Topics

Business

The Art of Swift, Smart Decision Making in Business

October 4, 2016 —

The Art of Swift, Smart Decision Making in Business

Too Many Choices Business leaders can be gun-shy about making decisions – big and small, important and minute –when it comes to both their business and their brand. The abundance of scenarios about the unknown can easily feel overwhelming. But effective leadership hinges on effective decision making. And it’s impossible to choose a direction when you’re trying to please everyone and do everything. To Compete, You Have to Decide At the end of the day, there’s no room or time for slow decision making in today’s competitive, fast-paced landscape. In fact, businesses and brands in every industry...
Read more >
The Value of Questioning in Business

September 26, 2016 —

The Value of Questioning in Business

Questions for your business We’ve been reading Warren Berger’s fascinating book, “A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas”. The book’s basic premise is that we simply don’t ask enough questions these days. As youngsters, we were full of questions, but as we mature many of us lose this vital skill (while those who retain it become stellar innovators and leaders). “A More Beautiful Question” is a helpful guide to developing a more question-based approach to life, society, and business. It explores a flow of questioning from “Why?” to “What if?” to “How?”,...
Read more >
Your Business Issues Just Might Have A Brand Solution

September 20, 2016 —

Your Business Issues Just Might Have A Brand Solution

Top-of-Mind Business Issues for the C-Suite When you spend a lot of time working with people in the C-suite, you’re exposed to C-sized business issues. And those larger strategic problems can’t be solved by the CEO alone, or often times by existing resources. When changes in your industry push you to shift business strategy, it’s a sign that your brand strategy needs to shift in a synchronized way in order to reposition for success. We’ve surveyed C-level executives about the number one desire they have for their brand strategy.  Know what they want? Differentiation. A competitive advantage....
Read more >
Why Good Listening Matters in Business

September 2, 2016 —

Why Good Listening Matters in Business

Listen Up There are a lot of differing opinions about what good listening really means, let alone what it can do for your business. In one camp, good listening simply means not speaking over others when they are talking. While others think listening is about verbal acknowledgement.  And there are those who wait until the speaker is done, then promptly repeat everything back to them. But are any of these really impactful, productive ways of listening? Falling Short This kind of one-dimensional listening falls short for many reasons. It isn’t what great listeners are actually...
Read more >
The Value of a Sales-Led Brand Strategy For High-Growth Companies

August 1, 2016 —

The Value of a Sales-Led Brand Strategy For High-Growth Companies

A Sales Perspective Tracy Lloyd, founding partner and Chief Strategy Officer of Emotive Brand, shares how her sales background informs her work today, and offers insights on the true value of bringing sales to the strategy table. Tell us about your sales background. I have an interesting background that has led me to the agency world, and on to brand strategy. Initially, I got my start in non-profit fundraising and development. A start-up CEO bought an expensive table from me to attend a gala event I was hosting. Throughout the sales process of getting that deal done, he said to me that I...
Read more >
How Do You Create a New Brand Category?

July 27, 2016 —

How Do You Create a New Brand Category?

All Signs Point to a New Brand Category Traditional wisdom suggests that creating a new brand category is a massive undertaking. In our recent post on category change, we wrote about when it’s time to consider creating a new category. In that post we were clear: undergoing a category change is not something for the faint of heart. If you’re leading the effort, you’ll need thick skin, an iron will, and if you don’t have deep pockets, you’ll need to be extra resourceful. Creating a new brand category requires big ideas that literally think outside the box — that’s the whole point. You’ll...
Read more >
Agile Brands Break Through

June 29, 2016 —

Agile Brands Break Through

Agile Brands are the New Norm More than ever before, people expect brands to evolve around their needs, anticipate their desires, and cater to the ways they want to connect with the world. The expectation to keep up with market innovations and business trends translates into a demand for agile brands. Customer behavior is always shifting, and values are changing faster than most companies can keep up with. Consequently, people dismiss brand communications that are behind the consumer curve. For businesses, this mean it’s often hard to keep up. Fittingly, Wired calls this an ear of...
Read more >
Brand Behavior Matters for Transforming your Business

May 2, 2017 —

Brand Behavior Matters for Transforming your Business

To Transform Your Brand, Transform Your Brand Behavior In the end, brand behavior is what drives results. No matter how smart and inspired your brand strategy may be, it’s just strategy. And oftentimes, it’s just not enough. In fact, we’ve seen many brand strategies fall short because they failed to move beyond brand identity and communications, and didn’t provide the guidelines, tools, and processes needed to actually bring the brand’s defining attributes to life through meaningful behavior and action. Brand behavior is all about how your brand reaches out to people and how they respond...
Read more >
Editing Your First Draft: How To

June 6, 2016 —

Editing Your First Draft: How To

Time For Editing In an earlier post, I wrote about the anxiety that can accompany writing and how you can overcome it with some simple steps designed to jump start your drafting. In this post, I’ll tell you how to get from the first draft to the finish line. The key to this: editing. So you’ve got a first draft. Congratulations. A first draft, no matter how rough, is cause for a minor celebration (coffee, maybe, not Cristal). A break helps you make the mental transition from writing mode to editing mode. Editing is how you get your rough draft to the finish line. Your mileage will vary here,...
Read more >
Breaking Through Writing Anxiety

May 23, 2016 —

Breaking Through Writing Anxiety

Writing Anxiety Unless your name is Stephen King or Karl Ove Knausgård or Aaron Sorkin, writing anxiety can feel like an integral component of the writing process – and a hugely toxic, paralyzing one at that. I know I feel it. Most new writing projects come with a sense of challenge, the promise of reward – and an unhealthy dose of torment. Which is, frankly, a little weird. I’ve been writing professionally since I graduated from college in the early 1980s. You might think I’d be well past feeling even a hint of anxiety in facing the brutal starkness of the blank page – that I could stare...
Read more >