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Tag: Narrative

The Evolving Role of the CMO: Chief Alignment Officer

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

No role in an organization has evolved more rapidly than the CMO’s. It used to be that owning branding, communications, and campaigns defined the job. Now, CMOs need to be experts on customers, marketing tools and advanced analytics, and business strategy. Brand management remains an essential duty, but in service of driving business growth. Most importantly, because a CMO’s work connects directly to sales, product development, IT, finance, and other parts of the organization, CMOs find themselves needing to play a growing role in aligning their organization around new ways of thinking and work that will help them engage customers more effectively.

For those in TL;DR mode, the quick takeaway is: CMOs are being stretched, so they might sometimes need a hug (but please ask first).

Here’s a by-no-means exhaustive look at some of the shifts that we’ve seen impacting how a CMO shows up:

From To
Voice of the Brand Voice of the Customer
Intuition & Instincts Data & Technology
Brand Management Brand Innovation
Strategy + Execution Alignment

 

Voice of the Customer

The amount of information we have about customers is only increasing. How does a temperature between 70-75 degrees impact consumer behavior on Monday’s v Fridays? What is the correlation between a new Netflix series and GPU buying decisions? What invisible patterns in customers can data now make visible? More and more, it’s up to the CMO to develop the customer insights that shape how a business goes to market. And because so many groups touch the customers, from sales to product to finance to corporate strategy, the level of collaboration required to align on these insights requires a significant investment.

Data & Technology

The increase in customer data a business can capture also gives rise to new suites of tools and technologies that a CMO can use to mine for insights, optimize campaigns, and deliver experiences across channels. When almost every brand action can be quantified, decisions about how to go to market are becoming increasingly data-driven. As a result, the CMO is responsible for leading the digital transformation of the marketing organization which requires deep partnership with IT (among others) to develop the tooling and data models that align with the organization’s technology systems. While a CMO needs to rely on her or his instincts and intuition when it comes to decision making, increasingly they need to justify their strategies with that data that points to a certain direction. The more fluent a CMO becomes in technology, the easier it becomes to reconcile data-driven insights with gut instincts.

Brand Innovation

More than anyone in the organization, a CMO needs to connect the dots between a brand’s legacy and its future vision. As much as products need to innovate, brands must as well to remain relevant: messages need to resonate with how the world is changing, and their expression needs to drive differentiation. But in doing this, a brand must also feel familiar and to take advantage of the equity it’s built with audiences. As brand management becomes increasingly data-driven, brand innovation is also becoming more dependent on analyzing trends, creating new audience definitions and segmentations, and audiences, and delivering next-level experiences that are hyper personalized and hyper-relevant. And these insights provide fuel for both brand and product innovation. The CMO that can use data to drive innovation across the organization is one that will stick around.

Building Alignment

It’s not enough for a CMO to develop a winning marketing strategy and execute flawlessly. As organizations become increasingly customer-centric, a CMO needs to bring every function in the C-Suite into the conversation about how to drive growth. From gaining the full embrace of Chief Revenue Officer for their marketing strategies, to the creativity of the CTO as you make your strategies more data driven, to HR working to bring new talent to the table, to the head of Product working in partnership around how to claim new audience segments, and the CTO finding budget to drive the strategy forward, marketing has become increasingly a team sport.

It’s no wonder that CMO turnover is high, and those in their positions feel they’re continuously in the hot seat. While the complexity of marketing is growing and budgets are coming under increasing scrutiny, there’s never been a more exciting time to be leading a marketing organization. All the data organizations have been amassing and the tools ready to parse it can reveal truly amazing insights about customers and how to connect with them. But only if a CMO can enlist the organization in lending a hand in making this all happen. And this comes down to storytelling and building alignment.

We’ve worked with many organizations to craft what we call a Growth Manifesto—a narrative that shows how the thinking that goes into brand development can open up new possibilities across an organization—from how people think about innovation to the collaboration required to bring new ideas to life. We’ve seen that a Growth Manifesto serves as an incredibly effective tool for building that alignment that is essential to getting every part of an organization living a new brand promise. While CMOs will always own the brand, communications, and marketing lanes of a business, as their role evolves, we’re seeing how they also need to become experts at building alignment between the functions that marketing depends on.

If you have thoughts about the new challenges CMOs face today please add to the conversation below. And if you’re thinking about ways to address specific marketing challenges in your business, we are always happy to help you think through how to approach the challenge.

Emotive Brand is a brand strategy and creative agency that unlocks the power of emotion to propel a brand, culture, or business forward. We are a remote-first agency with a footprint in the San Francisco Bay Area.

