The Ultimate Guide to Defining Your Brand Values

Creating a successful brand involves more than just an attractive logo and unique product or service. In order to reach your target audience and form a meaningful relationship, ensure you develop strong brand values which tie into your brand story and overall brand image.

Your brand values are essentially the heart and soul of your company and work as part of your brand strategy to ensure you connect with your audience on a deeper level and keep employees on the right track. Taking the time to mindfully construct your core brand values will enable you to fortify an unforgettable and impactful business and succeed as a brand.

Our expert marketers have thoughtfully written this article to help you fully understand what brand values are, why they are valuable, how they work, and how you can create them yourself, to ensure your business prospers.

What Are Brand Values?

Brand values are the foundational beliefs which define your company's ideological outlook and ethics. They work by guiding your brand's messaging through various marketing efforts, such as your brand story, brand identity, and brand mission. Strong brand values have the power to build customer relationships and manifest a community of loyal customers.

A few examples of where you are likely to incorporate your brand's core values include day-to-day tasks (such as digital marketing) and long-term projects (such as product development).

The effect of brand values extends beyond marketing, as they also impact your brand's company culture, which is why it is vital that your core values resonate with both customers and employees for optimal effectiveness.

Regardless of a business’s nature, all brand values should be honest and clear. The most successful brands out there will have values that truthfully reflect their operations and beliefs, ultimately defining a brand's intentions and overall purpose.

It's important to understand that brand values do not revolve around the quality or use of your business's product or service. For instance, saying you sell the 'most nourishing natural lotion' does not count as a brand value, but saying 'we nourish people with nature' could be included in a company's core values.

Why Are Brand Values Important?

Brand values play a fundamental role in the construction of brand identity. While there are several elements (such as logos, colour schemes, packaging, and so forth) which facilitate your brand's aesthetic visual identity, core brand values contribute toward communicating the key principles of your business's ethics and personality.

Strong core values also work by conveying the meaning of your company, which aligns your brand with its target audience and employees, paving the way for success. 

5 Benefits of Brand Values

To illustrate just how much core values matter, we have shortlisted the major benefits that you can enjoy when fortifying a solid set of brand values:

1.   Engages Your Employees

Because most businesses are constantly fixated on attracting and retaining customers, they often fail to acknowledge that brand values massively affect workplace culture.

By ensuring your core brand values resonate with employees, you can evoke their drive to invest time and effort in supporting your company, which will simultaneously promote the efficiency and performance of your brand.

2.   Gives Your Brand A Competitive Edge

Your brand's core values are by far one of the most versatile attributes of your business, as they can be included in every marketing practice, helping your business to achieve a competitive edge within its respective market.

They do so by defining your brand's personality and key intentions, setting you aside from similar companies to yours.

Most successful businesses will integrate brand values into every angle of their brand strategy to ensure consistent messaging that is also impactful and unique, in order to successfully set them apart from their leading competition.

3.   Determines Customer Experience

Customer experience directly concerns how customers interact with your brand, as well as the emotions that these interactions produce. Because your core brand values are the foundation of your company's products and services, they define how customers experience your brand.

A recent study found that 65% of customers are influenced by the language, actions, and beliefs of a brand and its CEO, which shows just how much brand values can define customer experience.

4.   Promotes Brand Loyalty

By aligning your brand values with your customer's personal values, you will undoubtedly create customer resonance and encourage trust, which can then be utilised to establish brand loyalty. This will not only ensure customer retention but will also nurture your brand's engagement, promoting a steady influx of sales.

5.   Strengthens Your Brand Strategy

A brand strategy primarily concerns the processes and planning behind maintaining your brand's identity. The major ingredients of a brand strategy are a brand's promise and mission, which are communicated through various marketing elements.

By including your core brand values throughout your mission statements and promises, your strategies can guide your team so they have a better sense of direction when navigating through most forms of marketing, and, you will be able to sufficiently communicate your brand's purpose to customers which will encourage sales.

Brand Values Examples

To give you a better idea of what successful brand values look like, and inspire you to produce your own set of core brand values, we have compiled the following top 3 brand values examples:

Bioderma

Their Core Values: "We believe in freedom to create, to innovate, to take action whilst respecting the mechanisms of life and those with whom and for whom we work each day."

Bioderma is a leading skincare brand which offers innovative products powered by ecobiology. Their brand values highlight their core beliefs (such as the 'freedom to create') and directly acknowledge both their customers and employees.

Based on their language, they clearly value and respect the people who support their business, both internally and externally, which enables their company to emotionally connect with both customers and employees, forming a strong positive relationship.

Clarins

Their Core Values: "Cooperation, Audacity, Passion, Authenticity, Respect"

French cosmetic brand, Clarins, takes a more direct approach when detailing its values. They outline 5 major terms which each detail a brief expansion of each core value. For instance, under "Respect" they share: "For our employees, our customers and the environment—in both our words and our actions".

This concisely acknowledges customers, employees and the environment, demonstrating sincerity and mindfulness toward all aspects of our planet.

Adidas

Their Core Values: "We are fair. We are authentic. Our game is built on trust. We live inclusively every single day."

Adidas' core values take a more snappy and culturally conscious approach, by touching upon fairness, authenticity, and inclusivity.

Although they do not directly address customers and employees, their brand values are still equally impactful as they attract all types of audiences without explaining who they are focused upon, essentially playing on their advocation of inclusivity.

How To Develop Your Own Brand Values

Establishing brand values doesn't really involve any creation, but rather identification. Once you have pinpointed your brand's core values, you can explicate them throughout your strategy and brand guidelines to ensure your team channels them throughout each aspect of your business.

We have constructed this mini guide to help you unearth your brand values so you can further promote your brand's success.

●     Discuss With Your Team: Gather your business' internal team and brainstorm what your brand values are. We recommend asking self-reflective questions such as "what does our company stand for?" and "what's important to us?" in order to successfully locate your values.

●     Research Your Target Audience: Conducting market research, such as surveys or focus groups, will enable you to understand what attributes attract your target demographic so you can tailor your core values to resonate with them.

●     Refine Your Values: Once you know what your brand values are, it's time to refine and articulate them. Core values must be concise, so you don't want too many. Select two or three of your strongest values and construct them into a coherent statement that both your customer base and internal team can easily understand.

To Conclude...

Defining and upholding your brand's core values throughout your business activities should always be at the top of your priority list, to ensure you successfully resonate with customers and motivate your team.

While it may take time and effort to dig deep and uncover your core values, it will certainly pay off, providing your brand with authenticity, consistency and a competitive edge.

Elevate Your Brand With PicStudio...

We sincerely hope that this article has inspired you to develop your brand's values. If you are seeking additional guidance regarding your brand's identity, we warmly welcome you to discover PicStudio today. We are a boutique marketing agency specialising in visual storytelling, as well as strategy and branding.

We have worked with many reputable brands, including Clarins (mentioned earlier), Dermalogica, Wella, and many more! Get in touch today and find out how our expert team can help you strengthen your brand.