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Tag: Purpose

Is it Time for a Brand Refresh?

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

What Got You Here

Sometimes it’s hard to recognize that it’s time for a brand refresh. Why embark on a brand refresh if your business is successfully growing? Many high-growth companies grow organically, without any strategic direction. Things takeoff. Your team expands. New offices open. Your product line multiplies. And growth mode may happen without making plans for how the brand will accommodate and flex as the business develops.

At these times, decisions are often made that help an internal team manage change. In many cases, this means that some of the key brand components end up holding greater meaning for those inside of the company, but lack meaning for other key audiences – prospects, customers, and recruits – who also matter to the brand’s success.

The warning signs of a solely internal-facing brand are plenty: internal names for your product, add-on brands, or a website that has been pieced together, mirroring the evolution of the company. These common indicators show that important audiences have been forgotten. If this sounds familiar, your brand needs to start looking outside itself.

Forgetting Who’s Outside

The problem with an internal-facing brand is that the brand isn’t always clear or powerful to outsiders. The purpose of an impactful brand is to connect meaningfully with all the people who matter to your business – inside and out. So if a brand makes sense to your team, but isn’t as easily understood by external audiences, your brand loses impact, and as a result, business eventually stagnates.

Sometimes all the effort that went into scaling your business becomes your brand strategy – making it very hard for outsiders to understand who you are, what you do, and why you matter. And when the people crucial to your business’s success don’t understand your brand, your business can easily fall behind the competition, risk becoming irrelevant and may even lack the future support needed to move your brand and business forward.

Time for a Brand Refresh

Consider these aspects of your strategy to refresh your brand and position your business for continued future growth.

1. Brand Architecture

For many high-growth companies, add-on brands have rendered your architecture irrelevant. Do you have one brand or many brands? A branded house? Or a house of brands? How do all of your products fit into the structure of your brand? Evaluate how all the different products, business units, and pieces of your brand fit together. Don’t let organic growth lead the way. Develop your brand architecture to help people understand your business, products, and services. Enable that architecture to work for today and accommodate for tomorrow.

2. Category Reframing

Your brand needs to fit into the framework of a brand category that people understand and relate to in order to really ‘get’ your brand. Companies that have experienced organic growth oftentimes outgrow their original category without realizing it. As such, many high-growth company will start in one category and need to shift into another over time. This shift might be necessitated by the advancement of products, the market, and/or new category. Choosing the right category or defining a new one is critical to positioning your brand in a way that frames your value and makes it relevant to your customers. We like to think of category development as a process that helps clarify and shape the perceptions, feelings, and attitudes about your brand. Think about articulating the right metaphor that will make it easy for people to find meaning in your brand.

3. Positioning

Knowing how you want your brand represented, enforced, and reinforced is part of developing your positioning. A strong and meaningful positioning can enhance what your brand does, how it differs from your competitors, and why it’s better than any alternative in the market. Ensuring you have the right positioning strategy is critical to building your business.

4. Target Audience

Who is important to your brand? Who do you sell to? Who are your most important brand champions? Who are the key influencers? These are all important questions to answer during a brand refresh. For high-growth companies, the people who were important to your brand when you started have probably evolved. So take a critical eye and focus on understanding precisely who your target audience is, why you matter to them, what are they looking to solve, and how can you create messaging to speaks to their needs and desires.

5. Your Why

It’s critical to make sure you lead with ‘why’ during a brand refresh. Most likely the success of your business and its growth is the result of your purpose, or reason for being. Formalizing your purpose into a brand promise will help your growing team get aligned internally around why you matter. Everyone can get on board the same boat and row towards the same higher purpose. And when you align everyone internally and drive them towards that purpose, the people on the outside will feel your why as well. A brand is a way of bringing your purpose to life, so focus on it and how you can make people believe in your brand.

6. The Competition

In order to differentiate yourself and offer unique value to your audiences, you have to know your competition – inside and out. Who you were competing with when you started businesses has most likely entirely shifted, especially in the fast-paced business world we work in today. Map your current brand against the competition and shift accordingly.

7. Corporate Narrative

Investing in developing a corporate narrative helps everyone understand who you are, what you do, why you matter, and what the future holds for your business. If everyone internally has insight into this, it helps the external storytelling become clear and consistent. Your corporate narrative should help tell the story of your brand in an honest, meaningful, and emotive way.

