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Challenger Brands: B2B Challengers

Posted on by Emotive Brand

Continuing the Challenge

This post is the second in our three-part series on challenger brands. You can read part one, “Challenger Brands: A Primer,” right here.

Previously, we spoke about adopting a challenger mindset. It’s one defined by ambition, agility, and a willingness to take risks. Most importantly, we noted how businesses are no longer competing against each other – they are competing against the category they are in and the expectations of what a customer experience feels like.

At a glance, these personality traits naturally lend themselves to the B2C world. Ask anyone to rattle off a few challenger brands and you’ll invariably get the same answers: Uber, Netflix, Spotify, Airbnb—and it makes sense. When you’re trying to rewire people’s preconceived notions, B2C is, by definition, the shortest path to the customer.

But it is by no means the only path. The worlds of B2B and B2B2C are being transformed by challenger brands. Just look at ZipRecruiter, Zoom, Slack, or even Salesforce. If you can’t see it on the surface, it’s most likely occurring behind the scenes in their business strategy.

B2B Challengers

Founder of 500 Startups, Dave McClure, notes that 

“The next bubble is not in tech where innovation and capital are never in short supply. Rather, the real bubble is in far-too-generous P/E multiples and valuations of global public companies, whose business models are being obliterated by startups and improved by orders of magnitude. As more Fortune 500 CEOs recognize and admit their vulnerability to disruption, expect them to hedge their own public valuations by buying the very same unicorns that keep up awake at night.”

Many legacy B2B companies end up following a similar lifecycle. They start off small and hungry, build a legacy off of their early innovations, ride the wave for as long as possible, then go out and acquire innovation when they start to stagnate. The daily churn of operating a business makes it very difficult to ignite the same innovation that got you started. So, you import. To be clear, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But it’s a strategy that ultimately puts your future in the hands of other creators.

Homegrown Innovation

Regardless of size, if B2B brands want to truly adopt a challenger mindset, they need to take active steps to continually foster their own innovation. Famously, Google has a 20% rule. Implemented by Google Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 2004, it’s designed to give employees one full day per week to work on a Google-related passion project of their choosing or creation. It’s the same strategy that created Gmail, Google Maps, Google Talk, Google News, AdSense, and many others.

The point being, words like agile and innovative don’t have to be words that are only synonymous with startups. B2B companies can instill a challenger’s sense of agility through the behaviors and culture they nurture. If you’re wondering how a B2B brand knows if it should adopt a challenger mindset, there’s a wonderful diagram created by Michael Hay, a business leader with fifteen years at IKEA, that can help. Outlining four essentials for driving a successful change of strategy, it acts as a checklist for recognizing and delivering change.

need for change

Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal

At the end of the day, there are many lessons that B2B brands can steal from the challenger world. Are you leading with a strong story that unequivocally answers the question, “Why do you do what you do?” More than meet a singular need, are you meeting the needs of today and tomorrow better than anyone else? Are you talking with lead adopters at the front of the innovation curve and making them evangelists for your brand?

Perhaps the most important lesson that B2B brands can glean is in how they hire. As Adam Morgan writes,

“Employees at challenger brands require different qualities. They need to be mission-driven. They need to know why they get out of bed and go to work every morning and they need to be passionate about the problems the company is trying to solve. Being a maverick is also of far greater importance at a challenger, the opposite of at a larger organization where dissent is considered a flaw. Employees need to ask the provocative questions and not just take risks themselves, but also to be tolerant of risks that others might take.”

To learn more about how your B2B brand can benefit from adopting a challenger mindset, contact Tracy Lloyd at [email protected].

To finish reading our three-part challenger series, check out: Part Three—Challenger Brands: Design that Disrupts

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

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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Let’s Get Political: Can Brands Stand for More Than Profit?

Posted on by Chris Ames

These days, when you see a brand trending on Twitter, it can only mean one thing: they got political.

Brands aligning themselves with a cause is no new thing, but there’s something about the social media age that makes it electric. Even a low-risk cause, like suggesting that men should aim to be the best versions of themselves, is enough to start hashtag boycotts and video challenges of people destroying their own property. For better or worse, we’re in an era where if people don’t like a particular cause you’ve supported, they will actively search and destroy your ad partnerships. The modern relationship between brands and politics is super interesting, and has led me to the following three questions.

1. Why do people respond so emotionally to brands?
2. Can brands stand for more than profit?
3. If you’re going to get political, how do you do it in a way that feels authentic?

Millennial Marketing and Brand Democracy

As an agency that specializes in emotion, it’s been fascinating to watch the increasingly volatile connection between brands and people. Nearly two-thirds of consumers around the world will buy or boycott a brand solely because of its position on a social or political issue according to the 2018 Edelman Earned Brand study, a staggering increase of 13 points from last year.

