Blog
The Art of Swift, Smart Decision Making in Business
Too Many Choices Business leaders can be gun-shy about making decisions – big and small, important and minute –when it comes to both their business and their brand. The abundance of scenarios about the unknown can easily feel overwhelming. But effective leadership hinges on effective decision making. And it’s impossible to choose a direction when you’re trying to please everyone and do everything. To Compete, You Have to Decide At the end of the day, there’s no room or time for slow decision making in today’s competitive, fast-paced landscape. In fact, businesses and brands in every industry...
Read more >
Six Secrets of Thriving Brands
This is the second post in our “Brand Strategy 101” series. Last time, we discussed why a brand is so difficult to define. While a brand might mean different things to different people and different businesses, at Emotive Brand, we think of brand as a driver of business. When a brand connects with the people who matter to your business, the business is positioned to thrive. But, for a brand to connect with people, some important factors come into play. We have identified six of the most powerful attributes that thriving brands and businesses have in common: 1. Meaning Every moment a brand...
Read more >
Moving from B2B to B4B: A New Code for B2B Brands
Could a subtle change in the way you think increase your potential as a B2B brand? For example, consider the difference between business-to-business (B2B) and business-for-business (B4B). B2B: Business-to-business suggests two separate and different entities, one “selling” to the other. B4B: Business-for-business suggests many companies in a value chain working toward a common goal of ever-greater end-customer satisfaction. A shift to a B4B stance means making your brand known as one that embraces the shared interests of all the businesses and people who will benefit from a stronger and more...
Read more >
The Value of Questioning in Business
Questions for your business We’ve been reading Warren Berger’s fascinating book, “A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas”. The book’s basic premise is that we simply don’t ask enough questions these days. As youngsters, we were full of questions, but as we mature many of us lose this vital skill (while those who retain it become stellar innovators and leaders). “A More Beautiful Question” is a helpful guide to developing a more question-based approach to life, society, and business. It explores a flow of questioning from “Why?” to “What if?” to “How?”,...
Read more >
A Learning Culture Can Bring New Value to your Business
Expertise in Learning? Starting a new job or entering a new industry always entails a learning curve. People understand they have to learn quickly in order to survive. It’s the key to their success. When people work closely in a business or specific industry, as experience builds and time accumulates they often forget this sense of voracious learning. It becomes more and more difficult to see things in a new light. And some top leaders are stuck thinking in a silo. Some call this ‘the paradox of expertise.’ As expertise increases, people struggle to notice possibilities, discern novel...
Read more >
Product Design and Brand Strategy?
Product Design and Brand Strategy? Too often marketers and product developers don’t see the connection between product design and brand strategy. We’ve noticed this trend, especially with technology companies. Products can suffer growing pains if they are conceived, gestated, and born into the world without the guiding hand of the brand. On the flipside, brand strategy can have an enormously reassuring influence on the design of a product. In fact, our brand strategies exert positive influences on the product designs of most of our clients, in direct and indirect ways. Here’s how....
Read more >
Your Business Issues Just Might Have A Brand Solution
Top-of-Mind Business Issues for the C-Suite When you spend a lot of time working with people in the C-suite, you’re exposed to C-sized business issues. And those larger strategic problems can’t be solved by the CEO alone, or often times by existing resources. When changes in your industry push you to shift business strategy, it’s a sign that your brand strategy needs to shift in a synchronized way in order to reposition for success. We’ve surveyed C-level executives about the number one desire they have for their brand strategy. Know what they want? Differentiation. A competitive advantage....
Read more >
Why Bring in an Outside Branding Agency?
In-House Mentality The age old question of determining if you need to bring in an external branding agency is still relevant today. Whether it’s because of tight budgets, a hesitation about letting outsiders inside your business, or a general ‘we can just do it ourselves’ mentality, many companies look internally to tackle even their largest branding projects. But whether it’s a repositioning, a new visual identity, or an all-around brand turnaround, this might be a mistake for businesses who really want to position themselves to thrive in a fast-paced, highly-competitive market. What Value...
Read more >
Readying Your Marketing Budget
For most companies, Q4 is a time of strategic planning and where every CMO and VP of Marketing prepares for marketing budget planning for the upcoming year. Questions You Want to be Asking It’s important for businesses to start the new year with a strategic framework that sets them up for success. Look beyond your marketing department for alignment within the rest of your organization to help refine and define your marketing objectives for planning purposes. What are the strategic initiatives for your business? What are your top marketing priorities from these strategic initiatives? What mix...
Read more >
Why Purpose-Led Brands Drive Business Results
At Emotive Brand, we believe that the root of many business problems is the gap between what the business requires (results) and what people desire (meaning). So when your brand matters to people, they are more likely to do what your brand needs them to do. Operating as a purpose-led brand, business issues become less of an issue because meaning drives results. Emotive Branding: A Bridge Through emotive branding, you build a bridge across that gap between results and meaning. And by better balancing the “give and take” of your relationships with people, they are more likely to be open to...
Read more >
Purpose-led: The Never-Ending Market for Something to Believe In
Purpose-led branding is hot topic in 2016. Cartoonist Hugh McLeod addresses this topic in his post, “Meaning Scales, People Don’t”. By this he means that the size of an endeavor doesn’t matter as much as how meaningful it becomes to you. This is a reminder to purpose-led brands that they don’t have to be the complete answer to everyone’s problems. They simply need to ensure that the small, modest and in-the-scheme-of-things, insignificant things they may do for people should resonate with as much meaning as possible. If you want your purpose-led brand to...
Read more >
Why Embrace The Squishy Idea Of Purpose?
Purpose does more than make brands appealing to people – it makes money for the businesses that embrace the concept. So claims the chairman of Deloitte, an active evangelist for the “squishy business attribute” called purpose. Why invest in an emotional and squishy idea like purpose? Won’t it be hard to get everyone in my organization and all my customers to understand and embrace it? What is it really beyond a set of words? What value does brand strategy deliver? It’s the question of the never-relenting ROI monster, “What’s in it for me?” Well, here’s the answer, from no one less than the...
Read more >
Why Good Listening Matters in Business
Listen Up There are a lot of differing opinions about what good listening really means, let alone what it can do for your business. In one camp, good listening simply means not speaking over others when they are talking. While others think listening is about verbal acknowledgement. And there are those who wait until the speaker is done, then promptly repeat everything back to them. But are any of these really impactful, productive ways of listening? Falling Short This kind of one-dimensional listening falls short for many reasons. It isn’t what great listeners are actually...
Read more >
Use Your Brand to Cultivate Customer Engagement and Reap the ROI
Customer Engagement, More Complicated Than That When it comes to customer engagement, not all engagement is created equal. And despite some misconceptions, engagement is never a simple question of engaged vs. unengaged. In fact, customer engagement can’t be dictated by a single engaged or unengaged behavior. Understanding the value of a customer’s engagement can’t be boiled down to a ‘like’ or a single purchase. We define customer engagement as a set of behaviors. This means customer engagement is about the relationship between a customer. So when fostered, the relationship can progress,...
Read more >
Why the Best Brands Act Like Tech Companies
Everyone’s in Tech Today, it’s not a question of tech vs. non-tech. At the end of the day, every company is a technology company. This means it’s time to throw away preconceived notions about what tech companies are, what they do, or where they do it. Technology companies don’t only thrive in Silicon Valley. Technology companies aren’t all as big as Google. In fact, you don’t even need to sell technology to be a technology company. It’s not always about the product. It’s about how you do business, how you compete, and how you offer the most meaningful value to customers. It’s about...
Read more >