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Tag: Strategy

Business Imperative: Socializing Strategy

Posted on by Joanna Schull

One of the first things we learn in business is the importance of “having a plan.” Preferably, it should be a strategic plan, complete with milestones, action items, KPIs, and other important measures. This is definitely true. You need to have a plan, and you need to be socializing strategy.

As someone who’s been in the consulting game for many years, I can’t count the number of times I’ve sat down with new clients only to discover that while there may, in fact, be a carefully (and expensively) constructed strategic plan, it’s a mystery to most employees. Chances are, they learned about the strategic plan via an online WebEx, saw some slides, listened to an executive talk, participated in some Q&A, and called it a day—and then promptly forgot the whole thing and went back to business as usual.

There’s a better way of socializing strategy—it comes down to following a few key principles and practices.

Step 1: Alignment

Align the entire leadership team on the key initiatives that’ll be required to execute on the strategy. The initiatives should be cross-functional and specific—not siloed within a single part of the organization. Good examples would be “develop vertical solutions and go-to-market expertise” or “create a culture of collaboration.”

Step 2: Plan for Change

As a leadership team, identify what’s going to change from three levels:

  • Functionally/operationally: What new things are going to need to happen? For example, do you need to develop new competencies, expand into a new geography, or acquire different types of talent?
  • Org structure: Are changes to the organization’s structure required to achieve the new strategy?
  • What internal cultural shifts will be required?: Starting with a baseline assessment of the status quo, what new types of behaviors will be needed to help the company adapt and execute on the new strategy?

Step 3: Socializing Strategy

Sharing and socializing the strategy and execution plan with your workforce is the next step. This is where it’s important to be thoughtful and thorough in planning and execution. Rushing the process will end up costing more in the long run, so take the time to do it right.

Don’t: Put together a deck, email it out, and consider the job done.

Do: Create an engaging way for employees to learn about the strategy directly from the executive leadership team, ideally with different leaders taking responsibility for explaining each track of work. If possible, do this at a live event that allows cross-functional teams to work together to discuss implications, as well as report outs from employees with questions, comments, and suggestions.

It’s important that the leadership team strike the balance of presenting a coherent, well thought out strategy while providing the rest of the company with an opportunity to provide input. This helps create ownership and buy-in across the company—but also may reveal things the leadership team may have overlooked or missed.

Step 4: Reinforce Awareness

Socializing strategy requires more than a one-time event. Best practices include:

  • Developing internal campaigns to keep it top of mind. Create a 12-month calendar to coordinate internal communications that reinforce the goals, but also celebrate progress and wins.
  • Ensuring cultural alignment. It is imperative that a company’s culture is set up to reinforce the change. This means taking a hard look at behaviors, metrics, and rewards. Do they align with the changes you’re asking employees to make? Are senior leaders practicing what they preach?

Step 5: Follow Up and Get Feedback

A good strategic plan will have ways to measure effectiveness by way of metrics, KPIs, etc. This is good, but not enough. It’s important to follow up and get feedback from the people who you’re ultimately relying on to see the strategy through: your employees. Find a way to check in on them and get a pulse on how it’s going, ask them what is working, and more importantly, what’s not. Nine times out of ten, you’ll get some valuable insights that will help to accelerate progress and keep things on track. At the very least, you’ll let your people know that you’re listening.

Strategic plans are imperative. Your company needs them to succeed in an ever-evolving and competitive world. But without a thoughtfully executed rollout plan to your employees—arguably the most important part of your business—even the most brilliant strategy will fall flat.

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

A 5-Step Action Plan for Sales and Marketing Alignment

Posted on by Stephen Banbury

B2B Sales and Marketing Alignment 2.0

A former colleague of mine just started a job where she was required to stand up and deliver a sales presentation to the sales leadership team. That wouldn’t be unusual for a new salesperson – but she’s a marketer. And the experience of walking in the sales team’s shoes made her a better one.

B2B companies talk a lot about sales and marketing alignment, but talk will only get you so far. Companies need to take action to get their sales and marketing teams empathizing with each other, strategizing together, and working from the same playbook.

It’s a critical time for sales and marketing alignment. The benefits have never been greater. As technology and data transform business, new opportunities are emerging every day for the savviest B2B companies to boost lead quality, close more deals, strengthen their brands and improve their work culture through tighter teamwork.

So how to get from here from there? If you take the following action steps, you’re all but certain to enjoy stronger B2B revenue growth this year.

Action 1: Plan together

Most companies have already conducted their 2019 planning meetings, but if you haven’t, now is the time. And even if you have, you shouldn’t stop there. Before the holidays, be sure to put four quarterly sales and marketing planning meetings on your calendar for next year.

A lot of change can happen over the course of a year, so it’s important to have an in-depth planning session at least quarterly. This is a chance for B2B sales and marketing teams to sit together and review sales objectives for each time period. Then you can agree on how the strategic marketing plan can best support those objectives, from corporate and field events to high-value content.

Action 2: Walk in their shoes

Aligning goals and tactics is an important start, but for greater impact, marketing needs to truly understand the hurdles salespeople face every day.