8. Creative Assets

Oftentimes, making your brand more clear, powerful, and meaningful to key audiences means refreshing your visual identity (and from there, your website). Ensure your identity represents who you are and why you matter. When looking to revamp your website, hire experts. Make sure your navigation clearly reflects your brand strategy and make sure your value proposition is clear and understandable to website visitors. There are many decisions to be made when redesigning a website, so use your newly refreshed brand strategy to guide these decisions. A strategically lead redesign is key to having a well-designed user experience.

A Brand Refresh = More Meaningful, Competitive, Successful Business

Taking the time to invest in your brand will bring tangible positive results to your bottom line.

In order to hold greater meaning in the hearts and minds of the people who are most important to your business, strongly position your brand and focus on meaningfully articulating your value.

By getting everyone around the table internally, with sales and marketing brought together, your sales cycle quickens, your business becomes better positioned for success, your recruitment efforts prove more successful, and your brand helps fuel a competitive and thriving business.

Refresh your brand and bring its purpose to life for both inward- and outward-facing audiences in order to stay ahead and continue to grow. Your business depends on it.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy agency. 

Are the “Best Places to Work” Really the Best?

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

The Clout of the “Best Places to Work” List

Companies like Fortune and Glassdoor have been dedicated to naming and honoring the ‘Best Places to Work’ for more than 10 years. And these awards have gained more and more clout with time. Much like colleges treasure their rankings, workplaces hold these awards like badges of honor.

The ‘Best Places to Work’ emblem is hung from work walls, integrated into recruiting and new hire materials, pushed on social media, and celebrated by the press, employees, and company executives alike. Our work building employer brands with companies looking to attract the best talent out there has showed us first-hand how much businesses today really value these rankings.

And for good reason – as a group of people who believe meaningful brands must be built from the inside out, we’re all for the pride. Focusing on culture and employee fulfillment, satisfaction, and happiness is key to building a business in the right way. The question is: What story do these rankings tell? Is it the whole story? And just because a workplace is deemed one of the ‘Best Places to Work,’ should recruits be jumping on the celebration wagon and signing contracts just like that?

First, Let’s Look at the Patterns

When you look at the companies who make the cut, yes, a bunch are big brand names you’d expect on the list. But many are less expected. So what ties them all together? Here’s what we noticed when we dug deeper.

1. They Lead with Purpose:

These are companies who are clear, aligned, and proud of who they are, what they stand for, and what they care about. Leaders have a vision for the future that everyone shares. The brands help employees live by the mission of the company every day – something we’ve always believed defines successful business today. Purpose-led companies who integrate purpose into their culture inspire and empower their employees to move the company forward in a meaningful and sustainable way.

2. They Offer Opportunity and Growth:

These are workplaces that celebrate employee accomplishments, foster a growth-mindset, work with employees to co-create the optimal work experience, and motivate employees to set high goals and help them actually meet those goals. This helps employees build a more meaningful relationship with their work along the entire employee journey. Above all else, employees feel as though they are invested in and valued – that people want them to grow, learn, be challenged, and succeed.

3. They Behave with Transparency:

Saying you value transparency is no longer enough. You have to live it – and not just externally. What ties many of these ‘Best Places to Work’ together is their leadership. Leaders don’t work in silos – they share challenges and successes with employees, hold open forums, have open door policies, and embrace honesty (even when it’s hard.) And it’s this kind of transparency that drives employee trust.

4. They Listen and Adapt:

The power of listening is huge. Being a good listener as an employer means you can better build empathetic, meaningful, and productive relationships with employees. This requires humility from leadership and openness to new ideas, perspectives, and opinions. And in turn, listening to employees creates more creative, innovative, diverse, and open work environments. Employers who not only listen – but act on what they hear – are able to flex to changing demands of employees, stay relevant and meaningful to the people who matter most, and never get stuck in past best practices.

It’s important to point out that what brings the companies in these lists together isn’t solely perks and benefits. Yes, a lot of the workplaces on the lists give out a lot of free food. Even free concerts, gym memberships, the most cutting-edge health benefits…But benefits and perks only get you so far. They have to tie back to employees – their purpose, their goals, what helps them grow.

