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Emotional Branding for Agencies: Key Findings
- Stink Studios builds teams around personal passion, showing how aligned interests boost creative quality and reduce burnout.
- Work that makes people feel something is more likely to be shared, proving that emotional connection drives brand impact.
- Constant curiosity and cultural input keep ideas fresh, reminding agencies that originality comes from exploration, not just execution.
Everyone’s racing to automate, but in the rush to optimize, something vital is slipping away.
And that's design with soul and substance.
For Viv Greywoode, Creative Director at Stink Studios, emotion is the fault line.
It's the differentiator between work that looks good and work that lands.
In this episode of the DesignRush Podcast, Greywoode shares how Stink has built a reputation for emotionally intelligent design that moves culture forward.
Plus, he discusses why success, at its core, comes down to caring more than anyone else.
You’ll learn how smart creative agencies are scaling emotion in 2025 by:
- Organizing teams around passion, not just roles, to spark ownership and creativity
- Designing for emotional connection, not just performance metrics
- Fostering curiosity over trend-chasing, to keep work original and human
Watch the full episode now on YouTube or listen on Spotify.
1. Build Teams Around What People Care About
When people work on things they genuinely care about, their energy, ideas, and sense of ownership multiply, leading to stronger results and happier teams.
At Stink Studios, structure follows passion.
Instead of assigning projects by role or seniority, Greywoode builds teams based on genuine interest.
That personal connection, he says, always shows up in the final work.
“We’re small enough that we can handpick teams based on what people are into.
If someone’s a gamer, they’ll work on Riot. If someone’s obsessed with culture, they’ll end up on a Nike brief. You just get better work that way, because people care,” he says.
That approach keeps creative energy high and avoids the burnout that often comes from endless multitasking.
“When people are doing work they actually like,” Greywoode adds, “you feel it in the outcome.”
2. Design That Feels
Emotion transforms design from decoration into connection.
It’s what makes work memorable, shareable, and ultimately more effective.
In an age of endless templates and automation, emotion has become the true differentiator.
“I think design is about emotion. It’s about how something makes you feel, not just how it looks.
The best kind of design is when people send you something you made because it made them laugh or it made them feel seen.”
For Greywoode, the true test of impact is when work escapes the industry bubble and lives in culture.
“You know something’s landed when it shows up in the wild, someone shares it with you not because it’s yours, but because it connected with them.”
So, what really makes someone remember your work? The polish, or the feeling?
According to Greywood, function may get results, but emotion is what builds relationships and ensures people remember your brand.
3. Stay Curious, Stay Human
Curiosity keeps creativity alive in a world of automation.
The more teams explore and question, the more original and human their work remains.
AI and automation are transforming creative work, but Greywoode believes humanity is what keeps design meaningful.
“AI’s not the enemy. It’s just another tool," Greywoode says.
But it’s never going to replace how people think or feel or care. You can’t teach that.”
He makes time to explore, to stay connected to culture and curiosity. These are habits that keep his creativity sharp.
“I always tell my team, just stay curious," he adds.
Scroll. Watch. Read. Go out. That’s how you find new references and new ways of seeing things.The second you stop being curious, you start repeating yourself.”
That curiosity, he says, is what fuels craft, career longevity, and brand relevance.
About Viv Greywoode
Viv Greywoode is Creative Director at Stink Studios, where he’s led work for global brands including Google, Peloton, Riot Games, and Nike. Known for his culture-first creative leadership, he focuses on building teams that combine design, empathy, and experimentation to create work that resonates and scales.
Leading with Feeling: The New Creative Advantage
Creative growth starts with empathy.
It’s what turns design from decoration into dialogue, and agencies from vendors into genuine partners.
Top-performing studios listen deeply, stay curious, and build teams that care about the outcome as much as the output.
By doing so, they create work that connects with real people and keeps clients coming back.
“We don’t just make things look nice. We make people feel something,” Greywoode says.
In other words, the future of creative growth belongs to those who lead with feeling and follow through with focus.