Marketing tends sometimes to lean toward the aspirational, but sales enablement requires a more down-to-earth approach. It’s important that marketers attend regular sales team meetings – yes, every week — and hear firsthand what is working, what is not, what prospective customers truly care about, and what key questions marketing absolutely needs to answer.

As my friend’s experience above illustrates, having B2B marketers stand and deliver a sales presentation is a great way to enhance their understanding of how well their own slides work in practice, not just in theory. Actually telling the story is the best way to gauge how each piece connects with different audiences while identifying any gaps.

Sales, for its part, should appreciate that marketing is tasked with a longer-term, strategic role in growing the company, the brand, and its customer relationships.

Particularly as subscription-based SAAS becomes the dominant revenue model, topline growth is driven less by closing a few big deals and more by long-term nurturing that paves the way for customer loyalty and successful cross-selling and up-selling.

It takes mutual respect flowing both ways to fully leverage the strengths of both sales and marketing – so everyone can reap the benefits of these opportunities.

Action 3: Connect top to bottom

Sales and marketing alignment at the executive level is not enough. The entire organization, from the c-suite to operations to customer-facing field staff, should know each other and have regular conversations. If this isn’t happening, now is a good time to make those introductions.

Action 4: Pay for what you get

Typically sales teams are compensated based on meeting and exceeding revenue targets, while marketers aren’t ­– but it doesn’t have to be that way. Some B2B companies have started rewarding marketers for KPIs like deals influenced or deals sourced. Good CRM tools are making it possible to track the effectiveness of specific pieces of digital content, making detailed ROI measurement – and rewarding the content creators — more feasible.

Action 5: Lean heavily on your brand

As sales and marketing alignment gains steam, brand makes even more of a difference. It gives both sides a common understanding and shared language as they essentially co-create the B2B brand experience.

The most successful sales and marketing partnerships are aligned in their commitment from top to bottom – from their brand’s highest-level vision to its most tactical tools.

By nurturing mutual respect and leveraging the strengths of both the sales and marketing teams, your company will be set up for greater success in 2019 and beyond.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco Brand Strategy firm working with high-growth technology companies. Learn more about our work with high-growth technology companies here.

What Does the Agency of the Future Look Like?

Posted on by Chris Ames

Last week, Emotive Brand celebrated its ten-year anniversary. Naturally, the milestone has led all of us here to reflect on the last decade and ask what it will take to continue to be successful moving forward. Today, Founding Partner and Chief Strategy Officer Tracy Lloyd and Creative Director Thomas Hutchings tackle that very question. What does the agency of the future look like? How does it behave? And how do we continue to push the envelope of what’s possible?

How have you seen the agency space shift over time?

Thomas Hutchings: Gone are the days of real arrogance, where an agency could rest prim and proper on its name alone. In the beginning, when there was far less competition, you could get away with being very demanding and say to clients, ‘It’s our way or the highway.’ Now, the space is so diverse and versatile, agencies try to provide the best experience possible. It’s a much more malleable and friendly relationship where you really immerse yourself in the client world. Keeping those worlds separate is an old way of thinking. In a sense, it’s kind of reversed: the agency is now the client and the client is now the agency. In addition, there’s been an increase in robust in-house teams that are strong, educated, talented, and bring something to the table. Perhaps some would see that as intimidating, but I think it’s great. We seek to inspire one another and be an extension of your team.

Tracy Lloyd: It’s a much more agile relationship that agencies are having with clients. There has been a shift from agencies dictating how long a project will take to the client driving the time frame. And at the same time, the problems agencies are being asked to solve are getting more complex. No longer are agencies able to lean on old methodologies. Solving the business problems of high-growth companies today requires having the right frameworks that can be adapted in real-time to keep pace. It’s about leaving your ego at the door and acknowledging that our clients are sophisticated, educated, and have a lot of the same skills agencies have. You must be prepared to be collaborators – not dictators.

What’s the value of bringing in an outside agency?

TH: While brands and their in-house teams have definitely become more robust, agencies will always bring a lot of muscle to the game for one key reason. Brands are cursed with having to focus on themselves 100% of the time. We have the privilege of working on so many different projects across a myriad of verticals. We have a 360-degree view of the landscape and can leverage solutions from other fields or spaces. That’s a very unique power.

TL: We are asked to solve some tough business, product, and brand problems for our clients. As an agency, we bring a very senior team that not only dedicates time to fix those problems but solve them in unique ways. You need that outside perspective, that diversity of thinking, and that unique pool of talent that agencies bring in order to see the problem for what it is. It’s the fastest way to ascertain the strategic shifts you need to make to get back on the right track.

What have you been most surprised by?

TH: It’s been fascinating to see the small to medium-sized agencies become the new champions of this era. They are the ones getting the big clients, and the giant branding firms are wondering where they sit in this space. It’s almost akin to what’s happening in the retail space, with big box stores versus small independently-owned businesses focusing on experience. Clients are looking for the weird and the wonderful – not just the cold, stark efficiency of a massive branding firm. The agencies that create brands that actually mean something, rather than just exist and churn, will be the ones that survive in the long run.