Forget About Benefits and Perks, “Best Places to Work” Is About Something More

Because ‘Best Places to Work’ is often used in recruiting it’s important to remember that making any list of great places to work isn’t enough. Potential employees and current employees need to understand why you are not only great, but why you are a perfect match for them.

The employees who are going to drive your business forward not only care that you’re a great place to work (sure, that might be a plus), but they also care about connecting with you. A good fit means that they understand and admire what you do and why you do it. They feel aligned and connected to your business because it connects to their passions, expertise, and ambitions. Your purpose is a purpose they want to latch onto.

Yes, from 1984 to 2011, those that won ‘Best Places to Work’ outperformed peers on stock returns by 2.3% to 3.8% per year. But that’s because they did more than just display ‘Best Place to Work’ on their walls – they lived up to it. They committed to their unique workforce and their careers. They committed to their community. And they helped their community commit to their purpose with pride. In the end, those might be more worthy causes than any award out there. That being said, we wouldn’t be surprised if you made the list if you did just that.

If you need help evaluating your workplace and what you offer employees, give us a call and we can help you build a more meaningful workplace that will help you drive your business forward.

You may also want to download and read The Meaningful Workplace which has been downloaded more than 7000 times.

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

The Power of Creating a Compelling “Brand Vibe”

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

We humans are very proud of our ability to think rationally. This cognitive power not only lets us understand and use facts, it also helps us build elaborate creations and fantasies.

We use our rational brains to conduct business. Cognition helps us sort stuff out, compare options, and rank priorities. Our rational, conscious brain is so “upfront” in our day-to-day work lives that we begin to believe it is our only way of thinking and acting at work.

Yet, as neuroscience is finding, it is now clear that this cognitive ability is not a stand-alone factor in how we perceive, sense, or act upon input. Indeed, we now see that emotions influence, if not drive, our thinking at every turn.

Emotions in play at work

We don’t readily admit it, but emotions – floating well below our consciousness – are in play all through the workplace. These emotions come to surface as feelings when people interact with one another, with people from the outside world, and with company news, policies, processes, and, of course, the gossip they hear around the water cooler.

These emotions are also very much at play in the marketplace as personal lives, news events, social media updates, and brand messages collide throughout the day. These emotions color how people feel whenever they interact with the outside world; including your brand. And, your brand strategy need to be focused around an emotive presence.

Is your ‘brand vibe’ in tune with people?

Given what we now know about how people make decisions, brands need to ask themselves a few questions:

  • To what degree are you proactively influencing the emotional “vibe” surrounding your brand, in both your workplace and the marketplace?
  • Could your brand behave in new ways that consciously address the unconscious manner in which people make decisions and take actions?
  • What would happen if your “brand vibe” started to resonate more profoundly with people?

People respond to meaningful vibes

I’m sure you’ll agree that you experience a nice “vibe” –  a significant, positive feeling – whenever you interact with, or think about, particular people (e.g. someone who inspires you), places (e.g. a romantic getaway), and things (e.g. your latest toy).

This is because you have recognized something within that person, place, or thing that triggers a connection to what you value, what you need, and/or what gives you pleasure. You may not be able to exactly say what causes your feelings, but you know you have them.

Now, think about your brand, and what feelings it is triggering; in other words, what is your “brand vibe”? Most important, is that “vibe” connected to something significant and meaningful to people? In other words, is your “brand vibe” one that rises above the fray, connects deeply into lives, and puts your brand into a class of its own?

“Brand vibes” hard at work

A distinct “brand vibe” not only lift the spirits of employees, it also creates an appealing way to stand apart in the crowded marketplace.

A clearly emotive “brand vibe” becomes a welcome feeling for everyone vital to your brand’s success, especially as they see how it helps them, the society, and/or the planet, in one way or another.

A strong “brand vibe” elevates your essential selling messages to a higher, more meaningful level; your stories take on a more compelling and inspiring aura, that makes more people get involved and engaged (and then, more likely to act).

How do you create a compelling ‘brand vibe’?

A powerful “brand vibe” is driven by a purpose – one that goes well beyond profit; it creates desirable and motivating feelings by capturing an ambition that taps directly into the needs, desires, interests and aspirations of the people you seek to influence.

