It’s no secret that values-driven brands are more popular and make deeper connections with their audiences. Today, people see your brand’s purpose and impact as part and parcel of your products or services.

In this climate, it’s more important than ever to have clear and actionable values to shape and communicate what you prioritise, and what your audiences can expect from you. 

However, values are also often the most complicated part of any brand or organisational strategy work we do. There are many misconceptions about the role of values or how to best express them. Left unaddressed, this confusion can lead to values that are diluted and ineffective. 

So how do you ensure your brand and organisational values are working as hard as they should be for you and your audiences?

Here’s our top 3 tips to help you avoid some common pitfalls.

1/ Understand the strategic role of brand values

The most common challenge we face when working on values with our clients comes when the lines between brand values, behaviours and personality are blurred. 

Each of these strategic elements are important and serve a specific purpose to shape the way an organisation exists in the world. While each element should inform the other, they should not compete or overlap when it comes to their role in the strategy platform.

Values are a set of promises an organisation makes to their audiences, both internal and external, outlining what they stand for, and how this impacts what audiences can expect from them. They define how an organisation delivers its vision and mission, and guide the investment of time, money and resources.

They are not an expression of the behaviours expected from employees. Nor are they the place to define a brand’s personality traits or tone of voice. 

For example, one of Cúpla’s organisational values is:

We build long-lasting relationships with brave, collaborative, purpose-driven organisations. Together, we improve the communities, societies and world in which we all live.

This value clearly defines our commitment to working together with purpose-driven organisations to achieve our vision of making life better for people.

In action, it’s a powerful tool for deciding which organisations we will and won’t work with. It’s a promise to our team that they’ll never have to work on a job that goes against our mission. And as a bonus, it also helps attract the types of clients we love working with, by directly calling them out.

2/ Avoid generic, one-word values that describe hygiene factors

We love punchy, succinct and memorable strategies as much as anyone. But we’re not fans of single-word brand value statements. 

The issue is that when we try to sum up complex concepts with one word, we often end up with generic, catch-all hygiene factors as values.

Words like ‘integrity’ or ‘innovation’ are appealing and broadly positive - but they don’t tell us anything about how and why an organisation will deliver on this to its audiences, in a way that matters to them. This is not to say that words like these can’t be worked into organisational values - but when they are, they must be used to help make the value statement as specific and actionable as possible. 

Patagonia’s values are a great example of this. They include the concept of integrity in their values - but define what it means for them, as an audience-centric promise:

Examine our practices openly and honestly, learn from our mistakes and meet our commitments. We value integrity in both senses: that our actions match our words (we walk the talk), and that all of our work contributes to a functional whole (our sum is greater than our parts).

3/ Don’t use values to demand relationship outcomes from internal and external audiences

Many organisations fall into the trap of using their organisational values to define the outcomes they want from their internal and external audiences - words like ‘trust’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘respect’.

For us, these outcomes are to be earned by the organisation through demonstrating their commitment to their own values, not by using their values to demand things of their audiences.

Take ‘trust’ for example - an absolute essential for any positive relationship, whether it be between an organisation and its customers or beneficiaries, or managers and their teams. But as important as it is, it should never be a brand value.

Only our audiences can decide if we are worthy of trust. It’s our job to prove we are, by consistently delivering to the wants and needs of our audiences in a way that aligns with our brand vision, mission and values.

The same applies for outcomes an organisation might want from its team members, like respect and responsibility. While it’s fine to seek out people with these behaviours and traits, they are not values. 

Instead, organisational values must commit to building the sort of environment or relationships that create these outcomes.

We worked with Onemda to create effective, actionable values as part of our brand strategy and visual identity project.

Onemda is a centre for learning and therapeutic development for people with a disability. Working closely with their team, we helped to craft a set of values that made clear commitments to both their internal and external audiences:

INCREASING IMPACT

When participants succeed, we succeed.

PROVIDING POSSIBILITIES

Everyone has the right to reach their potential.

CULTIVATING CONNECTION

Great things happen when we do them together.

PRIORITISING PEOPLE

People are at the heart of everything we do.

The values clearly outline what they will prioritise as they work towards their purpose to enrich lives through education, therapy and social connectedness. 

This ensures Onemda’s values are functional pieces of strategy that can be used to guide the organisation across all areas of business, from launching new projects, to developing hiring policies. 

If they consistently demonstrate commitment to these values, then important outcomes such as trust, respect and responsibility will be fostered within their communities and teams.

If you want support with crafting clear, actionable and audience-centric values for your organisation, we’d love to chat. Or, why not check out some more of our strategy work?