Blog
Don’t Let Your Product Ruin Your Brand
It’s a tale as old as time. You can’t sell product without a brand; you can’t sell brand without a product. Product designers and brand designers are sometimes viewed as adversarial disciplines, but in truth, both sides are working toward the same goal with different tools. But what’s the right balance? And how can you get the best of both worlds? To begin, a bit of level-setting. Product Designers Product design is commonly defined as the approach to building a new product from start to finish. This encompasses market research, identifying problems, product development, designing informed...
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Eight Questions to Evaluate the Strength of Your Brand
Do you ever wonder about the strength of your brand? And its impact on your business? Do you monitor it and measure it? Do you evaluate it like you do for your business? If you wanted to know how it’s doing, would you even know what questions to ask? We’ve put together a quick diagnostic test to help CEOs assess when it’s time to for a strategic brand check-up. Eight Questions to Ask Yourself to Evaluate the Strength of Your Brand Does your company have a purpose that your employees live up to every day? Is it meaningfully activated in your corporate strategy, inspiring how your business...
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What Makes a Perfect Concept Statement?
Over the course of a branding project, there are thousands of micro-decisions to make along the way. As much as possible, agencies try to establish a common way of seeing and evaluating work to minimize decision fatigue. In our case, we create an Emotional Impact and a Brand Idea. We start by identifying four emotions we want to evoke in our target audiences, and then craft a big idea that brings these emotions to life across business, brand, and culture. The thing is, as much as you try to establish frameworks and lenses and litmus tests, you can only ask a client to hold so much in their...
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Business Imperative: Socializing Strategy
One of the first things we learn in business is the importance of “having a plan.” Preferably, it should be a strategic plan, complete with milestones, action items, KPIs, and other important measures. This is definitely true. You need to have a plan, and you need to be socializing strategy. As someone who’s been in the consulting game for many years, I can’t count the number of times I’ve sat down with new clients only to discover that while there may, in fact, be a carefully (and expensively) constructed strategic plan, it’s a mystery to most employees. Chances are, they learned...
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Why Business Leaders Must Address the Big Picture
Business Leaders, Caught in the Small Picture It’s easy for business leaders to get caught up in the details of everyday business, assuming the role of micromanager, not leader. And because leaders may not be focusing on big-picture questions surrounding the vision, mission, and value of their business and brand, many leaders end up feeling stuck—trying to figure out how to implement strategies without any real framework to guide these decisions. As a result, employees and middle managers can often suffer. Too often, big-picture questions are dismissed as important, but not necessarily...
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Non-Business Books to Improve Your Brain and Brand
When I worked in a bookstore, I would often help young businesspeople find the books their bosses wanted them to read. This assignment was to help them expand their thinking, get a new perspective, and stand out from the crowd. But invariably, they would always ask for “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” or if they were in sales, “The Art of War.” To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with these titles! But in the words of Haruki Murakami, “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is...
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User-Generated Content and Why You Want to Be a Usage Brand Today
Are Users the New Billboards? Historically, brands relied heavily on marketing and advertising to drive awareness and engagement with products and services. But in an era of general mistrust of big corporations, ever-heightening consumer expectations, and a no-bullshit view on unsubstantiated claims, even a killer ad might not be enough to drive your brand forward. That’s why smart and strategic brands realize its customers have the potential to be the biggest trust, credibility, and value builders (or destroyers) out there. And that nailing brand experience today means tapping into the...
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Is Revenue Hiding in Plain Sight? Six Steps to Refocusing on the Customer
Leading a B2B organization is a lot like trying to change the wheels on a bike while you’re still riding it. Half of the time, you’re rethinking internal systems and how to assemble them in new ways. The other half, you’re just trying to keep the business running and avoid any major potholes. There are many different ways to drive an organization, but if you’re not thinking about customer experience at every touchpoint, it might be time for a tune-up. Sales, Engineering, or Marketing? If you’re a sales-led organization, you’re primarily focused on revenue, deals, price, and...
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What’s in a Name? An Interview With a Brand Naming Expert
Anthony Shore names things. For 25 years, he has wielded his linguistics and varied marketing background to introduce more than 200 product and company names to the world. Even if you don’t know him from this New York Times Magazine article, you’ve probably come across his work: Fitbit Ionic, Virgin Voyages, and Jaunt to name just a few. From novel descriptors to taglines and slogans, Shore specializes in succinct, inspired brand expressions of six words or fewer. As one of the world’s foremost naming experts, we’re thrilled to partner with him. Today, we sit down with Shore to discuss...
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Introducing the Art of Symbols: How Ancient Symbols Inform Brand Design
After successfully completing the #100DayProject, Emotive Brand is thrilled to launch the Art of Symbols, a website exploring how ancient symbols inform contemporary brand design. Check it out! The Art of Symbols As previously discussed, the 100DayProject is a free art project started by Lindsay Thomson that takes place online. Every spring, thousands of people all around the world commit to 100 days of exploring their creativity. “It’s a lot to commit to, 100 variations on a theme,” said Jonathan Haggard, Senior Designer. “Just like creating anything, the first 90 are the expected and...
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This Is Not Another Blog Post: The Power of Differentiation
Somewhere in a humid conference room right now, someone is adding the phrase “disrupt the status quo” to a bulleted list titled “our values.” Can you smell the whiteboard marker? Can you hear the crackled audio of the one remote employee dialing in to suggest that we “shatter the status quo,” since the word “disrupt” is so overdone? I’ve been there, you’ve been there, you might be there right now. One thing we all know deep down as we finish our third coffee of the morning: this is not how you differentiate your business, brand, or culture in a meaningful way. You can’t just say, “I’m not...
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Why Curiosity Fuels Business Innovation
Where’s the Curiosity? Children thrive on curiosity. People grow up asking questions. Many young children ask “Why?” almost excessively, wanting explanations for everything—unafraid to ask, always curious, and fiercely inquisitive. Why? They are in a phase of intense learning, absorbing information, and widening their capacity for new information at a rapid pace. But studies have found that curiosity peaks at around age four or five and takes a steady decline from there. As people grow up, they become more self-conscious, more fearful about asking questions, and are increasingly...
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How to Hire the Right Branding Agency
The Business Case for Hiring a Branding Agency In all the years of working with tech companies, we have heard the same story time and time again about the trials and tribulations of VPs and marketing executives trying to secure a budget to invest in hiring a branding agency with limited success. On top of that, how to hire the right agency can be just as confusing. We hear about them making strong and compelling business cases to invest in the brand to leadership teams and hitting a wall. It happens at every budget cycle, management meeting, and discussion around disappointment in growth,...
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Adopt a Growth Mindset to Drive Business
Growth vs. Fixed MindsetWe believe an organization that adopts a growth mindset can position itself to thrive. But what exactly defines a growth mindset?At Emotive Brand, we define a growth mindset as a set of attitudes and behaviors that reflect the belief that an individual’s talent is not set in stone. Talent can be developed. Intelligence can be fostered. Creativity and innovation can be strengthened. Leaders can emerge. People hold potential.This means every employee within an organization has to have the ability to develop, grow, and learn. And organizations who believe this seek out...
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A Designer’s Guide to a Successful First Presentation
Presentation Is Everything The Emotive Brand design team had the pleasure of attending First Round San Francisco, a one-day showcase of original client presentations showing initial design explorations for logo, identity, and branding projects. Twelve different design studios presented on a variety of client projects – everything from a global healthcare non-profit to a menstrual cup company. The crowd was filled with eager designers – some from design studios, others from tech companies, and some freelancers. We’ve gathered a few key takeaways – a checklist of sorts – to make sure all the...
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