When such a purpose is underscored by emotionally meaningful behavior of your brand, and its people, your “brand vibe” becomes stronger, more distinct and more powerful.

So, to have a meaningful “brand vibe”, brands need to go well beyond rethinking communications and key brand interactions (such as product launches, events, etc). Indeed, the entire organization behind the brand needs to evolve.

  • The C-suite needs to embrace, and live by, the new purpose.
  • Product teams need to refine user experiences.
  • The sales team needs to revise their pitch.
  • And, perhaps most important, HR needs to reorient the intent, attitudes and behaviors of the workforce.

A purpose beyond profit to inspire, an emotional space to exude, and an emotive behavior to bring it all to life. All there to generate a meaningful “brand vibe”. All key ingredients of emotive branding

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

San Francisco Branding Agency Shares New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

We promise to…

Deliver Business Results

Our clients hire us because they are looking to solve business problems. We know how to successfully enable growth by delivering positioning strategies that differentiate, brand campaigns that fulfill on marketing and sales goals, and deliver employer brand strategies that engage global employees around why the brand matters. Our work continues to drive business for our clients in a way that is transformative. We are focused on standing behind our work and delivering a strong ROI on every project.

Continue to Lead with Purpose

We stand behind the belief that purpose is at the core of any good brand. When purpose and brand are perfectly aligned – when what you do = what you say – you’re firing on all cylinders. We will continue to help unearth our client’s purpose so that their brands can flourish in 2016.

Evoke Emotions to Help Brands Connect with People

The feelings brands produce are not consequential, but essential. We will continue to explore how to peel away the layers – inside and outside a company– and arrive at the core of a brand’s emotional impact. This emotional understanding helps brands build powerful, meaningful, and vital connections with their audiences. Emotional impact is the greatest impact a business can make. 

Drive Business, with Empathy Behind the Wheel

Empathy is the driver of any successful brand strategy. We work to shift perspectives, introduce a different lens, and examine a brand from every angle. Empathy is crucial to humanizing a company and helping build brands that understand the people crucial to their success.

Share What We Believe

We’ll continue to write and share our thoughts on the subjects that matter most to you by being aware of the content you most enjoy and share. It inspires us to inspire you. That is what being a thought leader is all about. We are committed to more, to better lead and inspire you.

Continue to Collaborate

The theory and practice of collaboration is how we’ve always worked. We know that the best ideas are the ones that result from a diversity of thought, generosity of spirit, and the courage required to bring new thinking to life. We know this is the kind of collaboration that transforms business. We promise this year will be no different.

 

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

How to Help Your Startup Thrive Internally

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Finding for the right strategies to help your startup thrive

It’s an all too familiar startup sight. Your technical co-founder and engineering teams have their eyes glued to screens of scrolling code as their fingers fly across keyboards and music blasts through their earbuds. They are driving hard toward the launch date or new product release, losing themselves in their work and consuming Red Bull like there’s no tomorrow.

Nikos Moraitakis, Founder & CEO of WorkableHR.com, sets the following as one of ten helpful tasks non-technical co-founders should undertake:

“Nurture good spirit, keep everyone intellectually stimulated. Your technical co-founder may spend long stretches of time focused on some particular technical detail or problem. This focus is good from a development standpoint, but takes his mind off the big picture for a while. You need to engage him, and let him participate in the intellectual conversation about what it is we’re building as a whole – not burden him with the work of execution on “everything else”, but enriching his big picture with knowledge and contemplation about it. There is a joyful and highly motivating emotion that comes from the sense that your vision is coming all together, customer development is progressing, investors are interested, numbers can be achieved, feedback is positive, market is missing what you’re building, etc.”

We agree wholeheartedly. A time out from the day-to-day pressures can remind hardworking team members of why they are doing what they do, renew their energies around doing the work needed to complete the product, and focus their attention on creating a quality product.

Toward a product that matters.

At the same time, as a non-technical partner, you need not only the energy and endurance of your technical co-founder and team, but also the ability to keep them focused in ways that push them to create a product that matters right out of the gate.

That is, a product that not only works, but helps people lead better lives in some way (e.g. more productive, healthier, more enriching, etc.).