TL: We work with mostly B2B brands. I think there are some B2B companies that are raising the stakes. The branding out there is getting more interesting, more experimental, and less corporate. That’s really nice to see. With the bloom of smaller digital agencies, there is a lot more competition out there – but I think it’s incredibly inspiring. I feel energized and inspired by our peers and am happy to be pushing the envelope of what’s possible alongside them. I think this year will be revolutionary for what we will see from B2B brands and the agencies that serve them.

What does the agency of the future look like?

TL: Agile. Smart. Nimble. Focused. I think the agency of the future, especially those agencies that work with B2B brands, will be two-fold. First, they will be the ones who can bring the same level of strategic problem-solving and creativity of B2C agencies. And second, they will be known for developing those big ideas that create new categories, new markets, new revenue models, and build brands that people want to buy, work for, and talk about. That’s the agency of the future we are trying to build.

TH: The best agencies are the ones that keep their minds open and are willing to take a brand into any avenue. The more you pigeonhole, the more stagnant your agency will be. That’s easier said than done. Much of that comes down to surrounding yourself with people who have a natural hunger for curiosity. Those who ask, ‘What if it went there? Why can’t we do this?’ You need to embrace a challenger mindset to upset preconceived notions and conventions if you want to make something that really resonates.

If you could start over and build from this agency from scratch, is there anything you’d do differently?

TL: This is a hard one to answer. In many ways, we are doing the same things we’ve always done, just on a bigger scale. Our clients are the C-suite. The companies are bigger, global, and recognizable by name. The stakes are higher, and our team is more senior. But in principle, we are operating the same way. The tenets of Emotive Brand have always been about finding the perfect blend of emotional and rational strategies to help change how people feel about the brand and to ensure they are activated in the ways business need.

We’ve worked hard to make the experience clients have with our agency different in every way. We’ve used our own methodology to deliver on that, and every employee from day one knows how to deliver on that. I’m glad we were clear from the start, and I’m proud to know it still drives our behavior as an agency today. We continue to lean into a sales-led approach to solving positioning and go-to-market strategies for our technology clients because that’s just how my brain works. And it’s working. Our references are not just CMOs and CEOs – CROs love us, too. As an agency, it’s helped us become recognized as a go-to B2B branding agency. And that means something to me. Because delivering growth is how our clients measure our success, and theirs.

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

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Getting all the Stakeholders on the Same Page

Posted on by Chris Ames

In America, there is a strong belief that the success or failure of your venture comes down to individual drive. It’s you, and you alone, that can turn the tide in your favor. In reality, as even the most steadfast founders learn, much of your time will be devoted to appeasing external stakeholders. Sometimes, those who know the least about your vision will have the most influence over its chance of survival.

Navigating the C-suite requires knowing how to engage stakeholders by building and nurturing relationships. The meaningful enterprise has moved from a transactional foundation — where enterprises serve their own benefit, even at the expense of others — to a relational foundation — which acknowledges that interdependence among diverse parties is essential for sustained success. Here’s the thing about relying on others: it’s always slower in the short-term. But for those with the patience to sacrifice short-term speed for long-term agility, it can be incredibly rewarding.

Before we get too deep, a bit of housekeeping. What exactly is a stakeholder? A stakeholder is anyone who can affect or is affected by the actions of a corporation. The concept of the stakeholder was first used in 1963 at the Stanford Research Institute, and described them as “those groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist.” This description is as wonderful as it is vague, allowing you to cast the net as widely or as tightly as you wish. Is it those who directly fund you? Or those who provide those late-night emails of clarity when you’re spiraling? In short, yes. For a bit more guidance, look to the difference between internal and external stakeholders.

Internal stakeholders typically comprise employees, managers, owners, and in some cases, volunteers, interns, or students. The importance of consulting with internal stakeholders is self-evident. They are the ones on the front lines. They hear everything, know everything, and work across all touchpoints. Think of them as the physical engine. You can’t get a tune-up from a specialist without bringing them an actual machine. Most founders understand how vital their own team is. The trick is bringing that same love, care, and attention to outside counsel.

External stakeholders are those outside the corporation who interact with it in some way. This could be funders, investors, shareholders, advisors, banks, finance companies, suppliers, policymakers, legislators, social media influencers, and of course, customers. Each of these groups of stakeholders is usually termed a “constituency,” and each constituency represents a homogenous group usually holding a similar interest in the organization’s affairs. Think of them as the team of specialty mechanics, each having a particular, bespoke solution to make your engine run a little better.

When it works like it’s supposed to, stakeholder consultation results in a relationship of mutual benefit. It enables us to spot trends, emerging challenges, and risks. It brings a fresh set of eyes to your venture, offering new perspectives which can be used to improve project design and outcomes. And as anyone at a cocktail party has learned, playing nice can form unlikely collaborations and partnerships. All of this helps your brand to:

  • Determine needs and expectations
  • Identify perceptions and attitudes
  • Evaluate implementations and actions
  • Establish the brand values and positioning of the corporation as seen by others
  • Ensure your decision making is more informed and in tune
  • Administer a greater chance of implementation and activation

So, when and how do you bring in the troops? Kevin Crump, writer, and Customer Success Manager recommends weaving them in as early as possible.

