Topics

Empathy

What’s the Right Wellness Program for Your Brand?

June 3, 2016 —

What’s the Right Wellness Program for Your Brand?

The New Rules of Wellness Programs The EEOC recently issued new rules for employer wellness programs that have made a big splash in the media. With all the recent buzz around wellness, we began thinking about the overall value of these programs and how to build programs, as Obama hopes, that benefit employers and employees alike. What are the best practices for businesses as they incorporate wellness programs into their benefits packages? How can employers encourage wellness, while simultaneously respecting and protecting individual’s personal privacy and making sure employees never feel...
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Meaningful Millennials: In the Workplace

February 11, 2016 —

Meaningful Millennials: In the Workplace

This is the second installment in our weekly series entitled “Meaningful Millennials”, where we interview millennials on a variety of different subjects that are top of mind for us in the studio. As a brand strategy firm, we work with our clients to help develop strategies that enable their brand, their business, and their workplaces to be more meaningful. This year, there has been a lot of work in the studio around employer branding, improving employee engagement, shifting culture, recruiting top talent internationally, and understanding how to create a meaningful workplace for millennials....
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Inspiration from Purpose-Led CEO of Givesurance, Jennifer Rasiah

November 25, 2015 —

Inspiration from Purpose-Led CEO of Givesurance, Jennifer Rasiah

We had the pleasure of sitting down and speaking with Jennifer Rasiah, founder of Givesurance and the Emotive Brand epitome of a purpose-led leader. Starting as a claims evaluator at Prudential Financial and working her way up to Senior Executive at Hub International, Jennifer had 15 years of experience in the insurance industry under her belt when she decided to make a change. A meaningful change. She wanted to make a real difference in the world and saw an opportunity to leverage her deep knowledge of the insurance industry and her innate desire to give back. So, Jennifer created...
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Transforming Business: An Empathetic Approach

November 23, 2015 —

Transforming Business: An Empathetic Approach

There are many factors that add meaning and purpose to a brand, and they all stem from a single source: empathy. Empathy is the ability to walk in another person’s shoes. That is, to see and experience the world from a perspective different from your own. Here we explore how empathy plays a vital role in shifting brands from a bland and vulnerable position, to one that is robust in meaning and purpose. Empathy as a driver of brand strategy When you’re close-in to a business’s daily operations it’s hard to see how your brand is perceived by the people you serve, both as customers and...
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Meaningful Brands Are Led by Meaningful Leaders

March 20, 2015 —

Meaningful Brands Are Led by Meaningful Leaders

The key to meaning is empathy: the ability to step outside one’s own life and see the world from another’s perspective. In both branding and leadership, the value of this ability cannot be underestimated. Both areas depend upon engaged followers. Engagement only comes when followers see leaders connect the dots between their personal needs and desires, the goals of the business, and the greater good. Brands and leaders that are inward-focused and self-absorbed fail to connect with people who are increasingly attuned to the needs of humanity and the planet. This puts them in a precarious...
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Gaining Customer Trust Through Both Experienced and Sensed Empathy

November 6, 2014 —

Gaining Customer Trust Through Both Experienced and Sensed Empathy

Barclay’s Bank wanted to create a more empathetic understanding of customers with mobility issues. In this video, a Barclay’s office manager is outfitted with a special suit designed to recreate the physical world of his own elderly Mother. The suit includes weights that make it hard for the manager to take steps, or to raise his hands. Goggles dim his vision and cast a yellow light over the scene. Headphones distort his hearing. Electric sensors make him feel the pain of arthritis in his joints. In this way, the manager literally “walks in the shoes” of his mother – and every other...
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Should You Aspire to Have a Meaningful Brand?

July 21, 2014 —

Should You Aspire to Have a Meaningful Brand?

The idea o a  “meaningful brand” is taking industry by storm as more and more enterprises look for ways to prevail in the 21st Century, a time of great change and innovation. Should you join this bandwagon? Not before you fully understand what it means to be a meaningful brand, what it entails from an organizational change point of view, and what it can do for your business. Here, we provide top-line answers to a few of the most commonly asked questions. What is a meaningful brand? A brand transcends the market when it decides to look beyond the profit agenda and see its business...
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What Really Matters to your Brand’s Success? Empathy.

February 19, 2014 —

What Really Matters to your Brand’s Success? Empathy.

If I asked you what really matters to your brand’s success, you would probably only talk about things that can be explained rationally and measured empirically. Nothing wrong with that, after all that’s the way we think and talk as business people. However, if I asked you what really matters to you as a human being, I bet you would find yourself talking about things that are hard to explain rationally and virtually impossible to measure. You know, messy things like the need for safety, the desire for connectedness, and the joys of love and beauty. What really matters to your brand’s...
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Good Leadership Character Leads to Good Brand Strategy

September 26, 2013 —

Good Leadership Character Leads to Good Brand Strategy

An excellent post at IMD.org speaks to two attributes that the writers, Professors Stewart Black and Allen Morrison, believe are necessary for leaders of global organizations today: emotional connections and integrity. I think this advice is great for any business leader, not only those operating at the “global” level. Here’s the section on emotional connections that talks about being sincerely interested in others, genuinely listening to others, and understanding different viewpoints. Emotional connections Global leaders need to establish personal, empathetic relationships...
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Delight Is Harder To Deliver Than Just Say

September 4, 2013 —

Delight Is Harder To Deliver Than Just Say

I went back to find an older article I remember reading about the use of the word “delight” when talking about products due to a recent conversation with a client. “You can’t make a product delightful just by calling it delightful.” Above is a quote from Joshua Reeves Founder of ZenPayroll, now Gusto talking about Silicon Valley’s tendency to look beyond algorithms and code when describing their products. The article quotes numerous CEOs using the “delight” word to describe the impact they hope their offerings deliver. They all, of course, start to sound the same. To put the...
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