Mattering is the great differentiator today. People who are looking to create more meaning in their lives are being more discerning about the products they buy, whom they buy from, and the places they work. When you strike a chord of meaning, your product and business earns the admiration, respect, and support of people looking to do things that matter.

Three ideas to change the conversation

1.  Going beyond the vision.

Just as the dev team is knee-deep in coding, you are busy keeping on top of everything else that is needed to ensure a successful launch.

Most think the driving force of a startup is its vision. However, many startup “visions” are technology-centric, emotionally neutral, and lacking in meaning. They tend to be very internally focused and bereft of perspective. They are often generic in intent, written in corporate-speak, and hard to relate to on a human level.

So, step one in creating meaningfully refreshing conversations with startup dev teams is to go beyond your vision and to adopt a Purpose Beyond Profit. This is a statement that elevates your startup’s reason for being – its “why”- and the way it will matter to people both rationally and emotionally.

Going one step further, when using this statement as a platform, consider how your startup should make its employees, customers, and partners feel when they deal with your company and its product, your advertising and promotion, your website, your sales and investor presentations, your customer support team, etc.

2.  Now it’s time for a workplace conversation that matters.

With a solid Purpose Beyond Profit and a set of feelings to focus upon, you are able to construct a break for your dev team that brings these two factors to life.

Start by leading a conversation on what it means to matter in today’s world – the value of getting people (including themselves) to have specific feelings – and what all this means vis-à-vis the product you have in development. Then, follow up with whatever “good news” you can share about the market opportunity, the investor interest, the team’s progress, any feedback you’ve gotten, etc.

By letting your team feel the “joyful and highly motivating emotion” that comes from doing work that truly matters to themselves, to the company, and to the world, you help them deliver a product that matters right out of the gate. As Nikos put it, “Nurture good spirit, keep everyone intellectually stimulated.”

3.  Matter inside and out.

Finally, use your new Purpose Beyond Profit and set of feelings to guide how you bring your product to investors, partners, and customers. Help people outside the firm see your product as one that comes from a company that aims to do well by doing good through an emotionally meaningful Purpose Beyond Profit. Strive to be a company that stands out not only for what its products do, but also for the way the company makes people feel. Be a company that people are proud to be associated with and support because it does stuff that truly matters.

Learn more on how to help your startup thrive by making your brand matter.

The Meaningful Workplace explains how this change effects the dynamic between businesses and employees.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency that works with high-growth startups.

What Is Brand Generosity Anyway?

Posted on by Paige Lansing Valle

Why so generous?

Brand generosity is in. As consumers become increasingly connected to social media and exposed to marketing ploys and tricks, suspicions rise about the authenticity of brands. Many consumers are looking for a genuine social commitment from the brands they engage with. As a result, building a bond with the people that matter to your business is more important now than ever before. People are looking for brands that give more than what’s expected. They want to feel good about the brands they are buying into, and how those brands are giving back to the world at large.

What is brand generosity?

Brand generosity is a new phrase in brand land most recently linked to Target’s current marketing strategy. Using advanced data, Target figured out that consumers have an itch to listen to music while watching the Grammys, so they launched a live ad featuring Imagine Dragons during the show. The ad didn’t advertise products; it only gave viewers the music they wanted. Target coined this tactic as “brand generosity” in the sense that it provided a targeted audience with “free” content.

Even though Target is calling this brand generosity, we believe brand generosity should mean more. It’s shouldn’t be a substitute phrase or a disguised name for branded advertisements, marketing tactics, or content marketing. Indirect content marketing isn’t enough to call a brand generous.

What brands do it well?

We took a look at the qualities of successful brand generosity programs to better understand how they drive meaningful and successful business:

  1. Purpose-Led, Promise-Driven

Generosity that stems from purpose is inherently genuine. TOMS, for example, has pledged to make a positive impact on the world with a “one for one” promise. And yet, the promise extends beyond giving one shoe to someone in need for every shoe a consumer buys. It sings true in how the company invests, what partnerships the brand makes, where they give, and what they give. Because the TOMS purpose goes beyond specific products and far beyond profit, the brand has had ­– and will have – the ability to extend their giving beyond shoes: the gift of sight, water, safe birth, and kindness are also part of their brand generosity. By working towards a larger aspiration, there is always more giving to be done. If giving can grow, business can grow, too.