“If you engage your stakeholders early in the project — ideally during the planning stage — everyone gets a common understanding of the scope, the timing, the budget, and the resource demands from the get-go,” he says. “This means no major surprises later in the lifecycle, and no ongoing divergence between stakeholder vision and reality. That’s why we have menus in restaurants. We don’t just expect the waiter to serve us exactly what we want without discussing it first.”

In this lovely diagram from B2B International, a B2B market research company, we see how a method of planning, process, presentation, and promise can be used to maintain effective communication throughout the entire lifecycle.

Getting all the Stakeholders on the Same Page - Planning Diagram

This outline is a great bird’s eye view of how to approach stakeholders. But what happens when you’re in the weeds with someone difficult? Here are four strategies for making sure you don’t burn your only bridge out of town.

1. Seeing. You can’t solve a problem if you can’t identify it. The first step is to clearly identify your stakeholders and figure out what motivates them. Primary stakeholders are those directly affected by the work. Customers often fall into this category. Secondary stakeholders are those indirectly affected by the work. This includes support teams or those impacted by the outcome. Key stakeholders are those with strong influence and vested interest. This would be the executives. Each group has different interests, objectives, and agendas — many of which will be in direct competition. Identifying and ranking their influence and interest will help keep projects moving in the right direction. The truth is, not all stakeholders are created equal, so sleuthing out who holds sway and who is your best champion will save you a lot of stress. Ask yourself questions like:

  • What are their most pressing business needs?
  • What is the best way to communicate with them?
  • What information or details do they need?”
  • Do they fully understand your work or do they need some extra explanation?
  • Who influences them?
  • What are they responsible for?
  • Who do they report to?

2. Listening. This is much easier said than done but resist the urge to close communication channels just because you don’t like what you hear. When receiving negative feedback, I always have to remind myself that it’s very unlikely someone is doing this as a personal attack against me. (Though not impossible.) Nine times out of ten, even the most off-kilter comment is based on some insight, backroom conversation, or email you weren’t looped in on. Try to see where difficult stakeholders are coming from and put yourself in their shoes to better understand their motivation and goals. Do their needs align with your project’s objectives? Do they simply want things done a different way? Common ground isn’t always common, but it’s worth searching for.

3. Meeting. Never underestimate the power of individual communication. For one, it’s a more human, efficient way to explore diverging viewpoints. You can clear the air, vent, and hear things from a new perspective without the formality of a group presentation. And two, meeting without other stakeholders in the room takes the pressure off and prevents negative opinions from spreading. Sometimes, it’s about just letting someone feel that they are heard.

4. Proving. A sad truth: you’re probably going to lose a battle of opinions to a senior employee. That’s why you should arm yourself with cold, hard facts that support the direction you want to take.

“Change the game by quickly running a test and collecting some evidence,” says Marty Cagan of the Silicon Valley Product Group. “Move the discussion from opinions to data. Share what you’re learning very openly. It may be that neither of your opinions was right.”

Especially in data-hungry Silicon Valley, data will always trump hunches. More than being right, it shows you’re taking a more analytical approach to your role, which will bolster your credibility for the future. Even if you can’t find a mathematical proof point, you can use the voices of actual customers to make it less about your opinion and more about what’s right for the market.

In the immortal words of John Donne, no man is an island. As much as we’d like to singularly launch our idea into the Fortune 500, chances are we’ll need the help of external stakeholders. So, here’s to the power of compromise, communication, and diversity of opinion.

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

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An Audience-Centric Approach to Communications

Posted on by Chris Ames

The Curse of Knowledge

When you work in the business of ideas, things are bound to get complicated. At Emotive Brand, we mainly work with high-growth, B2B tech companies. Our clients are experts at building big, technical, complex systems that solve real human problems. What they aren’t always experts at, however, is explaining those ideas in a way that feels human and approachable.

We don’t blame them. It’s something that’s often called “the curse of knowledge.” It’s when you’re so immersed in the universe of your product that you have a hard time remembering the rest of the world hasn’t been on the journey with you. This is where jargon, shorthand, and tunnel vision thrives – often to the detriment of your audience’s comprehension.

The Idea and the Selling of the Idea

So, here’s the million-dollar question: how do you explain something complicated in a simple way? This question – the magic trick of turning the difficult into the delightful – is the engine of branding. There is the idea, and then there is the selling of the idea. You can have the best hardware, software, or cloud service in town, but if you don’t take an audience-centric approach to your communications, no one will hear you.

There’s a saying that the moment a piece of art is finished, it no longer belongs to the artist. When you release something to the public, you are surrendering a certain amount of control over its meaning, use, and interpretation. The same is true for your product in the market. It doesn’t really matter what you meant. What matters is what the audience feels.

What Does Your Audience Need to Hear?

As Matt Abrahams, writer at Insights by Stanford Business, says, “Rather than start drafting your presentation, email, or meeting agenda by asking, ‘What do I want to say?’ start by asking, ‘What does my audience need to hear?’ In order to answer this, you might first think about what your audience knows and how they go about knowing.”

