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Brand Strategy


Timing a Positioning Project: How to Set Yourself up for Success

Timing a Positioning Project: How to Set Yourself up for Success

When Considering a Positioning Project: Timing Is Everything A positioning project requires a serious commitment of time and attention from your team, as well as a financial investment. Whether you do it yourself or partner with a firm, you’ll (hopefully) end up with a positioning you can own that differentiates you in the marketplace. The most successful positioning projects we’ve run have three things in common: time, attention, and urgency. So how do you figure out the best time to start a positioning project? We’ve seen positioning projects thrive when: Your business, sales, or...
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Is an Agile Strategy the Right Approach for Brand Strategy?

Is an Agile Strategy the Right Approach for Brand Strategy?

Dynamic Times Require Agile Strategy We have seen a a large rise of requests for our proprietary agile strategy methodology for brand strategy. More than ever, sudden market changes, disruptive business models, rapid-paced technology, and ever-evolving competition demand agility. As customers change, new competition enters and new categories emerge, so businesses must be able to flex and adapt with the times. Without Agility, Less Impact Agility is becoming more and more of an expectation. And being agile doesn’t mean being hasty or impulsive. In fact, it’s the opposite. Agile strategy...
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Machine Learning Is the New, New Thing. But Can It Help CMOs Build Brands?

Machine Learning Is the New, New Thing. But Can It Help CMOs Build Brands?

Can big data build brands better? A few years ago, Big Data promised to radically transform the marketing landscape. CMOs were warned to master it or watch their brands get left behind. Artificial intelligence was the next new, new thing. Now the hot property is machine learning, the data-crunching tool that can find patterns in big data and make them actionable. Each of these innovations is truly transformative — and each has limitations. As machine learning gathers steam, let’s look at what it means for brands. Which challenges can machine learning tackle which still depend on human...
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What Makes a Great Strategist?

What Makes a Great Strategist?

A Team of Strategists Lots of businesses use the title of strategist for roles within their organization. For us at Emotive Brand, we have a very clear and defined view of what makes a good brand strategist. We carefully curate our project teams of strategists with a focus on selecting the skill sets and experience that are best suited for our clients and our projects. The Need for a Great Strategist In today’s hyper competitive, interconnected, always shifting world, businesses need great strategists to really drive their business and brand forward. When recruiting and hiring strategists at...
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Getting Executives to See the ROI of Brand Strategy

Getting Executives to See the ROI of Brand Strategy

Emotive Brand Expert #2: Matt Wolfrom Continuing our Emotive Brand Experts series, we’re interviewing past and present Emotive Brand clients to discover what they do better than anybody else – and how that expertise can be used to embolden your brand today. In this post, we speak with Matt Wolfrom, the Vice President of Corporate Marketing & Communications at Synacor. Before that, he worked in a VP role at both PubMatic and ShareThis. *** Business Solutions vs. Branding Solutions There are few things trickier than getting an executive to invest in brand strategy. It’s never the right...
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Your Startup’s Growth Strategy Starts with Brand Strategy

Your Startup’s Growth Strategy Starts with Brand Strategy

You’re running a startup. When should you invest in brand strategy? Put another way, when do you need to grow? When do you need to acquire new customers, build your culture and recruit the right people? For a startup whose primary job is growth, brand strategy can be a critical tool. So the answer to the question about when you need brand strategy is: Not at the very beginning, but probably earlier than you think. We recently branded a stealth-mode software startup whose CEO is a highly successful serial entrepreneur. He has worked with Emotive Brand several times. This time, he brought us...
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Why Have a Purpose Beyond Profit?

Why Have a Purpose Beyond Profit?

Why have a purpose beyond profit business strategy? Developing a purpose beyond profit business strategy has been gaining momentum in the business world, with both positive and negative attention. For decades, enterprises have had “mission statements”, “vision statements”, and  “values”. Check almost any corporate website and you’ll find these “drivers” of the business buried deep down and many clicks away from the surface. Despite having taken on these important steps to say what their business is all about, there’s often a big...
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Nothing Sells Itself: Why Storytelling Should Drive Demand Generation

Nothing Sells Itself: Why Storytelling Should Drive Demand Generation

Emotive Brand Expert #1: Greg Howard As a brand strategy and design agency, we have the privilege of being able to visit innovative companies from a myriad of fields. From global law firms to burgeoning start-ups, we get to pull back the curtain and observe how brands are built, from the inside out. Drawing on our ever-growing network, we’re excited to launch our Emotive Brand Experts series. In these posts, we’re interviewing past and present Emotive Brand clients to discover what they do better than anybody else – and how that expertise can be used to embolden your brand today. In this...
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Brand Differentiation: Where Do You Even Start?

Brand Differentiation: Where Do You Even Start?

Brand Differentiation In B2B marketing, creating brand differentiation is a critical output of all marketers whether you are managing a B2B or B2C brand. When your brand is truly and meaningfully differentiated, it works as a magnet to attract new customers and employees, as a glue that keeps people loyal, and as a warm glow that means people always come back for more. So how do you differentiate your brand? The problem for most brands is that they have yet to find a distinct place in the whirlwind of modern commerce. These brands are being buffeted by the winds of change and the waves of...
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Naming a New Brand Category is Harder Than it Looks

Naming a New Brand Category is Harder Than it Looks

Failed category labels are laughable. Before there were snowboards, there was snurfers. PDA phones preempted smartphones. Charga-plates rolled out before credit cards took their place. It seems obvious now why each current category name is so much stronger than its predecessor. But missing the mark with category naming is a mistake that’s easy to make. In our last post about how to define a new category, we left off with what is most commonly considered the fun part of strategy: naming. If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve identified that your existing category isn’t serving your brand’s needs....
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