Unlock The Secrets: 5 Game-Changing Brand Values Tips You Need To Know Right Now
Seeking what is important to being consistent
In this competitive era, your brand values can serve as a true North Star compass for your company.
Since they’re the principles, beliefs, and ideals that guide your company’s every move from product development to customer engagement.
At the start of my solo journey — April 2020, I made a huge mistake of ignoring to discover my values.
I used to think solo brands don’t need values. That way, I used to work with any brand I could meet. This resulted in manipulating my values.
Guess what? When I discovered my values like freedom, I stopped working with any brand.
Now I work with brands with which I share similar values. That’s the beauty of discovering your brand values.
In this article, I’ll walk you through;
- The world of brand values
- Unveiling their importance
- The pivotal role they play in the success of prominent global brands.
Our journey will begin by defining what brand values are. I’ll delve into stories behind famous brands, uncovering the values that have propelled them to iconic status.
That’s not all. I’ll also provide you with practical insights on how to craft strong brand values, offering a guide for companies seeking to establish their core brand values.
To inspire your journey, I’ll showcase real-world brand values examples from global industry leaders.
So fasten your seat-belts as you embark on this journey of brand values.
What are brand values?
Brand values are a set of guiding principles, beliefs, or ideals that guide how your brand behaves.
“A strong culture, underpinned by believable, meaningful, and actionable values can help improve retention, talent attraction, productivity, profitability, revenue, creativity, firm value, and growth rates,” — Sarah Robb, Brand Strategist
Brand values are fundamental to your branding and help guide every part of your business from the stories you tell through your messaging to the important decisions you make.
“Think of the brand values as a grounding compass that guides the brand story, actions, behaviors, and general decision-making process in the rest of the brand activity,” — Stephen Houraghan, Brand Master Academy
When you discover your brand values, there are benefits you get, like
- It helps connect your brand with its target audience.
- It helps you differentiate your brand from other competitors.
- And it helps you structure your brand.
If you already have a brand, but without core brand values. Think about discovering them.
No one should tell you that you don’t have brand values. You already have them, though they’re yet to be discovered.
As Humphrey Couchman said in his article, brand values should reflect your company and customer ideology.
Related article you may need to read: brand strategy formulation
Famous brand values and what they mean
Choosing your brand values like innovation will make no difference to what you’re targeting.
Instead, the above brand value will sound like a generic adjective any brand stands for.
When you’ve discovered your brand values, try to point out their importance by showcasing how and why they’re important to you and your brand. Have a look at some of the common famous brand values.
1. Innovation
When you’ve discovered innovation as your brand values, it should be deeply ingrained in your brand’s DNA.
It’s not just about introducing new products; It’s about a continuous commitment to being important.
Your brand must invest in research and development, embrace technology, and encourage creative thinking among your employees.
Your innovative ways should solve the real problems and improve your customer experience.
2. Authenticity
You’ve discovered to be authentic. Your authentic brand should have a clear sense of identity and purpose.
You shouldn’t pretend to be something you’re not. You should be transparent about your history, values, and operations.
It’s about forming real, emotional connections with your customers by showcasing your genuine personality and motives, not just following trends or mimicking your competitors.
3. Integrity
With integrity, you should hold a level of ethical principles and beliefs in all your dealings or whatever you do.
This means being honest and transparent in your communication, honoring commitments, and taking responsibility for your mistakes. Integrity will build trust and long-term credibility with your customers.
4. Sustainability
This involves your brand to commit to minimize the environmental and social impact of your brand’s operations.
Your brand should implement eco-friendly practices, reduce waste, and support ethical sourcing.
This will demonstrate your brand’s responsibility towards the planet and resonate with eco-conscious consumers.
Whenever we’re making decisions, we always think of the most sustainable way we can make it happen — Marina Eckert, Poppy Barley, Social and Community lead
5. Diversity and Inclusivity
It’s not about just framing such brand value and pinning it in the corners of your office. Make your products and services accessible to everyone.
Your brand should consider the needs of all individuals with disabilities, different cultures, and various socioeconomic backgrounds.