Questions are a beautiful place to start. Before you write a single word for your webpage or conference, ask yourself: What is your audience like and why are they here? What keeps them up at night and how can you remedy that? How can you hold a place in their heads and hearts? How might they resist?

It sounds simple, but it’s a radically different approach than what you usually see in the market. How many presentation decks have you sat through that start with a long history of the company, a poorly designed graph, or a disproportionate focus on their own sales, promotions, or services? Meanwhile, the universal human benefit is buried 30 slides later.

The hardest part about writing is knowing what to say and when to say it. The brilliant thing about an audience-centric strategy is that it answers these questions for you. By definition, it’s a strategy that’s built to resonate because it’s built from the audience up.

As Bill Skowronski, writer at Sharing the Good, says, “Audience-centric objectives are built on a deep understanding of the target audience’s needs and desires. Therefore, because the content is strategically designed to help customers, it can be search engine optimized to rank when they’re researching and will directly resonate with them. And because the messaging is audience-centric, it stands out in the industry, differentiating your business from every other one that says they do what you do.”

Complexity vs. Complication

Perhaps there are those out there who hear “simplify” and think “dumb it down.” This couldn’t be further from the truth. Simplicity is not at war with complexity – it’s at war with confusion.

In his TED talk “Simplifying Complexity,” ecologist Eric Berlow describes the difference between complexity and complication beautifully. “For me, a well-crafted baguette, fresh out of the oven is complex. But a curry, onion, poppy, cheese bread is complicated.” He goes to explain how in understanding the interconnectedness of species, you need to embrace the big picture in order to see the easy solution. “We’re discovering in nature that simplicity often lies on the other side of complexity. So, for any problem, the more you can zoom out and embrace complexity, the better chance you have of zooming in on the simple details that matter most.”

Everything vs. the Right Thing

That’s the exact exercise brands need to do in creating audience-centric communications. Google, for instance, is about as complex as a company can be, yet they always keep their messaging simple. Their dense web of technical prowess isn’t wasted, it’s just used to stitch simple human truths everyone can remember and understand.

Here’s Google’s mission: “Our mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Imagine for a moment you built Google and know everything about it. Think of how easy it would be to make that statement more comprehensive, more technically accurate, and more complicated, essentially making it worse.

That’s the burden of “the curse of knowledge.” You’re constantly fighting the urge to explain everything, instead of leaving your audience with the one perfect thing they need to make a decision.

To learn more about crafting audience-centric communications, contact Founding Partner Tracy Lloyd.

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

Image credit: Getty Images

Personalization Can Drive Meaning For Brands

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

What helps create a truly meaningful brand? A flawlessly articulated purpose? A killer logo? A leadership team that really understands the value of brand? Complete internal alignment? Oftentimes, the interplay of many different brand elements work together to create cohesive and lasting meaning. But one element that is gaining value in the world of branding is personalization.

Right now, personalization is “in” with brands. Mass consumption and mass production are becoming things of the past. These days, brands that matter and resonate with people are the ones that feel like they’re authentically made and designed just for you. It’s the age of personalization.

In marketplaces crowded with new technologies, ripe with innovation, and full of competition, personalization has become one of the most important ways to differentiate. People crave connections, and brands that establish relationships and produce emotionally meaningful connections with their audiences stand out – and win.

Here are five ways brand personalization helps create meaning for brands and drives brand performance.

1. Product Customization

When people get to customize a product to perfectly fit their need, aesthetic, and lifestyle, the brand gains meaning because they play an active role. Customization increases feelings of uniqueness and individuality, while still allowing all the positive brand associations of brand belonging to arise. For instance, Nike ID allows shoppers to design their own shoes and feel as though they are stylists and designers themselves. The brand is flexible to each individual, while living up to their brand promise of inspiration and innovation. Customization allows brands to become ownable to their audience on an individual level.

2. Ease and Convenience

In the hectic lives of today’s consumers, time is a precious resource. People want to spend the least amount of time doing things that don’t matter to them so they can dedicate time to doing the things that do matter. People want brands that integrate into their established lifestyle with the minimal effort. For instance, some people choose to do all their grocery shopping online in five minutes via apps like Instacart vs. spending hours at 3 different grocery stores. Other brands focus on personalizing for your well-being by tracking eating, exercise, sleeping, and stress patterns on a single device. Adaptability is a huge component of personalization these days. Brands like the FitBit not only add ease to a user’s life, but adapt to their every move, and push them to make the changes needed to reach personal goals.

3. Cohesive Look and Feel

In order for a highly personalized brand to function, it has to have an especially cohesive look and feel that grounds the brand. Even though consumers can build their own, unique Nike shoes, all Nike products and brand experiences are still easily recognizable as Nike and branded this way. A strong brand logo is key to this. Oftentimes, established brands, such as Coca-Cola, can pull of fun personalization tactics (like writing names on their cans) and not run the risk of diluting their look and feel.

4. Social Buzz

Personalization campaigns can create a lot of buzz on social media. Because they are personal, people are more likely to share brand experiences on their personal pages. When people get socially engaged with a brand, the brand becomes even more integrated into their own personal brand, and also easily expands into their social network.