How Do You Get Your Team Excited About an Uncertain Future?

Posted on by Jamey Aiken

How Do You Get Your Team Excited About an Uncertain Future?

The old axiom about uncertainty being the only certainty in business seems quaint given today’s headlines: Historically low unemployment. Hiring shortages one day and hiring freezes the next. Creeping inflation. Unexpected layoffs. It’s whiplash inducing. And it’s the world we live in.

As the economy shifts and shudders, leaders are challenged to make strategic decisions with increasingly limited foresight. And employees? They’re left feeling disoriented, confused, and vulnerable. It’s a recipe for getting stuck. People become less willing to make mistakes, to stick their necks out for each other, or to take the smart risks necessary to adapt to the changing environment. In a time when flexibility and agility are critical qualities to success, many organizations find themselves in a state of emotional contraction, unable to zag gracefully forward. 

The problem is alignment. Conventional objective-setting tools simply fall short as a way to get everyone on the same page because they’re based on past assumptions rather than the competing signals of the future. Plus, they don’t give employees the right context for seeing themselves in that changing future—much less get them excited about it.

At Emotive, we believe that companies need more responsive tools to adapt to the future—whatever it holds. They need ways to connect to what employees are feeling. And they need to equip their organizations not with a best guess about the future, but rather with a clear picture of how they’ll create their future. When employees feel they have the agency and ability to control their destiny, they lean into the future with an entirely different spirit. 

When you understand the emotional state of your organization, you can move forward. Faster.

How do your employees feel? Are they cynical or optimistic? Are they barely hanging on or feeling enthused and inspired? Do they understand the vision for where the company is going? Or do they need more evidence and explanation?

The more understood and recognized people feel in times of uncertainty, the more opportunities you have to deepen trust and allegiance. If you ask, people will let you know how aligned they are with a vision for the future and the strategy to get there. You can identify what dissonances need to be reconciled. Where the sources of doubt take hold. What fears need to be assuaged before they grow out of proportion. Powerful alignment—the kind required to change and adapt with the business environment—is only possible if you have clear insight into the emotional state of your organization at any given moment.

We use the lens of brand to audit the emotional state of an organization and identify alignment opportunities that can reduce friction, create efficiency, and drive growth. Our approach recognizes that businesses are more than just a collection of employees working towards a common goal. They’re complex networks of people with myriad emotions, attitudes, and beliefs. When you actually know what’s animating people’s behavior—the critical emotional drivers—you can craft more resonant, engaging stories about what you’re all working toward. 

Emotional understanding only makes a difference if your growth story is clear.

While emotional understanding can improve conventional objective-setting by creating deeper connections with people, you still need to establish a clear point of view that will guide your organization toward its future.

All businesses have multiple critical initiatives going on at any given moment. If the narrative about how they connect is haphazard or unintentional—or confused by external market conditions—people will start quilting their own narratives. The result is multiple, often conflicting stories that lead to different end states. In other words, brand confusion. 

We’ve created a wonderfully simple approach to helping businesses fulfill their ambitions. When clients need to realize important outcomes, we work side-by-side with executive leaders to co-author a strategic narrative of how—and why—they want to grow. We call this a Growth Manifesto, and it serves as a powerful tool for cutting through the noise of function-specific goals, objectives, KPIs, and OKRs to make business and brand more emotionally relevant to the people in an organization. It connects major initiatives—corporate strategy, product, go-to-market, brand, people & culture—in a single, coherent narrative that aligns everyone behind the promise of the brand and the actions required to support it.

Your growth story can’t be separated from the quality of storytelling.

In times of flux, business leaders face pressure to leap into action—to batten down the hatches, set a course, and prepare teams to brace for the worst. But what employees most need today is leadership that inspires people with purpose and meaning amidst uncertainty. If your organization is feeling trapped by mounting performance pressure and shrinking time horizons, you must give every employee the ability to see, believe, and participate in creating a future that they know is not only possible but necessary. Emotion is the accelerant, the enabler, the multiplier, and the amplifier that connects powerful ideas more deeply and resonantly to the people who need them.

To grow in times of uncertainty, you need to understand how your people are feeling. You need to address their emotions with a story of how you plan to grow. And you need to get them focused on a future that they are empowered to create. This is how you translate all the ambition that underpins your brand into a coherent set of actions that keep an organization aligned, confident, and positive as it speeds into the uncertain future.

