Brand values:
a credibility challenge

All brands express values. But not all of them are equally demanding. For many, values are mere words, a form of promotional cosmetics.
Yet values define attitudes, behaviour, ways of being and acting. They must also be felt in services and products. They are the expression of a “moral” contract that unites all the stakeholders. Defining, cultivating and living one’s values is therefore an essential and characterising founding act.

Values: beyond words

Values are not there to look good or to seduce the consumer. Yet some values recur and often sound like empty promotional slogans. Innovation or transparency, to name but two, are typical examples. They are certainly powerful words. But do they always match the brands that use them?

Innovation as a value requires a corporate culture, a mindset, structures and processes. Because this value means that the company constantly creates products or services that truly change our habits and ways of looking at the world. Developing, for example, a cap that clips on rather than screws on is not in itself an innovation, but an evolution (so it is not an expression of an innovation value, but rather of creativity or adaptability).

As for transparency, what brand can legitimately boast of it? What company would make public its manufacturing secrets, its processes or its margins? One can have integrity, but pretending to be transparent is only a very implausible marketing argument.

Values: beyond appearances

Displaying your values by name on your website or in your promotional brochures is probably a mistake, but also a risk.

Values must be felt. When a person meets another person, they will not claim to be loyal, funny, open or intelligent. If they have these qualities, they will make it clear by their actions, attitudes and behaviour; they will translate their values not into mere oratory, but into facts and actions. The same should be true for brands.

A risk, because everyone interprets words in a very personal way. The values of openness, respect or proximity, for example, do not have the same resonance from one person to another; they do not raise the same expectations, are not interpreted in the same way. To be content with affirming a value is therefore to take the risk of falling short of the expectations of certain people who will deduce that the brand does not keep its promises.

Defining values: a requirement for objectivity

Knowing oneself well and evaluating one’s brand requires a great deal of objectivity. Because values, in order to take on their full meaning and express themselves fully, must be lived, cultivated, defended and nurtured. Choosing a value means asking yourself some essential questions:

  • What does this value mean and how can it be nurtured in daily activity?
  • What does it require of the brand and its actors?
  • How does it relate to the sector and expectations?
  • How can it be expressed in actions internally and at all levels of the company, such as in the relationships, services and/or products we deliver?

Defining brand values is an exercise in modesty. It is better to have a more ordinary value that is deeply rooted and always respected, than one that sounds appealing but is dreamt rather than lived. Only then can values become real instruments of conduct and not motivational arguments devoid of meaning and reality.