Brand Booster 21 Day 3: Brand Values

These values personify the essence of your company. They are the pillars that support your company. They are the values that truely represent your corporate brand. They will be values that are easy to honor in good times, but must be adhered to in bad times. These are the values that represent the actual character of your corporate brand is the basis on which the stake holders build their understand of who you are – essentially your reputation.

Exercise:
Here you will need large Post-It-Notes®, and a newsprint flip chart.

Start out with a few easy ones. Ask if honest, integrity are important values. If so, write each on a Post-It-Note® and put it up on the wall in front of everyone. Write a note for every proposed value and add to the wall. Prod and poke for more values and keep adding to the collection. Challenge them for values that may be hidden. Values that they themselves adhere to in their day-to-day job duties. (In this one – you will begin to see the different dynamics of each individual on the assembled team and what they bring to your corporate brand) Their attitudes and understanding of the brand can be very different from your understanding.

This is good – this is your corporate brand coming into focus.

As you begin to amass dozens of value propositions, they will begin to ask how are we going to choose the ones that are most important. Well it is easy. This is where we first go after what is essentially the same. Ex: integrity and honesty. education and knowledge. Next determine which are most important as corporate brand values? Which ones might be covered off by others?
As you whittle down, everyone is very focused on making sure that the values that remain don’t compromise what they believe actually represents their company’s brand. They start to take ownership. This is a lot of fun to recognize, it makes you a little proud.

Now let’s say, you gotten them down to the essential 4 or 5 character values. Whew! Take a short break.

When the team returns to the table, have the (5) values written on the flip chart in no particular order. Ask them once more if these values are indeed representative of the company’s corporate brand? If NO, address which are wrong and if any should be switched. If YES, now as a team develop a statement to define what each value means to the company. Honesty to one may be something different to another – especially in difficult economies when cash-flow is tight. The definitions do not have to be any particular length.

That is the end of Character. You now have your new Corporate Brand Character cast in stone. Every brand decision should reflect these values here on out.

Your Notebook To Do:

Answer the following Questions and put the ACTIONS in your To Do Notebook

• What are your values?
• What are the values of your employees?
• What values will you honor in all times?
• Write out and brainstorm all of your values.
• Get others to acknowledge what they feel is most important.
• Write out your main 5 values and ask everyone once more if they represent the company’s corporate brand.
• Address wrong values and switch them.
• Write our your corporate brand character.