Blog

Your brand plans to launch a new product or service, code-named BigHope, with the goals of increasing revenues and expanding your customer base. To this end, you have asked Emotive Brand to describe how it would approach this challenge. We believe that the most successful brands and products help people get what they want and need – ways to create new meaning in their lives. We are in the business of finding relevant meaning within brands, products and services, and bringing that appealing and differentiating power to light. For BigHope, our goal will be use the kitchen of emotive...

We recently came across this great story about bringing corporate values to life inside and outside a brand. Frost Bank is in Texas, but when Terri, a customer of ten years standing, moved to San Francisco, she kept her accounts in place at Frost Bank. This is just one of the many stories Frost Bank uses to substantiate it’s claim for superior customer service. Frost Bank employees are guided by a manifesto of short, but telling, statements about things that truly matter to customers: Bankers should know their customers by name and vice versa. Courtesy should not be based upon the size...

We enjoyed reading Tom Asacker’s recent post, “Does your brand impute.” As usual, Tom makes important points with grace: “Leadership brands understand that brand success is not about winning a debate; it’s about signaling meaning. It’s not about convincing people with well-reasoned arguments. It’s about unearthing what people need to feel good, smart and special, and then giving it to them.” The message is clear: there’s a gift you can give people “that just keeps giving”. We believe that gift is already hidden inside your brand. It’s...

How do you take a brand operating in a marginally interesting and commodity-prone category to a meaningful position? You look deep inside what the brand does on a human level. You pull that out and shine light on it. People suddenly see something that wasn’t there before, something they like, something that helps them create meaning within themselves. You change how people feel, and they change how they feel about your brand. What human meaning is hidden within your brand? What could it mean to your business if people felt more emotionally involved with what you’re really all...

 Hugh MacLeod orginally did this drawing for a commission, but brought it out again after being inspired by a speech he heard about brands as platforms. As he puts it: “When you create meaning, understand your purpose, creating something worth talking about comes pretty easily.” Through our emotive branding process, we provide our client’s employees with new and helpful stuff to talk about. We give them a statement, which we call a “Driving Idea,” that urges them to reshape what they do to better align to the brand’s business and emotive goals. Built...

We came across this on the Truly, Deeply blog: US film maker Walt Thompson spent 22 hours shooting 2,600 pictures along with unmentionable hours of editing to create a Lego inspired marriage proposal for his girlfriend of four years. As Dave Ansett, the man behind Truly, Deeply put it: “Can there be a much higher tribute to a brand than to be woven into the most important and valued moments of our lives?” We agree. Lego has attained a truly meaningful position in the hearts and minds of people the world over. And while not every brand may have the intense emotional...

In a New York Times interview, Ron Johnson, CEO of JCPenney was asked: Q. Who are you targeting? A. We are going after all Americans. We would like to be the store for everyone. Think about that.  Rather than targeting a specific segment, Johnson goes right to the highest level. Everyone. Everyone is important. In emotive branding, everyone matters, from the customer (every customer), to the employee (every employee), to the partner (every partner), to the supplier (every supplier), to the investor (every investor), to the community (every citizen) … well, you get the idea....

After 100 years, JCPenney has placed a new stake in the ground. They are seeking a meaningful position in the “this weekend only” world of retail. They are turning everything upside down in the hope of mattering more to people who have been left shell-shocked by a field of pushy, hysterical and “me-too” retailers. They are seizing the opportunity to bridge the “meaning gap” to more clearly see the world through the eyes of their customers. Under the leadership of Ron Johnson, who established Apple in the retail space after juicing up Target, JCPenney is...

There’s the story of the dinner Steve Jobs had with Rupert Murdoch, at which he said,  “The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive.”  Jobs was talking about what companies do, and clearly had a message for the wire-tapping business headed by Mr Murdoch, saying he had ‘cast his lot with destructive people”.  Businesses and brands have a great opportunity to be constructive in a world where this sort of destruction is all too common. One way is to identify the constructive good that already resides in...

Cartoon by Tom Fishbourne There once was a time when true loyalty meant a card in the wallet. But then there was a proliferation of cards in the wallet.  And along with that, a dissolution of the power of “rewards” through pieces of plastic. Smart brands see beyond the lure of rewards-based loyalty. They seek to win the respect, earn the preference, and keep the custom of people by moving to a more meaningful position in their lives. They have a way of being that attracts people on a human level. They connect to the higher ideals and aspirations of people.  The way in...