Topics

Blog Posts by Carol Emert


Your Startup’s Growth Strategy Starts with Brand Strategy

Your Startup’s Growth Strategy Starts with Brand Strategy

You’re running a startup. When should you invest in brand strategy? Put another way, when do you need to grow? When do you need to acquire new customers, build your culture and recruit the right people? For a startup whose primary job is growth, brand strategy can be a critical tool. So the answer to the question about when you need brand strategy is: Not at the very beginning, but probably earlier than you think. We recently branded a stealth-mode software startup whose CEO is a highly successful serial entrepreneur. He has worked with Emotive Brand several times. This time, he brought us...
Read more >

Emotive Brand’s Take on the iPhone X Design: Color Us Skeptical

Emotive Brand’s Take on the iPhone X Design: Color Us Skeptical

iPhone X: Revolutionary or Not We’re a design studio, so it’s a given that Emotive Brand people are Apple fanboys. We followed the iPhone X launch enthusiastically and our collective hearts beat a little faster when Tim Cook announced the most revolutionary new product since the first iPhone hit the market. But as iPhone X’s new features were revealed, the collective air went out of the team — not just for the product, but also a bit for the Apple brand. The product definitely struck us as evolutionary, not revolutionary. And a brand that is beloved for over-delivering needs to be...
Read more >

Why It’s Frickin’ Hard for Organizations to Brand Themselves

Why It’s Frickin’ Hard for Organizations to Brand Themselves

The need for a branding agency is hard to determine sometimes. Many of Emotive Brand’s clients come to us after failed attempts to develop their own brand strategy. Just last week, a client sent us some themes they’d identified in an internal brand survey, along with a frustrated note: “We’ve gotten this far. We’re stuck. Can you help?” Why is it so hard for organizations to brand themselves from the inside? Aren’t the people who live and breathe a brand every day the most obvious choice to articulate it? That’s a logical conclusion, and clients who have tried often feel frustrated that they...
Read more >

Feel the “Good Burn” of a Strategy that Surprises

Feel the “Good Burn” of a Strategy that Surprises

Get out of Your Comfort Zone How do you feel about the brand strategies your agency is producing? Good? Comfortable? If that’s the case, those strategies may not be doing as much for you as they can. Staying in your comfort zone strategically is about as impactful as staying in your comfort zone at the gym. If excellence is your aim, you’ll only get there by feeling the burn. Of course, a bad strategy will make you uncomfortable too. So how do you know when a strategy is pushing your brand uncomfortably toward excellence? Here Are Three Components of a Feel-The-Burn Strategy: 1. Information...
Read more >