  1. Rewards Social Engagement

Since social sharing has become such an integral part of successful businesses today, brands that demonstrate generosity towards consumers via social media are thriving. For example, Lancôme allows customers to earn points when they share products on networks like Facebook and Instagram. This kind of giving creates more than a sense of reciprocity. It builds loyalty and fosters brand ambassadors who feel rewarded and valued. Showing gratitude goes a long way with these loyal and important consumers.

  1. Creates a Social Halo

When people buy from brands that are perceived as generous, they themselves often are perceived as generous. This is what many psychologists refer to as the halo effect. And the halo of giving is greatly valued and respected in today’s world. For instance, when consumers choose to buy a branded (RED) iPod Nano over all the other colors, they make the choice to help (RED) #endAIDS. Although consumers pay the same price for the product, they get the product and the social halo. They are not only Apple users, but also generous, good-hearted Apple users who have taken part in the fight against AIDS. Their purchase displays their commitment to not only “BE (RED),” but recognizes their personal and important contribution to the cause. 

  1. Builds a Giving Community

(RED) is quick to point out that an AIDs-free generation is not achievable if they work alone. It takes everyone: governments, health organizations, partner companies, and consumers. Other generous brands agree. By buying into brand generosity, consumers are not just consumers. They join the movement, and become part of the rally behind the cause. Generous brands like Yellow Leaf Hammocks, Kind Bars, Better World Books, Warby Parker, and Ethos Water all strive to build a community that works together towards their goals. By explaining what impact each individual can have, the community grows stronger, and the power of giving is brought to life. When people feel good about their personal generosity, they will feel good about your brand.

The Financial Benefits of Generosity

Generous brands benefit financially. In the end, giving back positively impacts your business. Why? Because as many brands and entrepreneurs have discovered, giving back to your community is incredibly rewarding both personally and financially.

Having a giving mindset creates positive PR and increases commitment amongst employees. It gets them rallied behind your cause. It also strengthens consumers’ emotional connection to your brand’s purpose. Because your brand is aligned behind a larger aspiration, your brand becomes a part of a larger community that cares about that same cause. With this strong community come more partnerships, support, and meaningful connections.

Consider the ways your brand can give back in an authentic way. Whether it’s aligning your brand with a charity that resonates with your purpose or setting aside time in the workplace to give back to your local community, fostering generosity within your business will help it thrive. Authentically generous brands are flourishing brands.

Emotive Brand is a San Franciso branding agency.

Authentic Brands Just Feel Right: Inject Purpose and Feeling

Posted on by Saja Chodosh

Everyone’s Claiming Authenticity

Where are all the authentic brands? In today’s world, where curation is everywhere, vacuous claims are made left and right by brands, and people are inundated with meaningless media content, authenticity is a hard feeling to come by. You can’t visit a website or see an ad where you don’t see brands declaring that they are, in fact, “the most genuine and the most trustworthy.”

The problem is, with so many choices and so much available content, people see right through brand claims that don’t ring true. And because declarations of “authenticity” don’t always ring true, the whole concept has lost some meaning and gained some skepticism. 

But Authenticity Still Matters

Finding the authenticity in a brand and making it resonate true at every touchpoint is still one of the most important things a brand today can do. It might be more difficult, but it is also more critical. It requires getting to those important nuggets of brand truth so that a brand can consistently deliver on promises and interact at with integrity at every touch point. Authentic brands lead with purpose and are emotive in nature.

Authenticity that Feels Right

At Emotive Brand, we help create brands that just feel right – helping them evoke very specific positive feelings in the right ways, with the right people, at every brand touchpoint. At the heart of this, is finding the authenticity in a brand.

Recently, we’ve been working with a very successful, 2nd generation family business entrenched in the coffee world where empty claims of “authenticity” are everywhere. Tired with competitor’s meaningless assertions, they looked to us to help articulate authenticity in a different and meaningful way.

