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Creating a brand that resonates: 3 Grammy-worthy lessons from Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.”

Creating a brand that resonates: 3 Grammy-worthy lessons from Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.”

Is your brand telling a story for now or a story forever? Take a lesson from pop music and learn how to create a brand that lets your customers feel like they “can be someone.” Imagine a slightly different 2024 Grammy Awards. In this one, there’s still a comeback performance from a reclusive 1980s star, but instead of Tracy Chapman singing “Fast Car” alongside Luke Combs, it’s Billy Ocean singing “Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car.” Can you picture Taylor Swift singing along rapturously to his lyric: “Lady driver, let me take the wheel”? Probably not, but why? Both “Fast Car,” and...
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The No Predictions Blog Post for 2024

The No Predictions Blog Post for 2024

Welcome to 2024. Have you already been bombarded with every person on LinkedIn’s latest and greatest predictions? The blog post titles can practically write themselves at this point. Artificial Intelligence: Everything You Need to Know in 2024, 10 Predictions for MarTech in 2024, What to Watch for in Social Media in 2024, and our personal favorite (and actual title), What’s Ahead in 2024? The Cookie Cutters May Tell! Well, here’s some good news. We’re not here to add to the predictive noise by adding our own set of predictions for branding. Nope, we’re not going to do it. And this is why. As...
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Rebranding in 2024? Move fast to go slow.

Rebranding in 2024? Move fast to go slow.

As 2023 winds down, odds are you’ve already set your goals for 2024 and are taking these last couple of weeks to tie up loose ends and get ready to take a running leap into Q1. But before you turn out the lights on the year, we have one piece of advice: if a rebrand is something you’re considering before the end of Q2, the time to start is now. “Starting now” doesn’t mean kicking off the project. But it does mean you need to socialize the endeavor with your leadership team, clarify the goals, secure budget, identify internal teams and resources, define the brief or create an RFP, find the...
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Welcome to the Generative Generation

Welcome to the Generative Generation

Generative AI is all the rage these days. While it feels like something brand new, this technology has been in the works since machine learning’s generative models emerged in the late 2000s. The use of advanced mathematics to generate content has always been part and parcel of a developer’s mindset, but the tools weren’t widely available. Now, the doors to Generative AI have blown wide open with ChatGPT, Midjourny, DALL-E, Adobe Firefly, AlphaCode, Bard, and GrammarlyGO, among others, and Apple’s impending release of Ajax that will no doubt inspire the cherubs to blow their horns and...
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Q&A with Eric Futoran of Embrace about Building a Brand to Lead the Mobile Revolution

Q&A with Eric Futoran of Embrace about Building a Brand to Lead the Mobile Revolution

Embrace is a company dedicated to unlocking the potential of mobile technology. As companies envision new ways that mobile can transform the ways people live, work, and play, they are asking their mobile teams to deliver mission-critical experiences that are increasingly bold and ambitious. Developers need help managing the growing complexity of what they build—so they can dream bigger about the role mobile plays in their future—which is what Embrace helps them do. Emotive worked with Embrace Co-Founder and CEO Eric Futoran and his team to redefine their brand and align their organization on...
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Business and Brand Strategy: Separated at Birth

Business and Brand Strategy: Separated at Birth

Peanut butter and jelly. Abbott and Costello. Disco and dancing. Some things in this world simply go together. So why is it that business strategy and brand strategy don’t always get invited to the same parties? Growth is the Goal We’ve written a lot about the importance of aligning business and brand strategy. Leaders intellectually get this, but many organizations fall into ways of working where business and brand strategy represent two different schools of thought. Delivering on financial goals (business) versus understanding customers and their needs (brand). Defining winning through the...
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Market Insights That Come from the Heart

Market Insights That Come from the Heart

Asking different questions can reveal new insights about your market. No matter what your company sells, the markets where you operate change constantly. One day the sun is (metaphorically) shining, and the next day a tanker gets stuck in a canal, there’s a virus outbreak, a prominent bank fails, a fragile aging musician opens fire on a twelve-pack of beer, or some other event happens to change our collective outlook. Reading the tea leaves of market dynamics is both art and science. There is no shortage of brilliant people putting advanced technology to work to uncover patterns and make...
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Infusing a brand with big heart begins with big thinking: How small design cues can generate great big feels

