30 Jan “Quality” Brand Values

Let’s talk about brand values shall we?

BRAND VALUE BREAKDOWN

Brand values is a term you will hear a lot when it comes to branding and marketing. But what does that phrase actually mean? And how do you go about choosing brand values that differ from what everyone else has?

Brand values are essentially a set of principles that are set out to shape and guide your business. They should be an internal facing part of your business, and don’t really need to be included on your website or social media.

However, lots of companies do exactly this and it often forms some sort of beautifully written manifesto or rallying cry on their website. 

If it works for you, there is something quite powerful in stating who you are and what you stand for, in an assertive way—it can actually be really persuasive.

UNDERSTANDING WHAT YOUR VALUES ARE

Your brand values should be in place before you go ahead and start building your brand identity—but most people tend to skip this part, resulting in a brand that just doesn’t hit the mark when it comes to targeting the right people, with the right message.

So how can you start deciding what are the best values that work for your brand? Well, that’s what FIT specialise in. After a quick consultation Skype call, or over a coffee, we can usually get a good feel for you, your business and what you stand for.

We’re really good listeners, and we may record the chat so we can listen to it again. More times than not, your values come out through just chatting and telling your story, and you won’t even realise it at the time.

There’s three main things that we want to get a deeper understanding of:

— Why are people coming to you for your services?

— How is your brand making those people feel?

— What are you actually delivering to them?

“YOU DON’T NEED BRAND VALUES”

Brand values often get a bad rep for being pointless and a waste of time, or at least in our experience we’ve had a few clients who are happy to forego that part of the process. You will hear people tell you to just get a logo done for cheap and get a WIX website up in a day – you don’t need brand values. Your clients won’t even care—or even worse, just Google some brand values and pick some that you think sounds like you, then be done with it.

We actually came across a website that picks out some generic brand values for you. It’s called ZeBrand – don’t use it, it’s shit. It will spit out some lovely, generic values for you like Quality, Trustworthy and Honesty. As if those shouldn’t be an already inclusive part of every brand. Would you really want a brand that comes across as shady, or tries to deceive you, or delivers a product or service that’s not high quality?

Besides having generic brand values, we personally don’t like single word brand values that aren’t supported by a meaningful rationale. Single words just don’t say enough about your brand. Try and expand on that single word.

THAT’S QUALITY!

Let’s take Quality as a horrible example. Why does quality matter to your brand?

Is it because you are meticulous, or a perfectionist, so everything is checked 100 times before you approve it? 

Is it because you only source the finest ingredients known to man? 

Or maybe it’s because you take feedback from clients and use that to be constantly improving your product or service.

All of these things are suggestive of a quality brand, but they sound far more powerful when you actually think about the why and write that down.

CONSIDERATION AND REPRESENTATION

So don’t just list your brand values in a notepad and think—right, that box is checked. You should be constantly analysing every piece of content you put out, and considering, does this showcase my brand values? Of course it doesn’t need to represent them all! But satisfying a few of them keeps your messaging on point, and ensures you are targeting the right audience with your message.

So before you go ahead and create that Wix website, or buy a pre-made logo from Fiverr, consider spending some time thinking about your brand values. Having a solid set of brand values in place allows you to make design decisions a lot easier. The thing is, you are probably already forming them without even realising. A personal brand is exactly that—personal. Your brand values should represent who you truly are. 

Thanks for reading guys, I hope you enjoyed this short chat about brand values.

As always, if you have any questions or want our opinion on what your brand values are, how to take them further or how to start implementing them into visuals then please drop us a message—we would be happy to help out.

— Marina