Topics

Blog


Meaningful Workplace: Master Plans Create Employee Alliance

Meaningful Workplace: Master Plans Create Employee Alliance

Creating employee alliance Seventh in a series. A Meaningful Workplace is built from the company’s master plan – a strategic platform used exclusively by senior management – that defines the three core elements of ambition (purpose), feelings (values), and behavior (building a culture). This master plan drives all subsequent activities, which include: Macro Plans – how the business itself will be evolved; Group Plans – how groups of employees will be engaged; Solo Plans – how individual employees will be personally engaged. Building something great and enduring Macro Planning puts the...
Read more >

Doing Good Feels Good – Is Your Brand on Board?

Doing Good Feels Good – Is Your Brand on Board?

Action for Happiness is a movement for positive social change. We’re bringing together people from all walks of life who want to play a part in creating a happier society for everyone. This video from Action for Happiness spurred some thinking on brands and what people are looking for today. Let’s start by defining “happy”. It can be superficial – like what you feel as you watch a TV ad that makes you laugh or brings a tear to your eye. It can be profound – as in what you feel when you know that what you’re doing is doing good for others. We’ve...
Read more >

Building a Meaningful Workplace Culture

Building a Meaningful Workplace Culture

Sixth in a series on workplace culture “If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.” – Albert Einstein A business’ fate is determined in large part by its culture. A business culture is the reality created by how people act, react, and interact with each other based on their attitudes, beliefs, and ambitions. The most damaging business cultures are those in which aggression, neglect, and punishment leave employees feeling they have no reason to commit their energies and skills, share their ideas, or help the company advance....
Read more >

Meaningful Millennials: On Brand Loyalty

Meaningful Millennials: On Brand Loyalty

This is the third installment of 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 create and roll out strategies that enable their brand, their business, and their workplaces to be more meaningful. We believe that with meaning comes loyalty. And with loyalty comes sustained and successful business. This month, we have been focusing on how brands can build loyal relationships with millennials that inspire connections,...
Read more >

Using Values to Build Engagement and a Meaningful Workplace

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...
Read more >

Implementing Brand Strategy

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...
Read more >

The Meaningful Workplace: It Takes New Ways of Thinking, and Acting

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...
Read more >

How Do You Define the Purpose of Your Business?

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...
Read more >

Meaningful Millennials: In the Workplace

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....
Read more >

Brand and Marketing? What’s the Difference?

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...
Read more >

Meaningful Millennials: On Brand Loyalty

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...
Read more >

Uber Rational: A New Brand

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...
Read more >

The CEO Challenge – Turning Corporate Vision Into Reality

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...
Read more >

Why Workplaces Aren’t Meaningful Now

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...
Read more >

Fast Forward: Our New Offering for High-Growth Companies

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...
Read more >