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Brand

How Not to Fail in a Super Bowl Ad

February 1, 2018 —

How Not to Fail in a Super Bowl Ad

Ads Can Only Get You So Far Do you remember the ad for Mophie from a few Super Bowls back? Neither do I. What I do recall is a small, private company spending what seemed like a crazy amount – around $5M – on a Super Bowl ad. And while Mophie is still chugging along, it certainly isn’t conquering the world. Interestingly though, the mistake they made wasn’t spending too much on the ad. In fact, the 1-minute spot allowed the brand to reach hundreds of millions of potential buyers. The error they made was spending that kind of money on advertising when they hadn’t yet built and...
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Timing a Positioning Project: How to Set Yourself up for Success

November 28, 2017 —

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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Creating the Emotional Connections That Build Beneficial, Meaningful, Brand-Led Investor Relations

November 3, 2017 —

Creating the Emotional Connections That Build Beneficial, Meaningful, Brand-Led Investor Relations

Emotive Brand Expert #3: Polly Pearson 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, Polly Pearson, a long-time friend of Emotive Brand, and an Investor Relations Consultant, speaks about helping CEOs better engage with investors. Polly has been innovating and helping companies build value with investors at leading companies for over twenty years. The secret to connecting with investors in a meaningful way?...
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Machine Learning Is the New, New Thing. But Can It Help CMOs Build Brands?

October 23, 2017 —

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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Brand Naming: Bodega Startup Sparks Major Backlash. Here’s Why.

September 15, 2017 —

Brand Naming: Bodega Startup Sparks Major Backlash. Here’s Why.

Bodega is not your new bodega. The online world is angry with Silicon Valley startup Bodega, which has chosen a brand name that equates itself with the beloved New York corner store. The brand articulates its value as “everyday essentials, instantly.” It offers large vending machines / minibars / mini-shops  – whatever best fits the environment – all contained within a box. The brand calls the boxes Bodegas. Bodegas use the latest technology to create cashless, card-less experiences. Gym-goers can buy new headphones when they forget them. College students can purchase last-minute detergent...
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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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Resonant Experiences and Authentic Stories: What Does Brand Journalism Mean in a World of Sponsored Content?

July 27, 2017 —

Resonant Experiences and Authentic Stories: What Does Brand Journalism Mean in a World of Sponsored Content?

Brand Journalism As a Writer at Emotive Brand, Chris Ames comes to EB with a creative background in fiction, journalism, illustration, and bookselling. When approaching storytelling for companies, he strives to eschew some of the pitfalls of traditional branding – stale scripts, hired actors, stock photography – and instead employ a journalistic technique to create a more resonant, human experience. In this post, he offers his thoughts on the power and inherent risks of authentic storytelling in the brave new world of sponsored content. What is “brand journalism” exactly and why do you feel...
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Building a Brand Awareness Campaign: How to Get It Right

July 26, 2017 —

Building a Brand Awareness Campaign: How to Get It Right

Big-Fish-Eat-Little-Fish World? The brand world follows the food chain – little fish look up to the big fish, everyone wants to be on top, and low visibility is often equated with eventual extinction. Every brand wants to be the next Nike or Apple, right? The thing is that those big brands – those top-of-mind, always relevant brands that even your grandma knows about – are rare. And if you’re a brand that’s still trying to build awareness, simply imitating what they do isn’t always the right strategy. Brand Awareness Issues At Emotive Brand, we’ve worked with a lot of brands who share a...
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Why It’s Frickin’ Hard for Organizations to Brand Themselves

July 22, 2017 —

Why It’s Frickin’ Hard for Organizations to Brand Themselves

The need for a branding agency is hard to determine sometimes. Many of Emotive Brand’s clients come to us after failed attempts to develop their own brand strategy. Just last week, a client sent us some themes they’d identified in an internal brand survey, along with a frustrated note: “We’ve gotten this far. We’re stuck. Can you help?” Why is it so hard for organizations to brand themselves from the inside? Aren’t the people who live and breathe a brand every day the most obvious choice to articulate it? That’s a logical conclusion, and clients who have tried often feel frustrated that they...
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