Author: Dr. Darren Coleman
Defining great brand values: Five practical pointers A surprising number of brands have values that are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard. Seriously. They do. Unfortunately, this only becomes apparent when brands try to bring their values to life via the experiences they want to build. Things grind to a halt because their brand […]
Defining great brand values: Five practical pointers
A surprising number of brands have values that are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard.
Seriously. They do. Unfortunately, this only becomes apparent when brands try to bring their values to life via the experiences they want to build.
Things grind to a halt because their brand values simply don’t work.
All is not lost. Executives that do a good job of creating great brand values articulate values that are unique, specific, active, deliberate and balanced.
This post will show you how to do the same.
Unique values
Unique values are powerful because they facilitate the delivery of unique brand experiences.
During the qualitative insight stage for a large government-backed savings bank in Southeast Asia, being humble emerged as being an important value. This felt refreshingly different to other financial services brands that had a strong commercial edge.
Quantitative insight then confirmed being humble resonated deeply with local market sensitivities. In another project, a healthcare brand understood the importance of being attentive.
Subsequent research confirmed being attentive got to the heart of what patients wanted from a healthcare brand because it inspired confidence and trust.
It also went further than the usual values of being patient-focused or caring, which can sound clichéd at times.
These examples contrast sharply with values such as quality, innovation and professionalism. These kinds of values are depressingly generic.
This is problematic because when such values are enabled through employee behaviour, communications or design, they result in generic experiences. And that’s about as useful as you know what.
Specific values
Specific values help bring your brand to life in the way you intended. Specific values reduce ambiguity and narrow the scope for internal and external misunderstanding. If you have specific values this will:
Consider the ‘values’ of quality, innovation and professionalism further. The scope for interpretation of such ‘values’ is very broad.
This is problematic.
Your colleagues’ or agency’s understanding of quality, innovation or professionalism could be drastically different to yours.
That could result in hiring the wrong recruit, delivering communications that miss the mark or the delivery of disappointing creative work.
Potentially expensive mistakes that don’t become apparent until it’s too late.
Active values
Framing your values actively means they focus on cause, not effect, to compel behavioural change. Quality, innovation and professionalism are not values: they are behavioural outcomes that stem from values. To solve this problem you could reframe:
‘Teamwork’ is another classic example. It’s not a value but a behavioural outcome of values such as being empathic, emotionally intelligent or collaborative.
If you focus on the behavioural outcome, not the value, you won’t get to the root of things. As a result, you’ll struggle to foster the behaviours you seek to engender as part of the experiences you build.
Deliberate values
Your brand values should be related but not overlap. That way they serve a purpose and won’t become repetitive and so redundant.
It may be useful to think of your values as a family of closely-knit brothers and sisters, but you want to steer clear of identical twins (apologies to my lovely twin cousins!).
A brand ideation session we ran for a corporate law client teased out preliminary values of being insightful, honest, supportive, diligent and sociable.
Can you spot the odd one out? It’s unlikely you’d select a corporate law firm because they’re sociable. That’s not what they’re paid to be and it doesn’t feel related to the other values.
They wanted to convey they are easy to do business with and are non-threatening. Sociable was reframed as approachable. Problem solved.
At the other extreme, overlap can be an issue. An urban fashion brand client had values of being confident, inventive, vibrant and fun.
We didn’t feel there was enough daylight between being vibrant and fun, so we traded in fun for selfless to give the brand more empathy.
Subsequent insight revealed that a youth brand that is confident, inventive, vibrant and selfless felt more relevant to the goals and sensitivities of their Millennial generation customer base.
To create deliberate values you need to define them carefully. Until you have defined your values the extent to which they align or overlap may not be apparent.
It may sound academic and like semantics but will be time well spent. Another common problem is to include the value you are defining in the definition of that value. Not a great idea as this creates a circular logic.
Balanced values
Once you’ve created values that are unique, specific, active and deliberate, you need to come up for air and reflect on how balanced your values are.
To do this you need to explore your values from core, peripheral, functional and emotional perspectives (read Professor Lesie de Chernatony’s work for more detail).
It’s important your brand values have balance. If all your values are core your brand may lose relevance as the market evolves.
If all your values are peripheral your brand will be a moving target, so stakeholders won’t know how to relate to it.
All your values are functional, you won’t appeal to stakeholders’ emotions, and if all your values are emotional your brand may not deliver the basics.
Doing this will help you manage the difficult balancing act of appealing functionally and emotionally to your customers today, tomorrow and in years to come.
Summing up
Defining values that are unique, specific, active, deliberate and balanced will save you time, money and possibly even heartache when building brand experiences.
Adopting this approach will help you brief your agencies more accurately; challenge communications work you feel isn’t on brand more objectively; and help HR to recruit people who can deliver your desired brand experience in natural and authentic ways.
This list continues but one point is clear.
By clearly defining your values, you’ve laid the cornerstone for building brand experiences. And that’s far more useful than a chocolate fireguard, for sure.
Contact Us at WeSpeak Global and follow us on Twitter
Author Profile
No results available
ResetThe articles, video and images embedded on these pages are from various speakers and talent.
These remain the property of its owner and are not affiliated with or endorsed by WeSpeak Global.
We are only as unified as our loneliest team or Disconnected Worker community members. No one is immune to feeling lonely at work—not even the outgoing top sales associate, the customer success representative that brings her dog into the office, or the charming vice president who always declines every happy hour invitation due to “overcommitments.” Entry-level […]
Care About and Challenge Each Other – The Two Keys to Team Performance I’ve been a part of lots of teams, in sports and business, and over the past 20 years I’ve had a chance to work with many high-performing teams, at companies like Google, Wells Fargo, Microsoft, Schwab, eBay, and others. I’ve also studied […]
As women we don’t actually talk about our periods that much. However, since I have been taking Peony Rose I have brought the conversation up with many of my friends. What surprised me most is how many women really suffer each month. Not just slight pains, but chronic mood swings, intense tiredness, pain that requires bed rest […]
Firstly, let’s take a quick look at the definition and statistics of Employee engagement in small businesses. Employee engagement is a property of the relationship between an organization and its employees. An “engaged employee” is one who is fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about their work and so takes positive action to further the organisation’s […]
One of the attractions of Work-At-Home schedule is the vision of freedom it invokes — no time clock, no time sheets, and no one to account for how you spend your time. Yes, it is an attractive proposition, but like so many attractive propositions there is a heavy downside — you are likely wasting a […]
Leaders Mistake Hard Work to company growth, success or anything else. It may even lead to something on the other side of the spectrum, burnout or possibly even the end of a company or a career. Let me ask you something. Do you think companies (or careers) on the decline are working hard, or not? […]
The Olympics are finally here after a year-long COVID delay and how Gratitude Wires Your Brain. The Olympic Games are incredibly inspiring. These men and women give a clinic on Peak Performance for twelve action-packed days. There will be thrilling victories, world-record-breaking performances, and soul-crushing defeats. But everyone competing will be showing you what peak […]
It’s a great time to have Rules For New Entrepreneurs —in the last decade, technology has leveled the playing field and propelled an entrepreneurial revolution. As an entrepreneur, you now have more access to information that enables you to make intelligent choices quickly. You have an advantage over big businesses in that you’re lighter, more […]
No results available
ResetOur Mission
© All rights reserved 2025. Created using VOXEL THEME