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Editing Your First Draft: How To

Editing Your First Draft: How To

Time For Editing In an earlier post, I wrote about the anxiety that can accompany writing and how you can overcome it with some simple steps designed to jump start your drafting. In this post, I’ll tell you how to get from the first draft to the finish line. The key to this: editing. So you’ve got a first draft. Congratulations. A first draft, no matter how rough, is cause for a minor celebration (coffee, maybe, not Cristal). A break helps you make the mental transition from writing mode to editing mode. Editing is how you get your rough draft to the finish line. Your mileage will vary here,...
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What’s the Right Wellness Program for Your Brand?

What’s the Right Wellness Program for Your Brand?

The New Rules of Wellness Programs The EEOC recently issued new rules for employer wellness programs that have made a big splash in the media. With all the recent buzz around wellness, we began thinking about the overall value of these programs and how to build programs, as Obama hopes, that benefit employers and employees alike. What are the best practices for businesses as they incorporate wellness programs into their benefits packages? How can employers encourage wellness, while simultaneously respecting and protecting individual’s personal privacy and making sure employees never feel...
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Sustainability Reporting: Preparing Your Organization

Sustainability Reporting: Preparing Your Organization

Preparing for sustainability reporting Our advice before starting sustainability reporting, is to prepare your organization before you do anything else. First things first. Before setting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard to write outlines or strategies or any text at all, there are a few important steps that will help build the foundation for a quality corporate sustainability report (CSR). Most people won’t see the report’s foundation. But, just because you can’t see it, doesn’t make it any less important. Any builder (or homeowner with a leaky basement) will tell you how critical it is...
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High-Growth Software Firm Looking to Accelerate Business Quickly

High-Growth Software Firm Looking to Accelerate Business Quickly

Metal Toad: a high-growth business needed to be aligned to create maximum impact Metal Toad is a successful, high-growth software business with a highly regarded reputation and big ambitions. As technology consultants, Metal Toad works to modernize businesses by building strategic applications for clients like Sony, Cisco, PBS, Verizon Wireless, and ABC. When they came to Emotive Brand for help, the management team was at a crossroads. As often happens in the midst of a boom, an enthusiasm for growth left the business pursuing too many diverse initiatives. They needed to quickly realign and...
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Top Ten Sustainability Acronyms

Top Ten Sustainability Acronyms

Several years ago, I got a new assignment at work and suddenly found myself immersed in sustainability reporting. As I set out to learn my new job, I discovered an alphabet soup of sustainability acronyms that made my head spin on a daily basis. I tried to make sense of what the experts were saying, but the language seemed to barely resemble English. So, one of my first orders of business was to learn the key acronyms of this new discipline. It was clear to me that if I didn’t understand these, I would continue to be lost and confused a good bit of the time. In this field, there are...
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Brand Narrative : The New Origin Story for your Business

Brand Narrative : The New Origin Story for your Business

Is Your Origin Story Enough to Make Your Business Stand Out? Origin stories have been embedded into modern marketing’s rulebook for as long as we can remember. And for good reason. Historically, they did help companies stand out. Origin have traditionally been the place where a brand explains what business ventures meant to their leaders and for the greater world – personally, historically, economically, and culturally. They helped make brands more human and emotive. People could empathize with stories embedded in the American Dream and felt connected to self-starters, underdogs, and...
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Using Metaphors to Communicate on Behalf of Your Brand

Using Metaphors to Communicate on Behalf of Your Brand

Meaningful Connections Even the most complex brands need to make meaningful connections with customers. At Emotive Brand, we work with a lot of brands that have complicated technology, products, or services. As we dive into these brands, we often find that even company founders struggle to clearly explain what their brand does and why it matters in a way that truly resonates with customers. Oftentimes they use a metaphor to describe their offering. Metaphors are powerful communication devices. They help us consider new ideas or concepts in a relatable way. They help us move away from talking...
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Breaking Through Writing Anxiety