Infusing a brand with big heart begins with big thinking: How small design cues can generate great big feels

“We need to make our brand feel human. It needs to reflect our people and our customers. We need to tell a human, emotive story.” This is how a lot of our conversations about brand design begin. If we were designing for packaged goods that sit on a shelf and give people a tangible representation of your brand, we’d have a well defined experience to address. But most of our work takes place behind the scenes in the B2B and tech space. There are no shelves or stores mediating the process, no physical objects or packaging. There’s sparse or no direct interaction with the end-user. And the...
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Leading With Beautiful Questions

Leading With Beautiful Questions

Many years ago, we got inspired by Warren Berger’s book, “A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas.” The basic premise of the book and the post we wrote at the time was that leaders simply don’t ask enough questions when they bump up against uncertainty. Since then, two things have happened. Mr. Berger wrote another book tying the art of inquiry to generating breakthrough ideas (which we all need today), and the world has started to get wobbly. Every leader we work with and talk to is grappling with the issue of how to drive growth in uncertain times. And...
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How Do You Orient Your Team When Everything Seems Uncertain?

How Do You Orient Your Team When Everything Seems Uncertain?

The old axiom about uncertainty being the only certainty in business seems quaint given today’s headlines: Historically low unemployment. Hiring shortages one day and hiring freezes the next. Creeping inflation. Shaky markets. Unexpected layoffs. It’s whiplash inducing. And it’s the world we live in. As the economy shifts and shudders, leaders are challenged to make strategic decisions with increasingly limited foresight. And employees? They’re left feeling disoriented, confused, and vulnerable. It’s a recipe for getting stuck. People become less willing to make mistakes, to stick their...
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Telling Your Story of Growth: The Power of a Strategic Narrative

Telling Your Story of Growth: The Power of a Strategic Narrative

One of the most important goals of a brand is to drive growth. Focusing a start-up on carving out market share. Positioning a fast-growing tech company to lead its category. Providing a foundation for product or portfolio innovation as a company seeks to reach new audiences. Or helping a global corporation expand its footprint into new geographies. Whatever your aim, brand can accelerate results. But one of the biggest (missed) brand opportunities is engaging individuals in your organization to see their role in creating the future. When growth is a generic goal, people can assume that...
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How Do You Orient Your Team When Everything Seems Uncertain?

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

How Do You Get Your Team Excited About an Uncertain Future? The old axiom about uncertainty being the only certainty in business seems quaint given today’s headlines: Historically low unemployment. Hiring shortages one day and hiring freezes the next. Creeping inflation. Unexpected layoffs. It’s whiplash inducing. And it’s the world we live in. As the economy shifts and shudders, leaders are challenged to make strategic decisions with increasingly limited foresight. And employees? They’re left feeling disoriented, confused, and vulnerable. It’s a recipe for getting stuck. People become less...
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A New Offering from Emotive: A Six-Week Diagnostic Engagement

    It’s a new year. Hopes are high, goals lofty, and expectations never greater. Is your team aligned with your vision? Are employees ready to execute as you hope they will? Are customers clear about who you are and what you can do for them? Let us help you find out with a six-week engagement conducted through the lens of brand, to assess emotional alignment across your leadership, employees and customers.      What we can do Assess alignment across a leadership team and identify areas for reconciliation Determine how employees are feeling about the company and the...
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Maintaining Brand Focus in December 2022: Some Brass Tacks Advice.

Maintaining Brand Focus in December 2022: Some Brass Tacks Advice.

The economy is shaky. Inflation is looming. A recession in late 2023 is a real possibility. Like the CEOs of the largest global companies, we’re concerned but not panicked. We’ve seen this movie before. And we have a few thoughts on how to keep the doom and gloom at bay.  Don’t abandon ship. This one’s a no-brainer. Brand-building has an outsized impact during uncertain times because people need brands that speak to their emotions. They need companions on the journey ahead. It doesn’t feel good when your companion goes quiet during tough times, and the same follows for your brand. Now is a...
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