How To Define Your Brand’s Values
Since founding Ellin Lolis Consulting nearly a decade ago, I’ve helped 98.7% of my clients around the world land spots in top MBA programs, like Harvard Business School and the Wharton School.
With many schools receiving 10,000+ applications for just a few hundred spots a year, competition is fierce. Over the years, it’s become clear that the candidates who get into top programs are those who can clearly articulate and build upon their values in their applications.
The other ~90% of applicants are simply forgotten.
The stats are little better in the business world, with 80% of consumers forgetting branded content after just 3 days. The main reason? According to neuroscientist Carmen Simon, the most common reason consumers forget branded content is because they consider it irrelevant.
Though it can be a challenge, brands that can truly and genuinely justify how their actions, mission, and purpose align with their values are one step closer to building memorable, meaningful connections with their audiences. That’s because clearly defined values serve as a compass for your brand, guiding your company’s visual identity, messages, and even actions.
Many companies, however, have never taken the time to define their values, ensuring their audiences will quickly forget about them.
This is why we’ve compiled some suggestions for defining and communicating your brand’s values clearly so that you can leverage this knowledge to your advantage. By answering the following questions, you can build a foundation to illustrate your brand’s uniqueness through its values.
What makes your brand unique?
Try to write down the core aspects of your brand’s personality, including strengths and weaknesses. Think about your brand’s main accomplishments or challenges, and how aspects of your brand’s personality influenced you to act.
If you’re having trouble getting started, or aren’t sure you’ve really identified the right path forward, polling clients and co-workers can be an excellent resource to help you zero in on this information. Ask them what are the most defining aspects of your company’s personality and to provide some examples of when they have observed this.
What has driven your brand’s choices?
Take a look back at your company’s experiences to identify the “tipping points” in your brand’s story. Think about the main choices and why your brand made them. What has led your brand to the point you are at now?
Thinking about this progression and writing down the main mile-markers that have guided it will be very helpful in thinking about the most important crossroads for your brand and what motivations lie behind them.
What are the most impactful moments in your brand’s history?
In what moments did you feel your brand was most engaged or fulfilling its purpose? Have you overcome any challenges that marked your identity? What events have really made you think differently about your brand and the work it’s doing?
Questions like these can help you get to the heart of the ideas that resonate with you most, and will help you discuss the motivations and influences that are behind your brand’s desired impact.
Why does all of this matter?
Once you have decided on the main ideas that are the most relevant to your brand, you can start to expand upon those and prepare to use them by establishing their importance.
Doing this is necessary to prove your points and show your audience the bigger context of your values.
TOP TIP: Regardless of which values you choose, make sure they are genuine and that you can point to specific moments in your brand’s history during which it has acted on this value. Without concrete examples of your motivations and values, your content will neither be convincing nor memorable.
For each of your brand’s main values and characteristics, write down why they matter. In doing this, try to think about change. What changes have these concepts brought to your brand and the work it does, and how does this demonstrate progress? Or, what lessons have they taught you and why are those lessons significant? Then, try to establish how you will use these lessons/changes in the future - in what ways will they change your brand’s future actions and what impact will this have?
What should you avoid when defining your brand’s values?
Brand values can be difficult to define and properly utilize, so there are a lot of common mistakes that companies make that cause them to fail to make them stand out from the rest. As you brainstorm how you will utilize your values and characteristics when communicating with your audience, it’s important to think about some of these easily committed errors.
Don’t be vague
Values are inherently abstract and subjective, so it is extremely difficult to paint a vivid, memorable picture to your audience about how your brand implements those values on a daily basis. However, you must find a way to illustrate them clearly.
Although the value itself may be a vast concept, throughout your content, you must show your audience what it means in your context through examples.
Don’t choose too many ideas for one piece of content
Another way you will produce content that sticks in readers’ minds is by keeping it simple.
Depending on the type of post, you want to focus on one, and no more than three, main values or characteristics. This will ensure you have the space to elaborate on what these values mean to your brand, give examples, and potentially discuss any lessons learned or best practices you’ve discovered.
Don’t use cliches
While you may think that common hooks like “We want to make a difference” or “We are passionate about social impact” may engage the reader, in fact, this is not the way to highlight your uniqueness. Instead, be specific, stick to your own context and lessons learned, and be yourself.
Don’t forget to share stories
In today’s attention economy, an ever-increasing stream of inputs battling for our ever-decreasing attention spans. That means that, even if you have clearly defined your brand’s values, you might still fail to connect with your audience in a meaningful, memorable way.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a tool that would reliably cut through all the distraction?
Luckily, such a tool already exists. In fact, storytelling has been the key to hacking the brain’s circuitry since long before the first word was ever written down (even Harvard Business School agrees!)
In fact, the importance of storytelling has only become even more entrenched as research on the topic emerges, meaning stories remain one of the most efficient means we have to transmit information to others.
Yet, with thought leaders reinforcing that stories are not only important but an essential tool for modern brands, it’s clear that the ability to tell compelling stories is an advantage. As such, when turning your brand values into content, ensure that you express these values through stories.
A statement like, “We are committed to helping our community,” for example, is very likely to get overlooked.
On the other hand, sharing a story about how your brand responded to a national shortage in medical supplies by refitting a major factory to produce these much-needed supplies, rather than its usual soft drink packaging, is a powerful way to show your audience that your brand lives its values.
More importantly, story-driven content sticks. The story I shared above? I heard it nearly 2 years ago and can still recall it perfectly today. Additionally, every time I run across this brand’s products, I’m reminded of how the company acted upon its values and earned my loyalty and admiration.
If you’re looking to truly and genuinely justify how your brand’s actions, mission, and purpose align with your values to build memorable, meaningful connections with their audiences, get in touch with the brand strategists at Clover Collective. I’ve collaborated on client branding exercises with the Clover team and highly recommend them. Get in touch and schedule a complimentary consultation with them today.
Ellin Lolis is the founder and president of Ellin Lolis Consulting, a global MBA admissions consulting firm with a 98.7% success rate. As an award-winning writer and certified career coach, Ellin has nearly a decade of experience helping clients get admitted to top MBA programs around the world, ensuring their degree fits into a successful career and personal plan. Ellin is passionate about working with future world-changers and empowering them to reach their goals. A graduate of Vanderbilt University and Miami Ad School, Ellin is an avid outdoor enthusiast and dog lover who splits her time between Texas and Brazil.
