“People like us do things like this”
—Seth Godin
82% of shoppers prefer a consumer brand’s values to align with their own. Over a quarter of shoppers said they’d boycott their favorite brand for a value mismatch. I wish I could leave it at that. However, let’s pretend for a moment that most marketing studies aren’t fundamentally flawed, borderline meaningless, and sometimes intentionally misleading, in this specific case most shoppers claimed they want their favorite brands values to align with their own and more than one third claimed they’d boycott their favorite brand for a value mismatch. The pessimist in me has a hunch most of them would succumb to convenience, as price and availability still tend to be the primary drivers in purchasing decisions.
For the cynics out there, I hear you, companies exist to make money. You could make the case that values and culture are emergent properties of whatever most effective business model a given company stumbles upon, and they’re the first things to be sacrificed in difficult times. They say, “Come to the office whenever you want, only when you want, take our colorful slide down to our on-site four-star cafeteria. Enjoy unlimited pawternity leave (bet you never heard about that one). We are a big family, and our employees’ physical and emotional well-being is our top priority.” To you, that reads as a lame and desperate attempt to keep employees from jumping ship for the next competitor.
But the optimist in me, which is the me writing this, remembers that although a business needs to make money to survive, every business also exists to make someone’s life better in some particular way. And that companies are made of people. People have feelings and emotions, and although they might find it hard to do so at times, they want to act in accordance with their values.
Legend has it that once upon a time, a small email provider called Lavabit decided to shut down operations rather than compromise its users’ privacy. I wish this story had a happy ending, but alas, Lavabit is no more. You don’t need to be ready for martyrdom, but if your customers can’t trust you to do the right thing, then how can they trust you at all?
On the other hand, in 2019, Madewell launched its first Fair Trade Certified clothing line. Though it cost more to produce, Madewell decided not to offset those costs to its customers. Madewell is still considered the most successful brand in its holding portfolio.
Hear this. In 2015, the world got an open letter from the CEO of REI Co-op:
“This Black Friday, we’re closing all 143 of our stores.
And we’re paying our employees to get outside.
Because we believe a life lived outside is a life well lived.
We’d rather be in the mountains than in the aisles.”
Tell me you’re not inspired!
We want to do the right thing. If you’ve done the hard work of setting standards for your organization and proven that you can be trusted to stick to them, all other things being equal, customers will pick your products over your competitors’ every time.
The world is moving too fast, and waiting for customers to pressure you into making a change is not an effective strategy anymore. I know there’s more to your business than the bottom line, and this is your opportunity to discover and declare what it is.
You probably know what’s coming. You and the team will brainstorm single-word values, then prioritize the top three before moving on to the next part of the exercise.
Here’s how to do it:
- For a few minutes, the team brainstorms brand values. The facilitator writes all values on the whiteboard as they come up.
- The team takes a few minutes to shortlist the top three to five values through a discussion or voting.
We prioritize three to five values because there’s only so much a person can focus on before they become overwhelmed and give up, especially when we’re talking about lofty ambitions. Most companies stop here and are left with a short list of words that sound great but mean different things to different people, which in our case is the same as meaning nothing at all.
You need more than that. When you say you value sustainability, what does it look like in practice? Reducing waste? Sourcing ethically? Supporting environmental NGOs? We don’t want to leave people guessing and getting paralyzed by choice. You need a manifesto, a code of conduct, and a set of clear instructions. Put a stake in the ground: people like us do things like this.
- Each person writes down their own list of how each shortlisted value can translate into action.
- Going around the room, everyone reads their actions aloud while the facilitator notes them on the whiteboard.
- The team takes a few minutes to define the top three to five actions for each value.
And there you have it. Your brand manifesto. It might not look like much now, but with a little word-smithing, you can proudly stick it onto your office walls. And you should. Make your values nonnegotiable. Team and partners should believe in them, support them, and hold each other accountable to them. This is how you build trust with your customers, trust which turns into loyalty, ultimately benefiting the bottom line. But that’s not the main reason we’re doing this, right?