Challenging Brands to Go Beyond Status Quo with Kim Christfort of Deloitte Greenhouse®

Mar 14

Kim Christfort is National Managing Director of Deloitte Greenhouse®, a division of Deloitte that helps executives tackle tough business challenges through immersive, facilitated lab experiences.

In this episode of Let's Talk Limbic Sparks, Kim reveals what it takes for brands and leaders to go beyond status quo, to activate new opportunities that overcome challenges, and to create differentiation that sparks brand desire and drives business growth.

We explore why most business executives shy away from emotion in business environments, despite the powerful role that it plays in people's decisions and behaviors, and how it can actually lead to the results they are striving to achieve.

Key Takeaways and Soundbites:

“The common thread for everything I've done in my life is this desire to try new things and go beyond the status quo.”

“One reason why it's hard to get to breakthrough is that the normal day-to-day requirements tax your brain so much. You're so busy keeping heads above water and widgets moving on the line, or whatever it is you're trying to do, that you don't have the space to take a step back and really think and consider the whole problem and what you're trying to accomplish.”

“I would argue that emotion is essential not only for customers and how you connect your customers with your brand, but even for your own company and for yourself and the way you think about things. Fundamentally we are human beings, we are not robots, and we have to synthesize those two parts of our being, the rational side and the emotional side, in order to get a full perspective on whatever the situation is.”

“Our decisions don't always start with reason. I think there's power acknowledging also that what we're really seeking often times is connection, and connection is rational in many ways but it's also deeply emotional. And connection is what sustains things from a transaction in time to a sustained relationship over time. That's what, I think, brands are ultimately trying to achieve.”

“I think there are a lot of associations with emotions that are unhelpful when applying them in a business context. It's considered to be soft, versus hard. It's considered to be maybe a distraction versus a core. I think that people don't often recognize the power of the emotion and we become too intellectual. A lot of how we measure success it's in things that you can count and things that you can easily measure, and things that can be more efficient. A lot of emotion is a means to an end. It's a way of getting to a better product, a stickier product, deeper loyalty deeper connection and that's incredibly impactful and harder to measure. So people might dismiss it, not realizing the power that it actually has.”

“Based on the thousands of experiences that we've done, emotion is actually the most important thing... We're motivated by this deep underpinning of desire and needs and wants and circumstances, and that's emotion.”

“It's so important to think about, what are the major interactions that people have with your brand and are those interactions consistent with the message and the emotions that you're trying to evoke. Because if they aren't, it's actually worse in a way. If you're going to claim a space and disappoint people on that, it's worse than not claiming a space at all.”

“The brand is only as good as the experiences you put behind it.”

Kim also talks in depth about brands that go beyond status quo to create desire - Tesla, Trader Joe’s, Disneyland, Patagonia, Restoration Hardware.

Here are some fun facts about Kim…

Kim Christfort is the National Managing Director of The Deloitte Greenhouse® Experience team, which exists to help leaders and their teams disrupt ordinary thinking, bring clarity to decision-making and reveal new opportunities for growth. She is a frequent speaker and coach for global businesses, providing insights, crafting methods that unlock opportunities, and facilitating immersive, interactive sessions that accelerate breakthroughs.

Deloitte Greenhouse® is a registered trademark of Deloitte.