No need for racism. It not only expands your potential customer base but also promotes your social equality, hence attracting various talents across the globe.
6. Transparency
You’ve discovered you’re transparent as a brand. Then your brand should share information openly and honestly.
It should disclose its pricing structures, sourcing methods, and product ingredients.
Among other things, your transparency reassures your consumers there are no hidden agendas and your brand has nothing to hide.
7. Customer centricity
Being a customer-centric brand means you truly understand your customers’ needs, wants, and pain points.
Your brand should actively seek feedback, personalize its experiences, and go that extra mile to exceed customer expectations. It’s about your brand building relationships and not just making sales.
8. Community engagement
Engaging with your communities goes beyond profit-driven motives. Your brand should actively contribute to the well-being of the communities they serve.
This can be through philanthropy, volunteering, or initiatives that address local issues, like reducing accidents. Your brand should build goodwill and foster a positive brand image.
Those are some of the common brand values brands discover and use. Your deeper understanding of them can provide you with a roadmap to build lasting connections with customers, maintain a competitive advantage, and contribute positively to society and the environment you serve in.
When your brand executes genuinely and consistently, those values help you create a brand identity that relates to your consumers on a deeper level.
Why are brand values important?
Brand values affect how your customers see your brand. Customers want to deal with brands that share the same values.
Brands can make one-off sales but may face the challenge of creating long-term customers.
Leading with your brand values enables your brand to capture the attention of your customers and distinguish your brand from its competitors.
Establish reputation
Brands with strong values straight from their founders can mix their values into everything the brand does and says, from product sourcing and recruitment to employee retention.
Brand values reflect how your brand wants to be seen in the eyes of your customers. Such dictates how your brand behaves through every interaction and brand touch point.
Brand values help your employees or team to know the goals and purposes of their work and give your target customers a sense of how your company operates.
When your brand values are mixed into your company, they help your company succeed and win the market share.
Put in your hard work to understand and discover your brand values and make them integral to your business.
Brand value examples for prominent brands
1. Forrester
Forrester has 5 brand values — client, courage, collaboration, integrity, and quality. With the client brand value, it sets way back from their off.
According to George Colony, CEO, Forrester, “Getting to customer obsession is a complex, all-in effort that is more of a cause of an organization. It’s about how you behave and what you value. You perform at your very best, every day. With us, you drive growth and achieve more with us, you can be bold at work”
Forrester, as a brand, is driven by customer obsession. Customer obsession is the foundation of their research and strategy — and the reason they get up every morning.
2. Beierdorf
The above brand has 4 core values that guide everything they do. These are care, simplicity, courage, and trust.
These apply to the way they run their business, the way they treat their employees, and the way they want their colleagues to treat one another.
Of these, CARE is closest to their hearts. They act responsibly towards their colleagues, consumers, brands, society, and the environment.
For over 140 years, they’ve helped people feel good in their skin. You can trace care about various things from employees to the environment.
3. CitizenM Hotels
One of their core brand values is environment and social responsibility. They believe sustainability is as important as being a good neighbor. They believe green buildings can significantly reduce a business’s environmental impact.
What they do about sustainability value
They say “Talking is good, but doing is better”. Here are some things they are proud of;
- 100% of their hotel electricity comes from renewable energy sources — think of solar, wind, etc
- They set themselves a single-use plastic goal
- They stopped putting plastic water bottles in guest rooms and society meeting rooms.
- They track their waste and recycling rates in every hotel
All areas of their hotels have individual light and temperature controls
How do you craft your brand values for your brand
At the time of discovering your brand values, you need to think of what you want to achieve as a brand and how you choose to get there.
If you’ve got a brand with some brand values, but want to add other values, look out for a gap where your company is in terms of your brand values and where it’s now.
Point out how your brand abides by your current brand values today in case you’ve some — share your intentions for how your brand practices will develop for tomorrow.
1. Seek what is important or matters to your founders and other stakeholders
In most cases, brand values stem from the founders’ values. For example, if you’re a person who appreciates transparency, when you start your company, you’ll need to consider such value within your company.
However, if you’re a person who wants secrecy a lot, then you’ll need to reconsider other values rather than choosing transparency, because this won’t work for your brand.
