Blog
The Evolving Role of the CMO: Chief Alignment Officer
No role in an organization has evolved more rapidly than the CMO’s. It used to be that owning branding, communications, and campaigns defined the job. Now, CMOs need to be experts on customers, marketing tools and advanced analytics,and business strategy. Brand management remains an essential duty, but in service of driving business growth. Most importantly, because a CMO’s work connects directly to sales, product development, IT, finance, and other parts of the organization, CMOs find themselves needing to play a growing role in aligning their organization around new ways of thinking and...
Read more >The Engine of Productivity: Wellness in the Workplace
How we define the workplace has changed radically over the last few years. Offices no longer represent the primary workplace, and remote and hybrid modes of working are becoming the norm rather than the exception. And this has greatly disrupted the way we work. The “office rhythm” is out the door when you’re zooming with people three time zones away one minute, taking a call from the car while you drive your kids to school the next, and collaborating with colleagues face-to-face once or twice a week. It’s hard to connect. Hard to disconnect. And it’s hard to orient yourself in a...
Read more >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...
Read more >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...
Read more >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...
Read more >Q&A with Sarah Cincotta of Aperian About Rethinking the Brand of a DEI Pioneer
As the DEI category grows larger and new entrants fight for attention, it can be hard for companies to identify the right partner for their journey of creating an inclusive workplace. Founded in 1991, Aperian is a pioneer in helping organizations develop culturally diverse teams that deliver measurable value. Trusted by over half of the Fortune Global 100, their experience serving over three million learners has driven their evolution into a data-driven, product-led company. Emotive worked with the Aperian leadership team to redefine the company’s brand as it embraced a new strategy,...
Read more >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...
Read more >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...
Read more >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...
Read more >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...
Read more >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...
Read more >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...
Read more >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...
Read more >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...
Read more >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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