When a potential customer is choosing between your brand and your competitors, what information are they using to make that choice? They might decide based on review scores or price, but that’s not all. Your brand’s values — the principles you stand for — can push buyers into making a decision.
Research finds that 82% of shoppers in the consumer packaged goods space would rather do business with companies that share their values. This means it’s important that you put your principles front and center, to let shoppers know that your organization is made up of individuals who stand by their morals and have a strong sense of purpose.
But it’s not just customers: Employees and job prospects, too, will want to know that they’re joining a principled organization, rather than one that is indifferent or driven merely by profit.
The most direct way to state the facts is to release a formalized value statement that establishes your purpose and situates the company within its market. Creating this document is a good way to clarify core beliefs and strengthen the business’s identity.
Check out 12 examples of how companies position themselves.
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What Is a Value Statement and Why Does It Matter?
Brands can define themselves in several ways. Some statements focus on practical matters such as your core audience and product offerings. While your brand purpose fits in with these other parts of your identity, it’s worth putting together a value statement specifically about these issues — they’re important enough to stand alone.
What Is a Value Statement?
A value statement is a succinct list of core beliefs that establish the company’s standards and morals. These are the principles that guide the business’s decision-making. Customers and employees alike can look to these organizational values for an indication of the concepts that company leaders believe in.
The items in a value statement are big-picture by design, and they can include a company’s vision for how sees its industry and products — for example, one of our core values at Brafton is a desire to create “a web without valueless marketing content.” They can also represent the business’s place within society and its efforts to reshape culture for the better. At Brafton, we stand for “workforces as diverse as the world they operate in.”
A value statement isn’t the same as a mission statement — that’s more about the organization’s objectives and purpose. It’s also different from a positioning statement, which is a more granular description of the company’s approach to operating within its market.
Learn more about how positioning statements function within overall brand identity and discover how to create one.
What’s The Role of a Value Statement?
Having an effective value statement is so useful because it can serve as a clear, unambiguous record of the concepts that guide a company’s decisions — why and how it does what it does. This clarity can be very welcome to both consumers and job applicants:
- Customers: A customer considering buying from a new organization for the first time may ask what the business stands for. When choosing between two similar companies, the one that has the most easily accessible statement of positive, responsible values may win out.
- Employees: Managers and their team members can gain a sense of direction from your value statement. Furthermore, when job candidates are deciding whether to apply to a business, they may wonder whether they would be proud to align themselves with a specific company — the value statement can give them the info they need.
Of course, to be effective in these roles, a value statement can’t be a cynical list of what you think customers or employees want to hear. If the brand doesn’t actually exemplify the purpose given in the statement, that will become clear quickly, leading to disillusionment.
See how companies sometimes make mistakes when defining their missions.
Creating a Meaningful Value Statement: Step by Step
So, how can you make sure your list of values is both truthful and impactful? Taking a focused, step-by-step approach to defining your statement is a good way to make sure the resulting document is a succinct, honest, inspiring and actionable accounting of the ideas that represent your brand.
A four-step approach to value statement creation can include:
1. Initial List-Making
To kick off the brand value statement creation process, the chief stakeholder in charge of the project can brainstorm core value ideas based on the company’s established persona. What was the gap in the market that led to the company’s founding? What are some of the values with which the business strives to treat its employees and customers? How do its products, services and business practices stand out within its field?
2. Researching the Competition
If competing businesses have strong value statements, it’s worthwhile to look at those documents and learn from them. The goal isn’t to copy anything exactly — after all, the idea is to stand out within the industry rather than blend in. With that said, there is value in seeing what kinds of principles companies in the industry stand for and how they talk about them. Is the focus more on the kinds of products they’re selling, or their moral stances on big issues? What’s the best way to seem unique and compelling against the backdrop provided by these competitor statements?
3. Collaborating with Fellow Stakeholders
While having one person or a small team in charge of the value statement can help keep the project on track, there should be room for many voices in shaping its final form. Polling colleagues about what they see as primary company values can help fill in gaps and create a document that many parts of the organization agree upon. There is also an opportunity to poll customers and use feedback from the business’s community when finalizing the list — this is a way to put the brand in direct communication with its audience.
4. Finalizing and Publishing the Statement
Collating every piece of input — initial ideas, learnings from competitors, suggestions from peers and customers — can lead to a long, unruly core value list. The final step in creating a polished value statement is to judiciously edit this raw information into a succinct and easy-to-grasp document. The text should reflect the company’s preferred customer-facing tone, cover many areas of the business and be both inspiring and actionable.
Once the statement is published, it’s time for the team to enact it and leaders to enforce it in reviews and training sessions. It may become clear that some revisions or additions are needed. If so, it’s best to incorporate them rather than leaving a flawed or incomplete statement live. Remember, the stated organizational values are explicitly part of the company’s public face and can shape perception.
Check out Brafton’s core values as one example of how a company can assemble a statement. Notice that though our values are published alongside other information like our mission statement, they stand alone in their own section of the page.
How Does Your Value Statement Affect Your Brand?
Having a strong value statement that truly exemplifies the way your company sees its market and its own role brings value in a few different ways, some external and others internal.
- External, public-facing benefits: As noted above, a value statement is a succinct summation of why people might want to work with you. Whether you’re positioning the company as a reliable corporate citizen or a great place to work, a value statement can be the primary text explaining what the organization stands for, with no ambiguity.
- Internal benefits: An effective value statement can shape the way managers and other employees conduct business. The listed priorities can serve as a guide to the way leaders train their teams and how workers at all levels handle everyday disputes and important decisions.
To thrive in these two related roles, your statement should be polished in both content and tone:
- Content: The principles listed in your value statement should focus on easy-to-grasp statements that accurately reflect your company’s reason for being, its role in the market and the way it aims to treat both its customers and its employees.
- Tone: Choosing the tone of a vision statement is the first opportunity to show that your company takes the included values seriously. Whether friendly and fun-loving, serious and dedicated or anywhere on that spectrum, your brand’s personality can and should show through in the way it talks about itself.
See examples of brand tone of voice and learn how a consistent brand defines a company.
Why Does Your Brand Need a Value Statement?
It’s always a good time to review the way your company presents itself to the world. If it doesn’t already have a value statement, that’s a missing piece of collateral that could send helpful signals to customers, employees and job protects alike. If you do have a statement but it doesn’t perfectly reflect your organization’s personality, a refresh can help.
Your company values, perhaps even more than your mission statement or your market positioning, define your company. You’re not just saying what you do as a business, you’re saying why you do it. That’s a powerful thing to define, so you should make sure you’re taking full advantage of the opportunity to do so.