So I suggest when discovering your brand values, start with your company founder, then move on to other stakeholders — employees, customers, investors, shareholders, etc.
You may send out surveys to all your stakeholders asking — what makes your brand unique from other similar brands?
Let’s say you’ve discovered transparency as one of your brand values. Explain it how will you exhibit your transparency to your stakeholders, and how will transparency appeal to your employees in your daily operations.
Think of what shouldn’t change and what needs to be different in terms of behaviors and norms of your brand.
Working with your brand founders will help you know the heritage of your brand. Knowing the values and principles they found your brand on.
2. Check out your competitors’ and other brands’ values
Look out for your competitors’ brand values. See how they deliver and say about their brand values.
If you’ve discovered you’ve some common brand values, look out for how they do their stuff with the same values.
In case one of your competitors has transparency as their brand value, and you’ve discovered you also have it, see how your competitor does their stuff with such value.
Then think of how you can deliver transparency differently and ask yourself why you should do it.
Another way you can do it is to look out for other leading global brands that have transparency as their value.
See how those leading brands interpreted that specific value and how they’re delivering on it.
Then make transparency more meaningful and authentic in your way by involving your brand stories, mission, purpose, etc.
Think of the behaviors you should consider under your transparency brand value, putting into consideration your target audience.
3. Identify what your ideal customer’s value
After reviewing your competitors’ brand values, you need to develop your customer relationships. Have conversations with the ideal customers around your values.
Think of things like why your ideal customers would choose your brand over others. Ask what your ideal customers would think you do differently or well.
Are you looking at the ideal customers, seeing your brand as a transparent one? Innovative? Environmentally friendly? What exactly?
4. Write out your phrases or values
As you go on with your process, write your suggested values down. From experience, you may have a long list of 8–15 values.
Make sure the selected brand values relate to all your stakeholders.
Narrow your brand values to those that mostly matter to your brand. It’s advisable to have like 1–7 brand values.
Having many values will complicate your process of demonstrating and delivering your values through your brand story, design, personality, etc.
To avoid future issues, explain and describe what all your values mean to your company.
Think of the dos and don’ts regarding your brand values — how will your team use such brand values to guide their work?
Listing your brand values in a generic form will not help to engage your team.
No one will know what they’re supposed to do to bring them to life. Instead, it’ll result in your employees leaving and joining your competitor, who has well-articulated strong brand values.
Embed your brand values into your daily operations. As earlier said, brand values should aim to touch every part of your company.
5. Try to be consistent
As other things change, your brand values should stay intact unless you want to add some values, but they can’t be modified for a while.
Being consistent, document your brand values. Remember, you want to keep them top of mind to everyone who interacts with your brand. Frame and place them in your physical and digital workspaces.
Making your brand values live
Try to communicate your brand values across all your touch points. Pin them wherever you think it matters, like a website, marketing assets, office spaces, etc.
Brand values summary
It’s your turn now to start your process. In case you need such help, we’re open to help.
Remember not to make the mistakes I did at the beginning of 2020. It’s time you work on your brand values as early as possible.
These should serve as your brand’s foundational pillars upon which your brand’s reputation is based.
Your brand values should be your guiding principles that define what a brand stands for and what it matters.
Knowing the importance of brand values is paramount as they not only communicate your brand ethos to customers but also foster trust and loyalty.
Looking at brand industry leaders like Forrester, Beiersdorf, and citizenM hotels provides valuable insights into effective brand values.
Forrester’s commitment to its customer obsession value showcases its dedication to staying at the forefront of research and technology.
Beierdorf’s values rooted in CARE reflect their dedication to skin care product excellence.
Meanwhile, citizenM Hotel’s value of sustainability illustrates their focus on saving the environment and planet Earth.
Incorporating strong principles into your brand values can guide your company toward long-term success, authenticity, and meaningful connections with your target customers.
Remember, brand values shouldn’t just be words or phrases on a mere paper; they’re the essence of your brand’s soul, shaping every interaction and decision, and ultimately, defining your brand legacy in the marketplace.
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