Topics

Brand Behavior

CEOs: Building Trust and Living Your Values

March 8, 2018 —

CEOs: Building Trust and Living Your Values

The Truth Is Always Trending Good relationships are built on trust. Whether it’s between romantic partners, brands, customers, or government agencies, trust is the currency rate by which messaging is valued against. So, how much is your word worth? In today’s hyper-polarized landscape, it really depends on who’s speaking. In fact, the world is moving apart in trust. According to the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer, “In previous years, market-level trust has moved largely in lockstep, but for the first time ever there is now a distinct split between extreme trust gainers and losers.” No...
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How CMOs Can Control Their Brand Message in the Age of Digital Sprawl

February 21, 2018 —

How CMOs Can Control Their Brand Message in the Age of Digital Sprawl

The New CMO What does a CMO do? Just a few years ago, that was an easy question to answer. You focused on building a brand. You managed your channels: press, radio, a TV spot, maybe even an outdoor installation if you were feeling ambitious. Like a conductor, you could orchestrate your brand message with Mozart-like precision. Marketing, itself, was a pure sport, clearly defined. Flash forward to today, and the blurred lines between technology, marketing, and sales are harder to discern than ever. Fluency in digital transformation has gone from a specialty to a requirement. CMOs need to be...
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Emotive Brand and Emotive Branding: Our Origin Story

February 6, 2018 —

Emotive Brand and Emotive Branding: Our Origin Story

Brands for the Better The idea of emotive branding – and the creation of our agency, Emotive Brand – flowed from our desire to make a positive difference in the way people and brands interacted with each other. These were our goals: Bridge the gap between commerce and civility. Create brands that people appreciate, respect, and actively seek out. Help employees of brands feel better about their jobs. Make partners and suppliers vie for the opportunity to work with our clients. See communities welcome our clients’ brands with open arms. As a result of all of this goodwill, our...
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Reducing Stigma Through Branding: A Moral Dilemma

October 31, 2017 —

Reducing Stigma Through Branding: A Moral Dilemma

Anti-Stigma Campaigns Need Authenticity Inauthenticity is the Achilles heel of purposeful brands. More than ever, people gravitate toward companies that radiate transparency and accountability. We laud brands that shift our perception to break down stigmas. However, if these sensitive topics are clumsily handled, the backlash is harsh and swift. Failing to sell a luxury item is one thing. But misrepresenting a sensitive topic for financial gain? That’s another. Nowadays, it seems hardly a week goes by without a public apology in response to a tone-deaf branding effort. So, how does a...
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The Role of Digital Behavior in Brand Building

September 6, 2017 —

The Role of Digital Behavior in Brand Building

The Role of Digital Behavior The ways people experience a brand’s digital behavior have deepened and become more complex as the digital landscape expands. As a result, there are seemingly infinite brand touch points that can strengthen a brand. On the flip side, businesses have to be careful to behave in a way that doesn’t fragment or dilute their brand, but instead helps to build a more powerful, impactful, and engaging experience that rings true across all platforms – digital and non-digital alike. Behaving in Line with Your Brand Because the digital landscape is shifting at...
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Making Your Brand an Intuitive Choice

August 3, 2017 —

Making Your Brand an Intuitive Choice

The power of intuition We can all easily recognize our own powers of intuition. They are there whenever something immediately makes sense to you – think of children playing with iPads. You also feel these powers every time your social radar sends alarms – think of all the times you’ve meet someone and immediately had a foreboding feeling. Some people are more intuitive than others. Some don’t trust their intuitions (until they back them up with “proof”). But we all have them, and they play a dominating part in our decision making, including our decisions about brands. How do you get your...
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Authentic Brands Just Feel Right: Inject Purpose and Feeling

June 5, 2017 —

Authentic Brands Just Feel Right: Inject Purpose and Feeling

Everyone’s Claiming Authenticity Where are all the authentic brands? In today’s world, where curation is everywhere, vacuous claims are made left and right by brands, and people are inundated with meaningless media content, authenticity is a hard feeling to come by. You can’t visit a website or see an ad where you don’t see brands declaring that they are, in fact, “the most genuine and the most trustworthy.” The problem is, with so many choices and so much available content, people see right through brand claims that don’t ring true. And because declarations of “authenticity” don’t always...
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Workplace Behavior Helps Brands Compete

February 24, 2016 —

Workplace Behavior Helps Brands Compete

Brand strategy that is not activated meaningfully within an organization can fall flat. The best way to ensure employees know how to bring a new brand strategy to life and live its brand promise is to develop a strategy for addresing workplace behavior. When we set out to build our methodology for brand strategy, we had two bold objectives in mind: 1. Reduce the emotional distance between people and brands, to make lives more meaningful, and brands more successful. 2. Go beyond simply stating a meaningful ambition for brands, by showing the executive team, the management, and every employee...
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The Power of Creating a Compelling “Brand Vibe”

February 23, 2018 —

The Power of Creating a Compelling “Brand Vibe”

We humans are very proud of our ability to think rationally. This cognitive power not only lets us understand and use facts, it also helps us build elaborate creations and fantasies. We use our rational brains to conduct business. Cognition helps us sort stuff out, compare options, and rank priorities. Our rational, conscious brain is so “upfront” in our day-to-day work lives that we begin to believe it is our only way of thinking and acting at work. Yet, as neuroscience is finding, it is now clear that this cognitive ability is not a stand-alone factor in how we perceive, sense,...
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The Power of Saying Thank You

November 22, 2016 —

The Power of Saying Thank You

’Tis the Season for Thank You The Thanksgiving season is the perfect time to not only reflect on what we’re thankful for, but also, to consider the power of saying ‘thank you’. For businesses, it’s a time to think about how to show appreciation for employees, customers, partners, and stakeholders alike. Caught Up in Business For many reasons, ‘thank you’ isn’t said enough. It’s easy to get wrapped up in daily business obstacles, work dynamics, or simply, an overloaded email box. It’s natural to get sucked into our own business-as-usual worlds. But as a result, many people find themselves...
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