I believe this trend is a result of two main forces in the market, the first being the rise of purpose-driven, mission-led marketing that uses storytelling to create strong emotional ties to their products. Especially in the last ten years, brands have fully leaned into the power of narrative and its ability to win customers. Here’s a winning formula that’s being constantly replicated: take something banal, give it gorgeous design and a strong backstory, deliver it straight to your customers, and donate a fraction of the proceeds to a charitable cause. It works for anything: toilet paper, shoes, socks, glasses, you name it.

This dynamic transforms marketing from function to aspiration. All of these products – once thought strictly utilitarian – are now narrative-filled objects that reflect on the buyer’s own personal brand. When there is all this meaning and identity and personality baked into the brands you interact with, no wonder it feels like such a betrayal when they support something you disagree with. That volatility is not necessarily a bad thing. If anything, it’s a use case for the power of branding. If you can find a way to wield that emotion, you’ll have a sea of loyal customers. At least, until they disagree with you.

The other force, in my opinion, is a shift in the power dynamic between big government and private business. Another key finding from the Edelman report is that nearly half of all consumers believe that brands have better ideas for solving our country’s problems than the government. Here’s what Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman, had to say about what are now known as “belief-driven buyers.”

“This is the birth of Brand Democracy; as consumers are electing brands as their change agents. Brands are now being pushed to go beyond their classic business interests to become advocates. It is a new relationship between company and consumer, where purchase is premised on the brand’s willingness to live its values, act with purpose, and if necessary, make the leap into activism.”

Can Brands Stand for More Than Just Profit?

Let’s get this straight: businesses want to make money. That’s the engine behind every action they take. Sometimes, that engine can be steered in a direction of social progress, but it is still fueled by profit.

Nike had the most controversial ad campaign of last year. Colin Kaepernick’s “Just Do It” ad, which bears the slogan “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything,” seemed to be the most politically divisive campaign in the company’s history. It was praised by the left for shining a light on police brutality and racial injustice. Sales at Nike not only increased, they skyrocketed.  “Nike’s stock recently hit an all-time high and has gone up nearly five percent since the Kaepernick ads launched in early September,” reports Yahoo Sports. “That translates to an additional $6 billion in market value.”

But as writer Joshua Hunter brilliantly put in his piece for the Atlantic, Nike’s cause is simply good business. “One of capitalism’s most enduring myths is the idea that there are good corporations and bad corporations,” he says. “The truth is far more simple: Colin Kaepernick has a dream, and selling dreams is Nike’s business.”

At the end of the day, Nike still does business with the NFL, which has done its best to stifle Kaepernick’s protest movement. Is that hypocritical? Is that calculated risk management? And if you’re a brand looking to get political, how do you do it in a genuine, authentic way that won’t bite you later on?

What You Make and What You Care About

Here’s an exercise I think is useful: create a Venn Diagram that plots out what you make and what you care about. Where brands get into trouble is when these are two completely separate circles. You end up with soda companies thinking they can solve racism, or this hilarious skit about Cheetos from SNL. The distance between what you’re making and the difference you’re looking to make can’t be too far. If it is, you look like an emotional tourist.

Look at Gillette. The new ad “We Believe” – a 48-second spot that plays on the company’s tagline of “Is this the best a man can get?” – addresses issues like bullying, sexual harassment, and the #MeToo movement. Does this pass the test? Well, they make shaving razors, probably the first object I would suggest for something representative of traditional masculinity. And since 1989, they have been using their tagline to offer an idea of what it means to be a man. For them to have an opinion on the changing roles of men is completely within their wheelhouse.

For a data-centric spin on political messaging, look at the way Netflix has positioned its popularity as a unifying force to break down barriers. “We All Have Six Shows In Common” is an innovative ad that claims any two Netflix members, anywhere in the world will share an average of six shows in common. The brilliant thing about this spot – and the reason it avoids the mistakes of Pepsi – is that it says so much without saying anything. All of the dialogue comes from the Netflix shows themselves, with reactions from a diverse and inclusive viewing public. They don’t have to say, “Streaming television will solve bigotry.” They simply show us a common point of connection and let us draw the conclusions.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s travel ban, Airbnb took a more direct political approach with their “We Accept” ad. “We believe no matter who you are, where you’re from, who you love, or who you worship, we all belong,” they say. “The world is more beautiful the more you accept.”

Do we buy it? Well, they created an entire platform on the belief that you should be able to find a place anywhere in the world that feels like home. Their technology is built on genuine human-to-human connection and a desire to expand your perspective through travel. It makes sense.

Is It Worth the Risk?

In a conversation on big brands and political activism, marketers believed taking a political stance:

  1. Shows their company cares about more than making profits (75.8%)
  2. Has a positive effect on the company’s ability to attract and retain customers and partners (69.7%)
  3. Bolsters the company’s ability to attract and retain employees (69.7%)
  4. Boosts the company’s ability to stand out in the market (51.5%)

We know that politics are messy. You risk alienating your audience if you back a cause they don’t believe in. But the truth is, whether or not they want the responsibility, brands are powerful vehicles of meaning in our world. If they choose to do so, brands can act as cultural agents that can shape commerce and community life. Companies put their products out into the world every day. The real question is, what do they want that world to look like?

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