5. Handcrafted

In many ways, the trends of personalization are returning to previous times when tailors made clothes one by one. People want things that feel specifically produced for them. Take Harry’s razors for instance. Harry’s delivers their handcrafted razors in packaging that resembles old wood boxes. They are not only easy and convenient, but feel handmade. They feel indulgent in a way that says, “just for you”. People want brands that are making a positive impact in the world and that also make them feel special. Brands that can create products that feel handmade are able to create positive feelings towards the brand.

Personalization, if done right, can be a huge brand asset. It can create deeper meaning, brand relevance, and drive growth. Make sure that personalization is well-connected to your brand strategy so that all aspects of the product development, brand experience, and look and feel are tightly connected. Each brand should use personalization in a personalized way — one that lives up to the brand promise, and is tailored to the way their brand wants to make people feel.

Emotive Brand is a strategic branding agency.

Marketing Strategy That Fuels Growth

Posted on by Carol Emert

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More than ever, CMOs are being looked to as the primary growth drivers of their companies. But what if you seem to be doing everything right and growth is still falling short? You have a strong brand strategy in place, a good sales team, and your marketing strategy is being executed on time and on budget. What then?

Chances are good that, if you’re experiencing a disconnect like this, the problem lies in the connection between your brand and your target audience. You may be reaching them. But how successfully are you really connecting with them?

How can you identify the problem? And what can you do to nurture your target audience while giving your sales team the support they need to drive growth?

Marketing Strategy That Drives Growth

At Emotive Brand, we find that the diagnosis for this condition virtually always comes from the outside.

The area where insiders typically have the least insight is the hearts and minds of their target audiences, which are so easily obscured behind the company’s own view of where its value lies. Companies often also find it challenging to stay on top of new developments in communications when their core competencies lie elsewhere.

Cue your agency. It’s the agency’s job to:

  • Understand your brand, products, and services in a new and exciting way, through the eyes of the people who can make it grow.
  • Use customer, marketplace, brand, and contextual insights to define strategic shifts that will win them over.
  • Create the right message and present it creatively to get their attention and rekindle the connection.
  • Identify existing and emerging channels that will best support your message and resonate with your audiences.
  • Tie it all together in a marketing strategy that drives growth.

Rebooting Advertising and Marketing Strategy

We’ve been working with a Silicon Valley client whose technology is so smart it inspires us. This company has been in business 15 years. It has a crack product that’s unique in the market. The product should be selling itself.

But there’s a problem: the company has under-marketed both its brand and its product. Its sales are lackluster. We identified five primary marketing challenges:

  • Marketplace perceptions hadn’t kept up with the company, so potential customers had outdated ideas that needed to be overcome before they would even pay attention.
  • Its advertising and marketing communications were telling an old story that didn’t communicate the product differentiators and reinforced outdated perceptions.
  • Its communications style was out of date and disconnected from both the brand truths and its audiences.
  • The client was spending ad dollars against a broad target rather than an audience aligned to its sales target, wasting precious marketing dollars.

We dug into this project to understand the marketplace, the product, and the brand through the eyes of our client’s target audiences. And we transformed its marketing strategy with some fundamental shifts.

Aligning Marketing Strategy with Sales

First, we used creative and surprising ways to talk about the product in advertising. Solidly rooted in meaningful customer insights and up-to-date product truths, the creative is doing a great job at grabbing the attention of sales prospects. Fresh and resonant messaging and design are replacing apathy with interest and engagement.

We also employed account-based marketing (ABM), replacing the client’s broad advertising strategy with a personalized approach. We’re targeting the sales team’s hottest prospects, in the places where they are most likely to engage.

This more resonant, tailored messaging is reinvigorating the company’s sales as well as its brand, making it relevant again and helping nurture prospects who might have ignored a more general message.

If you need fresh ideas for connecting with your sales prospects instead of merely reaching them, Emotive Brand would like to connect with you.

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

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Emotive Brand Co-Founder on Evolving a Business and the Challenge of Change

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

A little over nine years ago, Bella Banbury and I started Emotive Brand on a bit of a whim. Now, almost 10 years later, we have 20 people in our company. We’re recognized as a top agency in the strategy and branding world. CEOs of companies seek us out to achieve transformative shifts in their business. People hire us because they’ve been reading our content for years. Agencies around the world cite our content as smart and forward thinking. We didn’t expect all of this. We just started our agency and that was that.

The cobbler’s children DO have shoes

As we reach our double-digits, we’re turning the tables. It’s time for us to do some reflection and strategy work of our own. So we’re putting ourselves through the very methodology we use with our clients and we’re eager to see what shakes out. Our agency has become the client.

The first feeling I had was, “Holy shit. This is tough!” It’s hard to face the realities of change and the future. It’s hard to decide what you want, where you want to be, and how you will get there. I have more empathy for our clients right now than I ever have.

Along this journey, I’ll be sharing some thoughts with you. We’ll no doubt glean new insights about ourselves, but also learn things that we want our clients to know, too. Here’s where I’m at 2 months in.

