our most valuable contribution to a brand’s strategy is nothing but a set of words until the brand and its people act upon them.

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Should You Aspire to Have a Meaningful Brand?

Posted on by Jerry Holtaway

The idea o a  “meaningful brand” is taking industry by storm as more and more enterprises look for ways to prevail in the 21st Century, a time of great change and innovation.

Should you join this bandwagon? Not before you fully understand what it means to be a meaningful brand, what it entails from an organizational change point of view, and what it can do for your business.

Here, we provide top-line answers to a few of the most commonly asked questions.

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