Breaking Through Writing Anxiety

Writing Anxiety Unless your name is Stephen King or Karl Ove Knausgård or Aaron Sorkin, writing anxiety can feel like an integral component of the writing process – and a hugely toxic, paralyzing one at that. I know I feel it. Most new writing projects come with a sense of challenge, the promise of reward – and an unhealthy dose of torment. Which is, frankly, a little weird. I’ve been writing professionally since I graduated from college in the early 1980s. You might think I’d be well past feeling even a hint of anxiety in facing the brutal starkness of the blank page – that I could stare...
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TV Wars: Linear vs. Digital, A Brand Relevancy Battle

TV Wars: Linear vs. Digital, A Brand Relevancy Battle

A Brand Relevancy Battle It’s a big week for TV broadcast networks as they unveil their new lineup and advertisers strategize where to invest valuable dollars. With all the buzz around the hot shows on air, we’re captivated by the parallel conversations around how linear TV is fighting to keep up with digital TV. Because on-demand television has taken over as the norm, the quest for traditional networks to maintain brand relevancy is paramount. In just a few years, the ritual of sitting down to watch your favorite program at its scheduled time has all but disappeared from American culture....
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Is Your Company Primed for Sustained Growth?

Is Your Company Primed for Sustained Growth?

Growth is always good. But sustained growth is always better. It’s not just a matter of a stronger will or more ambition. Sustained growth companies are more agile, more resilient, and more innovative. Our work with a group of mid-market clients, along with a growing body of academic research, indicates the companies who enjoy sustained growth have embraced their purpose, and have built a culture and a set of practices that “live it”. Purpose sharpens vision, inspires teams, and empowers people. Purpose helps every person find fresh ways to think differently, to see how market dynamics can...
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Strategy for the Strategy

Strategy for the Strategy

Strategy from a strategist. When I started my career, I had some mentors who warned me that my world was going to be different from theirs. The main change was that due to downsizing, client companies no longer had people on staff to manage creative agencies. Instead of working with people who knew communications and branding, I would be working directly with vice presidents of marketing or human resources who had only vague ideas about how they work. That was good advice. But it missed an even bigger change. My mentors believed the clients would have a strategy, and it would be my job to...
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Purpose-led Brands and the Role of the CEO

Purpose-led Brands and the Role of the CEO

Purpose-led leaders lead thriving businesses. If you are a marketer faced with the task of re-branding or leading a brand strategy for your business, think about the person most influential to its success. Wondering who is essential to be part of the team? Ask yourself: Who has the greatest insight into where your business needs to go? Who can make sure that the company’s brand strategy embodies, and brings to life, this vision? Who sees how the people, processes and policies of the business need to evolve to address future issues and opportunities? Who is the best person to lead the...
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Why Digital Health Brands Need a B2B2C Strategy

Why Digital Health Brands Need a B2B2C Strategy

B2B Digital Health Brands Healthcare brands can never be too sensitive, too thoughtful, or too careful. B2B digital health brands need a brand strategy that addresses the needs and challenges of real people with real health challenges. It’s important to remember that no matter what your company offers, in B2B there’s still a person at the end of the line, not a faceless entity. As consumers have more and more information about healthcare through mobile applications and online resources, the demand for people-centric health brands is becoming stronger by the minute. A B2B2C strategy will make...
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Launching a Global Re-Brand: Interview with Brand Strategy Firm, Emotive Brand

Launching a Global Re-Brand: Interview with Brand Strategy Firm, Emotive Brand

As an Account Strategist at Emotive Brand, Sarah plays a pivotal role in helping us transform global brands in to more empathetic, purpose-led, and meaningful companies. Her ability to connect the worlds of writing, research, strategy, and design make her the perfect point person for tackling the nuances and challenges of bringing a new brand strategy to life. In this post, Sarah shares her thoughts on why a global brand rollout can be tricky, gives guidelines on how to tackle obstacles that might arise, and execute a successful maximum-impact launch. A global re-brand is a large...
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Purpose-Led Brand Strategy Optimizes Business

Purpose-Led Brand Strategy Optimizes Business

Purpose-led Brand Strategy that Masters the Intangibles, Masters Markets A purpose-led brand strategy has the power to optimize the present and future value of your business. When your brand actively embodies all the true and meaningful aspects of your corporate decisions, policies, and actions, it not only brings new energy to your current competitive efforts, it also signals a brighter and more energizing future to the people vital to your company’s success. Your brand houses your company’s intangible value Everyone knows there’s a link between the perceived value of your...
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