Like we do in any client engagement, we dove into their business and kicked the tires of their brand. We conducted a discourse analysis and a competitive audit and we got to know the landscape of the industry. We met the family who started the business over 35 years ago, toured the facility, observed the ways the employees interacted with each other and the family, learned about their innovative processes, unique and supportive farming relationships, and every step along the supply chain that brings their coffee to life.

You could tell right away, this family operated its business in a way that we’ve never seen before, and it inspired us. Seeing the innate warmth and friendliness of their family flow into their entire way of business helped us unearth an important brand truth: this company was a family that did business like a family, in every way. And this was different from the norm. They treated everyone like family: their employees, their farmers, their retailers, everyone.

This insight alone allowed us to realize the emotional impact the brand had to evoke the story it had to tell, and how it had to tell it. The work of our team became all about finding a new way to express its authenticity in a way that was not boastful, but authentic to who they are and how they behave. They are authentic because that’s always been the only option– it’s just who they are and how they’ve always done business.

The Ah-Ha Moments of Authentic Brands

Uncovering meaningful brand truths and gain an understanding of what will really connect with people and ring genuine is key to any brand looking to create significant experiences today. And when you get to those authentic truths that sit at the heart of any brand and you share them with the people close to the business, they just feel right.

Nothing beats the feeling of being able to reimagine a brand in a fresh and authentic way. It’s an ah-ha moment for everyone in the room. You’ve identified something that just feels so true. That stands out. This help gets the entire organization excited about the new trajectory of the brand and confident that this is a story they can tell and really stand behind – proud and tall. And that’s what authenticity is really about.

Click here to read a case study for another authentic brand and client that needed a new way to think about what made them truly unique.

Emotive Brand transforms the way brands reach out to people, and how people respond back to brands.

Authentic brands interested in learning how to transform your brand into a more authentic, meaningful and emotive brand? Download our white paper.

5 Things Executives Need to Know When Embarking on Brand Strategy

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Investing in brand strategy is a big decision for executives to make today.  Plunging into an ocean of the emotional, strategic, and intellectual dimensions and depths of your brand is not what executives often want to spend time and budget on. Preconceived notions about ROI, doubts about the actual value of it, and the more obvious budget concerns to evaluate brand strategy are hugely challenging.

Many companies don’t even make it to this place – the place where they accept and understand they actually do need to invest in the brand to address their business problems. But for those that do, it can create amazing results — internally and externally.

There are a handful of important things we believe executives need to know before beginning a brand refresh or investing in a new brand strategy.

1. Strategy is only the first step

The task of creating, socializing, and implementing a brand strategy is not a one-step process or an endeavor that can be achieved overnight. The brand strategy is just step one – albeit a big one, that requires strength, endurance, thought, calculation, and time.

Here at Emotive Brand, before we begin work with a client, we want the C-suite to understand that their work does not end once the strategy is complete. The role of the strategy is to unearth what kind of terrain they are building on and to help build the foundation for the brand, but it’s up to them to build a structure for it…to maintain it…and to sell it. The brand strategy we create together will have no impact unless both employee and brand behavior changes as a result. Brand strategy without meaningful implementation is next to useless.

The creation of a brand strategy demands budget, time, and dedication. The socialization and implementation that follow the creation of a brand strategy demands more budget, more time, and even greater dedication. We urge clients to invest accordingly from the start. We want clients to bring a long-term commitment – forward-thinking and future-looking – to the work.

2. Schedule your time in advance

A huge part of commitment is time. It is essential to schedule time at the C-suite level from the onset. We work with clients to allocate and plan the appropriate time needed for every meeting and for digesting and responding to our work at every point of the process. Executives should understand the time requirement needed and be sure they can commit to it. The best way to do it is to schedule the entire project at the onset.

3. Approach the challenge with openness, honesty, and trust

Because we are trying to understand your business, and unearth emotions, meaning, and deeper purpose, we take a particularly in-depth approach. Often, the issues that prompt a brand strategy effort are just symptoms of a deeper problem. We help discover these problems where they exist. Our approach is detailed, thorough, exhaustive, and sometimes even personal. It is our job to see how teams work together and understand  each of their leadership styles so we can facilitate and align them to enable progress. We dive into company financials. And we speak one-on-one with each executive to ensure we understand their personal perspective. This is what allows us to align and facilitate change.  On every project we work hard to uncover what is happening internally and externally. The productivity of our relationship with executives thus hinges on openness, honesty, and trust. It’s essential for the C-suite to be clear and candid about the strengths and weaknesses of all aspects of the company. If we are clear where the business, culture, and growth is challenged, we can create new paths forward. Trust that you hired the right agency and their power to create positive change; your brand strategy depends on trust to push beyond where you’ve been.

