Blog
Using Values to Build Engagement and a Meaningful Workplace
Fifth in a series. “People may not remember exactly what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou The goal of employee engagement is to drive employee attitudes, behavior, morality, and ethics in such a way as to improve their productivity, morale, satisfaction, and usefulness within the organization. However, many companies have struggled with converting their proclaimed values into compelling, work-changing experiences for their employees. Often, the problems have been that the values are typically expressed with meaning-neutral (if...
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Implementing Brand Strategy
Investing in Brand Strategy Is Only Step One Creating a brand strategy that maps precisely to your business strategy demands resources. Money, of course, but also time — the valuable time of your senior executives. But the best and most meaningful strategy in the world can only make a positive impact on your business if it’s implemented thoughtfully and effectively. Don’t waste your precious resources developing a brand strategy if you don’t have a strategy for a proper roll-out. Building a brand strategy is, of course, hugely valuable. Companies do it because they recognize the impact it...
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The Meaningful Workplace: It Takes New Ways of Thinking, and Acting
The Meaningful Workplace is the fourth in a series. How do you build an workplace where people are willing to bring their gifts of initiative, creativity, and passion?” – Gary Hamel You can’t build a workplace that is meaningful to people using the old mentality and outdated tools. Old techniques are no good if they have rendered your current workplace meaning-neutral or, at worst, meaningless. To forge meaningful alliances with meaning-seeking employees requires new ways of thinking and acting. Familiar business constructs that have formed the foundation of employer/employee relations are...
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How Do You Define the Purpose of Your Business?
Seeing Profit as a Consequence, Not a Purpose Like many, you probably default to saying, “To make profits”. And while that is certainly an aim of every capitalistic enterprise, it falls short as a useful and motivating driver of an enterprise. Too great a focus on profits draws attention away from the triggers of success in today’s world. Successful leaders see profit as consequence For more and more leaders, another North Star is rising. By embracing the notion of “purpose beyond profit”, these leaders don’t forego their obligations to generate profits for shareholders. But they subjugate...
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Meaningful Millennials: In the Workplace
This is the second installment in our weekly series entitled “Meaningful Millennials”, where we interview millennials on a variety of different subjects that are top of mind for us in the studio. As a brand strategy firm, we work with our clients to help develop strategies that enable their brand, their business, and their workplaces to be more meaningful. This year, there has been a lot of work in the studio around employer branding, improving employee engagement, shifting culture, recruiting top talent internationally, and understanding how to create a meaningful workplace for millennials....
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Brand and Marketing? What’s the Difference?
Brand and Marketing? Leaders are sometimes confused about the difference between brand and marketing. This is not surprising, because they are not mutually exclusive ideas. They are interdependent strategic activities that feed, inform, and drive each other. The important distinction to make is in the intent – and desired outcome – of each area. Brand Strategy Brand strategy defines how people should ideally feel about your business and products. It strives to find how to optimize belief in what you do offer, and what you stand for in the world. It is an abstract idea held in the hearts and...
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Meaningful Millennials: A New Age of Payment
Today we are launching a new weekly series entitled “Meaningful Millennials”, where we will interview millennials on a variety of different subjects. At Emotive Brand, because of current client work and upcoming pitches, we have FinTech on the brain. So our first week’s focus is “Payments.” Our question: What makes payment brands meaningful to and successful with millennials? We surveyed twelve millennials and here’s what we learned. FinTech brands can’t just be convenient. If your brand wants to be meaningful to and successful with millennials, you need to instill confidence and emote...
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Uber Rational: A New Brand
Yesterday, Uber launched a new brand identity, and it has sparked a lot of media attention. It’s amazing that an app icon update and a new website can create so much buzz, attention, and debate, but it got us thinking: What’s the real impact of changing an already established brand identity? We believe brands need to consider both rational and emotional needs when embarking on telling their story. Uber’s new identity focuses on telling a rational story about what they do. But it lacks the emotional impact of why they do it and why consumers flock to it. ‘Why’ is critical because...
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The CEO Challenge – Turning Corporate Vision Into Reality
The corporate vision statement We’ve written before about the gaps between what business leaders believe and what their employees think when it comes to the company’s corporate vision and values. Today we’d like to explore another gap. This is the gap between what the CEO sees as the company’s vision, and what employees are doing to help achieve that vision – often referred to as the Corporate Vision Statement. In some cases, the gap exists simply because employees haven’t been informed of the vision. As such, they are left to their own devices, pulling the...
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Why Workplaces Aren’t Meaningful Now
Third in our Meaningful Workplace series. Disillusioned by the age of conspicuous consumption, worried by the state of the planet and its people, rocked by war, corruption, and financial crises, and immersed in a swirl of information, news, opinion, and gossip, people are searching for meaning in their lives. Today they feel a need to align with people, ideas, and companies that make them feel they’re part of something bigger than themselves. People are seeking a sense of purpose, a reason for being, and the answer to the question, “Why is this good?” Today their idea of good is shaped by an...
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Fast Forward: Our New Offering for High-Growth Companies
Developing Fast Forward, an agile marketing, branding, and business offering was the right thing for our team to develop for startups, to address the issues startups are facing right now. We have created Fast Forward designed for our high-growth clients that need to make strategic shifts to quickly address product, industry, competitive, alignment, and other issues. Fast Forward is an agile workshop approach that very quickly develops a strategically aligned and nuanced understanding of your business and brand’s current situation. We bring the most important issues to light — business...
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Make Purposeful Brand Resolutions in 2016
The New Year is the perfect time to step back and create impassioned and attainable brand resolutions. What do you want to achieve in 2016? Look back on 2015 and reflect on your business. What were your greatest successes and biggest challenges? How can you live your brand promise in 2016? How can you build your brand to flourish? Emotive Brand wants to add some inspiration and purpose to the start of your 2016. We’ve asked top business executives across varying industries to share one piece of advice about managing a brand and driving business. Our advice: read up. “Managing your brand is a...
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Getting Employees to Respond Positively
Getting Employees to Respond Positively is the second in a series on Meaningful Workplaces. Meaningful Workplaces are built by companies that aim to produce a more meaningful outcome from, and for, their people. To become meaningful, these companies adopt a new stance vis-à-vis their relationship with their employees. They strive to reduce the distance that’s been imposed through organization structures and prevailing attitudes. They seek stronger emotional connections up, down, and across their enterprise. They see their task as making their company fit for the future by making it fit for...
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Is Your Brand Ready for 2016?
The New Year is the perfect time to reflect and renew your brand’s focus. It’s not about resolutions. It’s about looking back on this past year of business and checking the alignment of your brand and business strategy. What things should you focus on in order to ready your brand for 2016? We want to offer some purpose-led inspiration and advice on preparing your brand for success in the New Year. Here are three focus points to consider before you take the year by storm: 1. Make Meaningful Measurements Take a moment to consider what you’re measuring and why. Ask yourself, do existing...
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The Key To Better Engaging Your Employees
The workplace is in crisis. And engaging your employees is not easy. Workers are not engaged. Productivity is down. Morale is low. Many employees obviously don’t see the point of what they, or their employer, are doing. How can a business turn the tide of employee dissonance? How can it become fit for a future that’s bound to be more competitive, complex, and commoditized? How can it connect with people who are no longer blindly accepting corporate propaganda — people who are more “we” than “me” focused? People who are more discerning about the ideas, products, and brands they buy into, the...
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