Change is hard

Until someone asks you to question some fundamental things about your business, you don’t know what ‘hard’ really means. I get it now. The rational brain wants to analyze. Look at the numbers. Understand the trends. For me, this is the easy part. The numbers don’t lie and it’s important to take the time to really understand what they are saying. So I naturally thought this was the end. I was ready to start making the change.

But even when the facts tell a very clear story, your emotions can stand in the way of change. Yes, I am talking about fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It’s easy to focus on the rational needs for change. I didn’t realize the major role emotions play in any change process. It’s human nature. If I felt this way, our clients for sure must feel the same way.

We talk a lot about empathy at Emotive Brand. This process we are undergoing is opening my eyes to what it takes to have the courage to initiate changes in your business. I see now that we also need to help our clients get through the emotional hurdles to change. We need to give them the time and the emotional support they need to evolve their business and themselves.

Being agile is not as easy as it appears

Our clients’ timelines are shrinking. They need their projects completed faster than seems reasonable. So we’ve adapted. We’ve created a methodology that is agile. We work in sprints. We’ve realized we can develop strategy and branding at a pace we never thought possible – and still deliver smart work. But, what is always interesting, is that when we hear our clients say “fast”, intentions don’t always equal reality. Working quickly isn’t just a challenge for us, it’s really difficult for our clients too. They struggle to meet their own high-pressured deadlines. In the end, it’s difficult for some of them to keep pace with our agency and our ability to move quickly.

So it was pretty funny when, during our first sprint on our own internal project, we ourselves got in the way of delivering on our own “agile” project. The second lesson learned: moving fast is hard. More than twice, we put our own strategy project on hold to focus on our clients’ strategy projects. It begs the question: “How do we help our clients do their job, meet their own business deadlines, and move their strategy project forward?”

We’ve created a process to help our clients understand the time they need to devote to work with us, from meetings and workshops, to rounds of review and circulating deliverables internally for approval. When we develop a project plan, we always ask our clients about major events in their world that may impact our work together. We know we can enable clients to move at the speed they want. It just takes time – devoted time. Wish we had taken our own advice on this one. Without a solid project plan in place, almost everything can stop it in its tracks.

Building alignment is personal

We know firsthand change is hard. And moving fast is not always easy. But how do we manage these speed bumps and, at the same time, align a leadership team around the difficult shifts that transformation requires? Iteration. Putting the cycles in. We’ll go backward and forward as much as is needed to build consensus. We work to ensure everyone feels that their voices were heard to reach agreement and, ultimately, alignment.

How? We’ve developed frameworks that surface up gaps in alignment and facilitate discussions to hammer things out. This allows us to appeal to individual personalities and ensure people are truly honest with their feelings and opinions. We’ve excelled at doing this with our clients. In fact, we’ve built our reputation and agency on this activity.

But, again, it was much harder to do for ourselves. While tools and frameworks help facilitate available options and reinforce smart strategy, they don’t take into account the human side. People process things differently and at different speeds. They require different ways to evaluate options and opportunities. Sometimes their role in the organization can create blind spots. And people in different roles can easily view things through a siloed lens.

Only when we acknowledge these lenses and map personal roles back up the organization’s overall needs can we facilitate the group and reach full alignment. Without the alignment of a leadership team, there’s nothing. No moving forward. No change. And no successful transformation.

Strategy and branding moving forward

As we look to evolve our own agency, I’ll keep you updated on our progress. I’ll share what I learn and how that affects the experience, tools, and processes we use in the future with our clients. What we do for our clients is hard work. But now we know firsthand what the struggles our clients endure feel like. And I’m trying to use this experience to do better, be better, and deliver better on behalf of our clients.

Stay tuned.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco strategy and branding agency.

Positioning Strategy for High-Growth Tech Companies

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

High-Tech Companies Have Banished the Word Brand Strategy

I’m not sure when it happened. I only know it has. Brand strategy is no longer something the tech world is asking for. Well, let me be clear, they are still asking for it, they just aren’t using the term brand strategy. Positioning strategy is the new brand strategy, at least for high-growth companies where time is of the essence.

I’ve felt the shift first hand. As a co-founder of an agency, I’m the person who takes the incoming calls from prospects looking for an agency. It used to be that I would patiently listen for the words “brand strategy” to qualify a prospect. But over the past three years, I’ve heard that term less and less. Instead, prospects are using other terms to describe their most pressing business problems. It just took me a while to really understand what was happening and why.

The Factors I See at Play in a Desire for Positioning Strategy

1. Agile has become a way of doing business. Marketers need things fast. They want quick wins as they look to test new ideas in the market, prove that they work, and implement them quickly and successfully.

2. Competition in technology has never been as fierce as it is now. The rate of disruption and innovation that is happening is amazing. But with that comes the difficulty of keeping pace. It comes down to differentiating, getting to market first, and, if you make it, staying ahead.

3. Data drives everything. If you can’t prove a project has a strong ROI, it won’t happen. Iterating and testing strategy and ideas has never been more important. There is no harder role than being a CMO right now. And any CMO or marketer in today’s world needs to prove a strong ROI in the work they are doing, especially when outsourcing to an agency.