4. Have the right mindset for change

You don’t embark on a brand strategy just to create a strategy. You embark on a brand strategy to transform your business; to help you reach your goals and objectives. In order to solve business problems, you must accept that things do need to change and those changes will go much deeper than just a simple logo alternation. The strategy that we help you create will almost undoubtedly change the way you communicate externally and internally. It will alter how you and your employees behave. But, it may also force you to question if you have the right team to execute on the strategy. It may even alter what products or services you sell, or what the entire future of the company might look like. These changes may feel drastic, risky, or scary. However, with the right strategy, these changes can be momentous, far-reaching, impactful, and often times exhilarating. Transform your brand. Transform your business.

5. Be willing to be led

Executives are often hard-wired to lead, not follow. It is a naturally difficult adjustment to entrust power to an outsider. However, we ask executives to prepare themselves to allow us to do just that: to direct, to organize, to manage. This is our job and expertise; this is what you hired us for. So listen, trust, and follow our lead. We promise it will steer you to great and exciting places.

Emotive Brand works with high-growth executives to address the business problems they are experiencing by quickly evaluating the most pressing needs and developing a right-sized project that delivers quick wins though an agile brand strategy process.

Find out more about the outcomes we’ve delivered for our clients here.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

How Great Leaders Accelerate Innovation Through Meaning

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Why the need to accelerate innovation?

“No company in the future will be in a position to succeed if it squanders the imagination of its employees.”

Professor Gary Hamel, co-founder of the Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) and the M-Prize: Innovating Innovation Challenge.

Hamel says innovation is one of the most important and difficult challenges facing business around the world.

At the same time, innovation is a vital capability for companies because it is the:

> only insurance against irrelevance
> only antidote to margin-crunching competition
> only way you can out-perform a dismal economy
> only way to build enduring customer loyalty

Yet, he says, “I don’t think there’s one company in a hundred that makes innovation the work of every single employee, every day.”

He identifies three reasons why organizations aren’t truly innovative from top to bottom:

  1. People throughout the organization (front-line employees, administrative assistants, people in the centers, tech support staff, people in the warehouse, etc.) have not been given training in how to be innovative.
  2. There is no facility for people with ideas to get the time off from their current responsibilities to develop their ideas. Nor is there any available “experimental capital” that could help them prototype their innovations.
  3. Employees don’t have a clear understanding of what is expected of them or what is in it for them.

We would add a fourth point to Professor Hamel’s list:

4. Employees don’t share a common goal or purpose that inspires innovative thinking.

What’s missing in most companies is a compelling Purpose Beyond Profit.

When a company’s employees all share a common goal, purpose, and ambition built around making the world a better place, the opportunities for innovation abound.

A Purpose Beyond Profit that is folded into your brand strategy focuses everyone on the meaningful outcomes of the work they do.

This desire to do good brings them closer to those who are impacted by the company. These insights prompt them to focus deeply on the hopes, needs, values, and aspirations of the people the company serves.

Valuable, relevant, and practical innovations come as employees extend empathy to others, draw on their personal desire to create meaningful outcomes, and benefit from the company’s training, time, and financial support and clear expectations.

A company with a strong purpose inspires, stimulates, and enables the innovation it needs to thrive in the 21st Century.

The benefits go beyond profit as well. Meaning-based innovation creates a Meaningful Workplace in which employees feel that what they do matters: to themselves, to others, and to society.

As Professor Hamel says, “When companies innovate, you find that not only does market value go up, customers are happier, and so on, but most of all, it changes the human spirit of work. We were born to create as human beings. We can’t help but to create. But we need the skills, the tools, the environment, and so on. When you give people permission, when you allow them to bring those states of energy to the fore, you also create an organization in which there’s an unbelievable amount of excitement. The bubble of human excitement is always there with people thinking and dreaming up new ideas.”

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

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 touch points 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 tact. 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.