Investing in Corporate Narrative During Transition: Essential Tool for CEOs

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

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Transformations and Transitions

The corporate narrative is an essential tool for CEOs. Persuading them to invest in one is hard sometimes.

Competitive pressures on businesses today are stronger than ever. And as a result, many companies are taking new directions, which are leaving CEOs to reevaluate their position, redirect employees, and build new identities and strategies that are going to fuel business forward amidst important transitions and transformations.

As many businesses today shift and flex to changing market demands, it’s easy for a large transformation or transitional period to leave critical audiences and stakeholders feeling lost. Lack of alignment, disparate value propositions across the organization, mixed information, brand behavior, unclear values, or varied messages from recruiters all add to this feeling. And a lack of clarity and/or mistrust among the people most important to driving your business in a new direction is detrimental to a successful transformation. 

Falling Short

When businesses are in the midst of a large transition, focusing on a corporate narrative is usually one of CEOs last priorities. Execs are more concerned with the changing business at hand, meeting profit goals, or fighting off the newest competition. But what they don’t realize is that a strong corporate narrative is the high-potential solution to these top concerns.

Misconceptions about the impact of a strong corporate narrative may be due to the fact that few companies have actually leveraged their corporate narrative to its greatest potential. In these instances, the narrative is stifled because it is formulaic and limited in its reach, use, and emotional impact.

The Value Received From a Corporate Narrative

When built and leveraged in the right ways, a corporate narrative can help your business stand out and fuel the people who are going to power your business forward.

1. Standing Out

Differentiation is one of the biggest outcomes for businesses who dedicate time and resources to a strong corporate narrative. Because corporate narratives operate as long-term solutions, they can help your business sustainably stand out (as compared to a short-term solution like leading with a new product or service). Successful corporate narratives tap into an unmet desire of the people they are trying to reach, and this is the most powerful differentiator. Meeting important rational and emotional needs for the people who matter to your business is the competitive edge your business needs during a time of transformation.

2. Fuel Business Efforts

A strong corporate narrative can help fuel business efforts and drive innovation forward during a transformation by getting people inside and outside the company on board with the new vision of the business. When people are engaged and excited about what the brand and business can fulfill for them, they start behaving in ways that enrich the purpose and drive business forward. Consider all the app developers who have gotten excited by Apple’s narrative, developed their own apps supported by the platform, and as a result, driven Apple forward.

3. Power Innovation

Narratives have the power of opening up possibilities and opportunities for your business. Often, they help bring new audiences into what’s at play, and as a result, new voices get heard, people engage more, and innovation increases. For instance, having a strong narrative might attract new partners or companies to you that want to be a part of the story. Think of all the cutting-edge collaborations Nike has done. Because narratives encourage action and build a community around your brand, they attract more active people, which leads to more innovation. Giving people a narrative to buy into can help people see new possibilities and become more likely to experiment, explore, and collaborate. 

4. Pull People In

When trying to take a new direction with your business, it’s important that you bring people along on the journey. Investing in a corporate narrative can help build important relationships that will help your business sustain long-term success. Instead of pushing shifts on people, a narrative can help people feel like they are part of it, that they’re role matters. When you have a narrative, even during turbulent times, people are more likely to stand by you because they believe in what you stand for.

Your Corporate Narrative = Your High-Potential Solution

With a simple, flexible corporate narrative that fits the direction you want to take, and clear guidelines on how to use it, your business gets propelled in that direction. You become more differentiated, loyalty and pull increases, and innovation amplifies because everyone takes a more active role.

A strong narrative embodies the long-term opportunity your business offers and represents a sustainable future of meaning. It connects with the right people at the right time – bringing them into your collective culture that is formed around the vision, values, needs, desires, and aspirations that your narrative articulates so simply and so clearly. It is a foundation that can drive business success – a high-potential solution for any CEO looking to transform or transition their business in a new direction needs to be taken seriously.

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

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Early Warning Signs You Need a Brand Refresh

Posted on by Sara Gaviser Leslie

Brand Presentation Counts

Presentation is everything. It’s the way a gourmet meal looks on the plate, what you wear for a job interview, or the tidiness and odor of your hotel room when you open the door.

The same rings true with a corporate brand.

Your brand is who you are. When your brand presentation is clear, people understand who you are and what you stand for in the world. On the other hand, when your presentation doesn’t make a great first impression, you must prepare to deal with the fallout.

This is why when we work with clients, we often need to stress that how you present your brand externally is different from what you say internally. Externally, you speak to shareholders, partners, and customers.

