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Six Steps to Improving Brand Behavior

Six Steps to Improving Brand Behavior

On Your Best Brand Behavior Whether it’s B2B or B2C, brands need to be on their best behavior at all times. There’s nowhere to hide in this digital world when a brand misbehaves. A poor customer service experience, an offensive remark from a CEO, a bad workplace reputation, a lack of transparency, or lies, are types of brand behavior that create a lasting (and widespread) impression. When business suffers, often, a business can trace it back to a misstep in the brand’s behavior. And though it’s easy to revamp the website or roll-out workplace training as a quick fix, the real challenge...
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Law Firm Branding Project: Launching with Impact

Law Firm Branding Project: Launching with Impact

A law firm branding project isn’t just about the strategy or the creative – it’s about getting the law firm ready, aligned, and joined together behind the change. A new brand is an opportunity to build excitement and momentum around the future of your law firm. And the launch plays a large role in this. But launching a global law firm brand and figuring out how you are going to share it with the people who matter to your business is no small task. Here are some tips for launching your new brand: Although pushing your new website live is often the symbol of a new launch, there’s a lot of...
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Overcome Startup Competition in a Crowded Eco-system

Overcome Startup Competition in a Crowded Eco-system

Startup Competition is fierce Startup competition is tough. People used to think that consumers have mind-space for only three brands in any given category: the leader, the challenger, and the one other company lucky enough (or hard-working enough) to be noticed and considered. The rule of three may still be true, but the sheer proliferation of brands flooding a truly congested sector can starve every brand for oxygen and make it difficult for any brand to stand out. We deal with a lot of clients in crowded, complex categories and ecosystems: technology companies, software companies,...
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The Art of Swift, Smart Decision Making in Business

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...
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Six Secrets of Thriving Brands

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...
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Moving from B2B to B4B: A New Code for B2B Brands

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...
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The Value of Questioning in Business

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?”,...
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A Learning Culture Can Bring New Value to your Business

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...
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Product Design and Brand Strategy?

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....
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Your Business Issues Just Might Have A Brand Solution

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....
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Why Bring in an Outside Branding Agency?

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...
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Readying Your Marketing Budget

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...
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Why Purpose-Led Brands Drive Business Results

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...
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Purpose-led: The Never-Ending Market for Something to Believe In

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...
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Why Embrace The Squishy Idea Of Purpose?

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...
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