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Company Culture

Branding Agency, Emotive Brand, Turns 10 Years Old: An Interview with Bella Banbury

March 14, 2019 —

Branding Agency, Emotive Brand, Turns 10 Years Old: An Interview with Bella Banbury

Last week, Emotive Brand, Oakland-based branding agency celebrated its ten-year anniversary. To mark the occasion, we sat down with Co-Founder Bella Banbury to discuss her experience starting a business with her best friend, the importance of culture, and what it will take to be successful moving forward. What accomplishments are you most proud of? Ten years ago, Tracy Lloyd and I were working together at another agency that abruptly closed its doors. We found ourselves unexpectedly without jobs and we needed a plan. So, on the first day of our newfound freedom, we met for breakfast at the W...
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Employer Branding Trends for 2019

December 11, 2018 —

Employer Branding Trends for 2019

Fun Work vs. Fulfilling Work How we hire changes every year. Is there any page on a company’s website more volatile than its careers tab? At the start of the decade, it seemed like a place for plucky young startups to showcase almost everything besides what the organizations actually did. You’d have to scroll through two ping pong tables and at least one company dog before you got to any open positions. But at the end of the day, fun will only get you so far. Why We Work Now, the tech scene has largely outgrown its dorm room aesthetic. Prospective hires are looking for far more than bean...
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Integrating Company Cultures After a Merger or Acquisition

October 22, 2018 —

Integrating Company Cultures After a Merger or Acquisition

High M&A Activity Mergers and acquisitions are at an all time high, with $4.7 trillion of global deals signed last year according to a recent M&A report by KMPG. And although the payoff of a successful M&A is great, these are high risk deals. It’s not just about the financial gains. Reputations are on the line. Stakeholders observe nervously. And in order to ensure the expected return on investment is delivered, a great deal of planning around integrating company culture must go into the preparation. Cultural Integration Issues After an acquisition, the merger is a difficult...
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The Role of Company Culture in Business Success

October 16, 2018 —

The Role of Company Culture in Business Success

The Corporate World is Restructuring Company Culture Your company culture matters more than ever. Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends 2016 survey, “The new organization: Different by design,” maps and draws connections between the talent, leadership, and competitiveness challenges organizations around the world face. This year’s data indicates a shift: CEOs and HR leaders are more focused on culture as a source of competitive advantage than ever, and they are turning to restructuring their organizations to increase employee engagement and retention, improve leadership, and build the...
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Can Collaboration Tools Actually Help Build Better Teams?

September 20, 2018 —

Can Collaboration Tools Actually Help Build Better Teams?

More Than Your Average Team Building Activity If you know us at Emotive Brand, you know we love a healthy dose of post-work cocktails, a Friday spent hiking as a team, or the occasional holiday extravaganza. We can genuinely say we enjoy spending time with each other. Even so, we would be lying if we said productive collaboration always came naturally. Like any business, we run into communication issues. We question whether we have the right people in the right roles on the right projects. Some of us work best in short bursts, others need longer spans of time to be productive. Some love...
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HR and Marketing: Building Your Employer Brand Together

August 21, 2018 —

HR and Marketing: Building Your Employer Brand Together

Finding the Right Fit: HR’s Number One Challenge HR and Marketing? The role of HR has evolved significantly in recent years. Attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent is a high priority for executives, and most companies place this responsibility on HR. According to PwC 18th Annual CEO survey, a full 73% of respondents are concerned about the availability of talent – a 10% increase from 2014. Executives worry that it’s getting harder to recruit and keep the people who are both skilled high-performers and ‘fit’ within their organization’s culture. And without top talent, maintaining a...
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The Power of Debate in Meetings to Drive Business Forward

June 21, 2018 —

The Power of Debate in Meetings to Drive Business Forward

Meetings: Valuable or Valueless? What’s more frustrating than sitting through endless meetings and coming out on the other end asking: What was the point of those? As technology introduces even more ways to communicate offline, you would think we’d see the quantity of meetings decreasing. However, the opposite has been shown. Research shows meetings increasing in length and frequency. In the 1960s, executives spent less than 10 hours in meetings. Now, executives spend about 23 hours a week in them. And although no one loves a day jam-packed with meetings, what’s really at the heart of the...
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Enduring Brand Lessons from the Worlds of Retail, Restaurants, and Other First Jobs

June 7, 2018 —

Enduring Brand Lessons from the Worlds of Retail, Restaurants, and Other First Jobs

Is there anything as formative as our first jobs? It’s a magical time when the newfound autonomy of getting a paycheck is immediately countered by an ugly truth: making money is hard work. For many of us, first jobs start in the worlds of retail, restaurants, and other seemingly unglamorous customer service gigs. There are, by definition, entry-level positions, but don’t let that fool you. Any job that puts you in front of people — people with highly-specific desires, big expectations, and virtually no patience — requires a herculean amount of smarts and emotional intelligence. There is a...
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How to Grow and Maximize Employee Engagement

May 3, 2018 —

How to Grow and Maximize Employee Engagement

Employee Engagement Is More Than an HR Benefit Since Gallup began tracking employee engagement in 2000, employee engagement averages haven’t budged. A recent Gallup survey shows that indeed, work could be more fulfilling for most Americans. The percentage of U.S. workers whom Gallup considers “engaged” in their jobs averaged 34.1% in March. As it stands today, over two-thirds of the American workforce is disengaged at work, and it appears that no amount of HR benefit, wellness programs, or incentives can make a dent in this number. So how does an organization build a culture of...
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Are the “Best Places to Work” Really the Best?

March 6, 2018 —

Are the “Best Places to Work” Really the Best?

The Clout of the “Best Places to Work” List Companies like Fortune and Glassdoor have been dedicated to naming and honoring the ‘Best Places to Work’ for more than 10 years. And these awards have gained more and more clout with time. Much like colleges treasure their rankings, workplaces hold these awards like badges of honor. The ‘Best Places to Work’ emblem is hung from work walls, integrated into recruiting and new hire materials, pushed on social media, and celebrated by the press, employees, and company executives alike. Our work building employer brands with companies...
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