We believe external messages must address these four questions:

  •      Who are you?
  •      Why do you matter?
  •      What do you do?
  •      How do you do what you do?

You communicate these same ideas to your internal audiences — your employees, foremost, and, secondarily, your board of directors. But you have to tailor them for each audience. Not only does the way you communicate your brand connect your stakeholders to your strategic goals and objectives, it also affects your ability to be a sought-after employer and great place to work. You’ll attract and retain great people when you socialize and operationalize corporate strategy in a way that employees can understand and relate back to why it matters to them.

So how do you get to a place where you can communicate simply, strongly, and boldly?

You create the right message for the right audience and the right message for the right time.

Recognizing The Need for a Refresh

First, ask yourself, “Can we easily articulate who we are and why we matter?” More specifically:

  •      Is our story simple?
  •      Is it externally focused? Internally focused?
  •      Is it easy for people to know everything we offer?

Or try some more tactical, capital investment questions:

  •      When is the last time we invested in a brand campaign?
  •      How is our lead gen?
  •      Are we investing in content?

Maybe the easiest question to answer is this one:

  • “Can everyone in the company, even outside of the sales organization, give the pitch with confidence? Can they do it in 10 slides? Would it be consistent overall?”

Time for Change

If you don’t like the answer to these questions, you need to change how you present your brand.

It’s time to bring someone from the outside in to freshen up your story and your presentation so you can to start the new year in full alignment.

We’re here to help.

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

Need to Scale Fast? CEOs Can’t Just Focus On Engineering Benefits

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Scale Fast to Beat The Competition

Why do so many engineering-led CEOs have a hard time scaling their company? I’d estimate more than 90% of our clients are engineers first and become CEOs later. An engineering background is of great value today – inspired ideas, technical abilities, and intense drive bring great products into the world.

Unfortunately, the problem is that many of these products fail to scale fast, and dreams of  becoming the next unicorn are quickly squashed. Sadly, when this happens, the world doesn’t derive the benefits of the product the team has worked so hard to bring to market.

In today’s fast-paced market, having a strategy to scale fast is a key to staying ahead of the competition. And trust me, there is lots of competition. I’ve seen a lot of situations where suddenly a competitor figures out how to both mimic the technology and to bring it to market in a way that scales fast. The first-at-the-gate CEO is left baffled – wondering what these usurpers did right in order to scale fast and win the market.

It Matters Where Your Promise is Rooted

The difference between failing and succeeding often comes down to the promise that surrounds the product. Traditionally, it was enough to root that promise in the engineering behind the products – focusing on the technical benefits and features. But now, more and more products are scaling fast and taking hold of the market by basing their promises outside the realm of engineering.

Why Promise More Than Good Engineering?

It is no doubt very hard to accept that, in today’s world, the most “obvious” story isn’t always the “right” story to tell. What may be obvious to an engineer leading a company, is rarely as obvious, relevant, and compelling to your audience.

As more and more successful brands are realizing, the best stories don’t revolve around the engineering “outputs” of your efforts but rather the personal, social, and environmental “outcomes” they produce.

Quite simply, the most compelling outcomes are those that touch the core human needs of everyone, and which incorporate whatever positive impact your brand has on the society, people, or even the environment.

Searching for Meaningful Outcomes

To develop an outcome-driven promise that really changes the way people think, feel, and act, you need to see your product through the lens of true and meaningful outcomes.

As such, you need to interrogate your product to uncover how it can make people feel more positive, more connected, accepted, capable, and competent. Accounting for all the positive, human contributions that flow from your product and brand, help shape emotional outcomes that act like magnets – drawing people into your brand, filling them with desire for your product, and ultimately, leading them down the path to purchase.

Outcome-Based Promises Help Products Scale Fast

Outcome-based promises have great power because they resonate deeply on an emotional level that lies well below the surface. By addressing basic human needs and desires, they register internally in very significant ways. While people may not readily talk about these transformative experiences, they nonetheless are influenced by them in ways that lead to new ways of perceiving your brand and acting in its interests.

Suddenly, There’s a New Light Shining on Your Engineering

People drawn to a brand through deep meaning develop an appetite for information that validates and supports their decision to embrace the brand. It’s part of human nature. Because of this, when people are emotionally connected to your brand, they are primed to appreciate your engineering story too.

They may well have turned away if you had started with your engineering-based promise of solely features and benefits, but now, they now stick by you as they recognize your features within the broader context of your meaningful product story.

Develop your brand story on truly meaningful outcomes to engineer success, scale faster, and grow smarter.

Emotive Brand is a startup brand strategy firm.