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[ JANUARY 2006]
What Do Core Values Have To With Brand?
Everything!
by Michel Hogan
At the core, your organization’s Brand
is a reflection of the actions and beliefs of the people who
work there. Those actions and beliefs are shaped and directed
by the core values they hold. So before you start trying to
give your brand more sizzle, ask a question sure to generate
some long-term results – “Do our core values and our Brand align?”
Both Brand and core values are often afflicted
with the same disease – they
are “created” to be aspirational or worse expedient, and have
no foundation of truth or connection to the organization behind their veneer.
They are applied rather than discovered
and in so doing
fail to act as an authentic representation of the beliefs
and actions of the organization – leading to cynicism and the loss of credibility
inside the organization and outside in the marketplace.
As important as the
identification of authentic core values are, this article is not designed
to be a “how to” guide for finding them. This article
is about the extraordinary opportunity to be found in aligning Brand with
those core values. In fact we would take you a step further and argue that
they cannot
be separated and are in fact inexorably tied together. But to begin we
need to reintroduce Brand as we understand it – as a
key tenant of the organization.
Defining Brand
Brand is not a subset of marketing, not merely a device for
connecting with customers and shaping their perception,
not a logo and tag line. While these are all useful and
important aspects of a Brand they are just that – small
pieces of the whole. To paraphrase author Margaret Wheatley
Brand is “both what we want to believe is
true and what our actions show to be true about ourselves.”
So
considering that one of the primary influences of action
and belief in an organization are its core values (whether
articulated or just held
within
the
culture), we believe it is imperative to consider one in relation to
the other. Unfortunately few companies look to
their core values when embarking on a Brand project, choosing instead
to focus all attention on the market landscape and customer perception.
And while these elements must be incorporated, significant consideration
must also be given to the actions and beliefs of the people who deliver
the experience. Without this consideration you risk building
a brand
that is disconnected from the authenic organization and
therefore one that cannot build positive customer perceptions. This disconnection
in turn sets the Brand up to be fail internally and externally.
Simply, employees cannot deliver on
a brand promise that is not tied to their shared day-to-day beliefs
and actions and in failing to do will
negatively
impact the expectations of customers drawn to that same promise.
However, when the Brand is connected to the core
values of the organization, consistent delivery of the Brand
meshes seamlessly
with the existing
behavior and belief: no high profile internal “brand education” campaign
needed; no change initiatives needed; what customers expect is
what they get, strengthening perception; employees don’t
feel they are being asked to deliver something they don’t
believe, further reinforcing the values and creating a upward spiral
of motivation and belief.
Consider Volvo. From the outset the founders
held safety as a fundamental core value – “An
automobile is driven by people. Safety is and must be the basic
principle
in all design work.” From that point forward safety
has been continually embedded in the design ethic, work practices
and Brand. It is so woven into the fabric of the organization
and it’s Brand
that it is impossible to think of Volvo separate from safety.
This
is the ideal and there are numerous examples of organizations
who firmly embed their core values in their brand – Google,
Whole Foods, Apple, Nordstroms, Patagonia and 3M to name a
few well-known examples. There are still many more who forgo
the opportunity, preferring to keep the wall between their
internal organization and the external marketplace firmly intact
and then
questioning why their Brands
don’t deliver as expected. The hard truth is that until
they incorporate the authentic core values of their organization
as a key
component of their
Brand they never will!
Resources for discovering and understanding
Core Values:
Jim
Collins web site
Jim Collins article: Aligning Action with Values
From The Forum (originally published in The Peter F. Drucker
Foundation for Nonprofit Management’s Leader to Leader,
Premier Issue Summer 1996)
Excerpt: “You cannot “set” organizational
values, you can only discover them. Nor can you “install” new
core values into people. Core values are not something
people “buy
in” to. People must be predisposed to holding them.
Executives often ask me, “How do we get people to
share our core values?” You don’t. Instead,
the task is to find people who are already predisposed
to sharing your core values.
You must attract and then retain these people and let those
who aren’t predisposed to sharing your core values
go elsewhere."
Patrick Lencioni article: Make Your Values
Mean Something
Harvard Business Review
Excerpt: “Take a look at this
list of corporate values: Communication. Respect. Integrity.
Excellence. They sound pretty
good, don’t they? Maybe they even resemble your own
company’s
values. If so, you should be nervous. These are the corporate
values of Enron, as claimed in its 2000 annual report.
And they’re absolutely meaningless...”
Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi: Good
Business - Leadership
and the Making
of Meaning. Margaret Wheatley: Finding
Our Way - Leadership for an Uncertain Time
Resources for discovering and
understanding Brand:
Other articles by Brand Alignment
Group and broader Brand
resources, exploring the ideal of truth based
branding.
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