4. Valuation is critical to any high-growth company. Being in the wrong category can derail even the best tech company from achieving their vision of a successful exit. This is top priority for almost any high-growth business, whether it’s a startup or a publicly-traded technology company.

5. Positioning has never been so top of mind for leadership teams. It is where the rubber hits the road. Every successful brand needs to be strongly positioned in the market to thrive.

6. Strategy is no longer enough to shift a business or brand. Marketers are looking for strategy AND the assets needed to implement in market ASAP. They just don’t have the team or the time to figure it out internally. They need both strategy and activation.

These are the factors that have shifted the landscape of what leadership teams and marketers are looking for to help their business thrive, to help their brand be more meaningful, to hire and retain top talent, and to realize their purpose and vision.

What are high-growth businesses looking for today?

High-growth businesses are looking for ways to make the biggest impact in the shortest amount of time. It’s about strategies  to help scale their business. Quick wins that can prove ROI for larger investment. And strategies gain better valuations. They are looking for the magic bullet.

I believe that in B2B and high-tech, brand strategy has now become the following things:

  • Defining the right category – developing a new one or moving to a different one
  • Positioning Strategy to ensure you are perceived in the right space, associated with the right competitors, envisioned by your target audience in the right ways
  • Creating a narrative to align your corporate strategy, vision, and why you matter to all of your stakeholders, internal and external
  • Messaging that resonates, that blends the rational and emotional in ways that differentiate and support both marketing and sales teams as they drive revenue and build brand
  • Websites that deliver the value proposition, convert leads, articulate the story, differentiate, and help any prospective buyer or employee see why you matter

Positioning Strategy

So, while marketers are not asking for brand strategy in the way they used to, they are still asking for it. In many ways it’s easier because they are asking for it in ways that address their most pressing business issues. Demanding it in sprints, delivered in ways that are actionable. They need strategy and the tools to launch that strategy in market, but it is still brand strategy.

It doesn’t matter what terminology is being used it. Whether it’s brand strategy or a small component of it, being a good partner is being able to adjust to the needs of prospects – meeting them where they are at, delivering what will impact their business. When they win, so do we.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco strategy firm.

Naming a New Brand Category is Harder Than it Looks

Posted on by Paige Lansing Valle

Failed category labels are laughable. Before there were snowboards, there was snurfers. PDA phones preempted smartphones. Charga-plates rolled out before credit cards took their place. It seems obvious now why each current category name is so much stronger than its predecessor. But missing the mark with category naming is a mistake that’s easy to make.

In our last post about how to define a new category, we left off with what is most commonly considered the fun part of strategy: naming. If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve identified that your existing category isn’t serving your brand’s needs. You’re ready to make a shift and have accepted the risk of creating a new category. And, you’ve appropriated the time and budget necessary to do so.

What’s in a name?

Category names make it easy for people to familiarize themselves with products and brands. They help people make choices and create loyalty. They set expectations about why brands belong. When a category name resonates, it paves the way for brands to develop meaningful connections with people.

When developing a new category, it’s tempting to come up with a catchy, quirky, or unique category name. Everyone wants to differentiate and make a mark. It can seem, understandably, that developing a category name that grabs attention will help your brand stand out too. But that’s not the case. Names that aren’t recognizable create confusion and uncertainty for customers. When the category name isn’t immediately clear, the brands and products it represents become muddied in those waters.

As we described in a previous post, people need context to grab onto something new. The framework your category creates sets the stage for your innovative product to become the category leader. But that also depends on the name being something that people understand without explanation. What the heck is a snurfer? No one knew. But snowboard is easy. Anyone who surfs or skates immediately gets it. And, it was no coincidence that when Burton coined “snowboard” they were going after surfers and skaters as a target audience.

Simplicity is Key

When it’s time to create your new category name, choose one that’s simple and recognizable. There are a few ways to go about it:

  • Two Known Words: Credit Card, Data Center, Sports Drink
  • Compound Name: Automobile, Bicycle, Laptop
  • Derive a New Word from an Existing Word: Browser, E-commerce

The timing of a category launch should influence which direction the name should go. If your product is truly innovative — with nothing on the market that compares — the category name should be a riff off an existing product. In this case, using two known words or joining them into one would be ideal. But if your brand is joining a group of products that are currently on the market, the category should confirm and validate behavior (people were already browsing the internet so coining ‘browser’ made sense).

When there isn’t a dominant category name, different labels make it difficult for any brand to gain traction. Most people stay within a comfort zone and too many options lead people to ignore the category all together. A name represents the ‘rules of membership’ — the specific characteristics that the products within the category must have in order to belong to the category. Once a name achieves dominance, people know what to expect and the brands within its umbrella follow suit. In our next post on defining a category, we’ll share tips on how to get buy-in on your new category name with important users, innovators, and industry commentators to help ensure a successful roll-out.

This is the 3rd in a series. Check out When to Create a New Brand Category, How to Create a New Brand Category, and what goes into Launching a New Brand Category.

Download our White Paper on Brand Category Creation.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy firm.