The Value of Values

I don’t think anybody would question the significance of our personal values in the way that we connect with and relate to other people. We constantly apply our super sophisticated perceptive capabilities to measure and compare other people’s values to our own. The more values we share with another person the more we resonate with them and the more likely it is that we will choose them as friends, partners and so on.

Well it’s really no different with your corporate values. They are of HUGE value to your business and if you haven’t defined them they will be invented for you based on whatever passing impression you make on whomever you come into contact with. Here are a few of the reasons values are so important:

1. They bring clarity to your offering because they are the uniting factor in everything that you do. That creates coherence and scalability in your brand.
2. They are a critical component of your central value proposition to your customers. That gives you a laser focus on what it is you are really selling.
3. They engage your employees in something more compelling than the day-to-day execution of your business and improve individual productivity.
4. They give you a benchmark against which to assess decisions within your organization.
5. They make it possible for you to share clear values with your customers and illicit much greater engagement and loyalty.

That’s just for starters. You might feel that your values are apparent or implicit in your brand but if you can’t say what they are, quickly and concisely, how can you expect your customers to recognize them?

Is There An Ambient Brand?

I have been thinking about this question for ages. Trying to weave together ideas and observations from branding, cultural change, economic transformation, consumer trends and shifting values. Just about everything really. It is all starting to come together around the idea of an ambient brand.

The branding community has come to accept the idea that brands are no longer fully owned or controlled by corporations. That they have drifted away into social, often virtual communities that have a say in forming them. If that is true, then brands have become social and there is a need for a new paradigm through which to understand and leverage them.

An ambient brand, according to me, is a virtual space, defined by social needs and values, and occupied by a community of like-minded people. Unlike a traditional brand, it is entirely independent of products and their parent corporations. Instead it exists as a shared values space where consumers gather, converse and ultimately transact with organizations that are in alignment with the values associated with that community. The label "brand" is justified by the fact that the ambient brand is a distinct identity to which products and services can attach in order to attract the engagement and loyalty of customers.

Corporations do not create ambient brands. They must qualify for inclusion within them by demonstrating that they share the values and will service the interests of their associated communities. The brands develop organically as a result of emerging social and cultural codes and are materialized through people’s ability to organize around them through the use of mainly virtual communities on the web.

Ambient brands literally turn the traditional concept of branding on its head and put people, in place of products at the heart of campaigns. This makes for an interesting set of opportunities from the perspective of companies looking to develop relationships with various communities of consumers. It begs the question “what is an ambient brand campaign and how do you execute one?”

Eco-Something is Better Than Nothing

If you take the long view, social responsibility and sustainability are an imperative for all our future economic activity. The truth about the alternative is becoming increasingly evident and incredibly alarming. In the short term however, the reality is that most consumer product companies are unable to immediately make the changes necessary to fully transition into new and better practices. They either don’t know what to do or the logistical and cost implications are prohibitive. Workable, affordable solutions for sustainable sourcing, manufacturing, packaging and so on are still largely a work in progress, as are the services that would support businesses in making the transition.
Most companies understand the importance of change but face obstacles in execution. This is inevitable and will be resolved over time. The problem is that an eco-elitist atmosphere around the issue of change creates an all or nothing reward system that recognizes grandiose gestures but ignores the slower, more incremental reform that is the only realistic option for most companies. This may seem like a pretty small complaint in the overall landscape of eco-reform but I think the implications are pretty huge.
Many companies are understandably intimidated by reform in the absence of sustainable alternatives that fit their cost and revenue requirements. The danger here is that rather than think about what they can do, they focus on what they can’t and decide that this revolution is not for them. They do nothing rather than coming up with the something that they can manage today. Even worse, they fail to embrace the corporate mindset that commits them to change moving forward. That’s a terrible waste of the low hanging fruit of sustainability that most businesses could and would do if they were rewarded for it.
Another outcome of not recognizing and rewarding incremental change is green-washing. Social responsibility and sustainability are amongst the most powerful brand attributes a consumer product can carry in today’s marketplace. Setting the bar to high for access to this kind of brand equity is a mistake because it makes misleading marketing more beneficial than meaningful change. If companies knew that their brands could benefit from a reasonable, good faith effort to get on board with a slower but steady transition to sustainability then it is likely that they would do more to change. This is what I call “Eco-Something”. It may not seem like much but it’s better than nothing and all business should be rewarded for taking this first step towards sustainability.
This is the thinking behind Good Citizen Brands. The basic premise is that in every business there are, be they large or small, opportunities to reform. By taking advantage of those opportunities and committing to greater awareness and an ongoing process of transition into sustainability, a company should be able to distinguish itself as a Good Citizen Brand with the associated brand equity and competitive advantage. Do what you can today and keep changing until you get there. If this seems like setting the bar too low, think back to your first consciously green purchase. It probably coincided with you redefining yourself as green but, just as probably, didn’t catapult you into an entirely transformed and sustainable lifestyle. If eco-reform is going to be more than a marketing narrative between businesses and consumers then business must be judged, labeled and rewarded for incremental change in the same way that consumers are. Those market forces will provide a greater impetus for change than even the scariest of inconvenient truths.