The role of brand values and identifying enablers to increasing recall

We’ve recently done some research with marketing professionals from Marketing Executives to Directors of Marketing on brand values. We wanted to build our understanding on:

• how many businesses have brand values and to what extent employees are able to recall them;

• explore to what extent brand values underpin marketing and communication activity;

• understand the barriers or challenges to embedding brand values within organisations;

• identify enablers and opportunities to embed brand values within organisations.

Brand values research findings

So, what did we find out? 86.7% of our respondents said that their organisation had brand values, with all respondents being able to recall the brand values. Brand values capture the essence of what your organisation is about, your beliefs, ideals and how you behave.

The following word cloud shows the commonalities between respondents brand values:

As you can see there were some words that were more prominent than others; enjoyment, passion, collaborative, care and quality. We also asked respondents what they liked and disliked about their brand values that raised some interesting commonalities, there were three themes that stood out for what people liked that are:

1. Reflective of who we are and what we do

2. Clear and simple

3. Bring people together and unite teams

“Feel reflective of the breadth and depth of our activity. Feel aspirational”

— Lizzie D'Angelo, Marketing Director

The common themes for what people disliked about their brand values can be grouped as follows:

1. Not fully embedded

2. Difficult to live by the values and not lived by in practice

3. Nothing

“There are too many components to too many values, making it very difficult to live according to the values. This can result in ‘lip service’ trying to express that we are considering and living the brand values by force.”

— Phill Harvey, Senior Marketing Manager

Employee recall levels for brand values

Our Brand values are well established

We regularly refer to our brand values within internal communication activity

We consider our brand values when creating marketing strategies

We understand how our brand values align with customers

Our brand values are evident throughout our marketing activity

We understand which of our brand values are the most important to customers

Planned work relating to strategy

The following piechart shows the percentage of people concerned with developing their brands.

The respondents mentioned that they had following brand development activity planned:

• Launching a new brand strategy

• Recent rebrand, so embedding the new values

• Brand building, awareness and oversea expansion

• Logo animation and brand awareness literature

• Establishing sub brands

• New organisational strategy

All respondents felt that brand values would be important or very important for their brand development activity. However, only 55.6% felt that they would be working on their brand values in the next 12-18 months. Those that are planning to do work on their brand values were:

• Looking to ensure they are still fit for purpose with organisational changes

• Redevelopment of core brand to appeal to new audiences

• Aligning the brand values to the new organisational strategy

• Brand refresh, website and tone of voice

Barriers and challenges to embedding brand values within an organisation

There were a lot of barriers and challenges highlighted with everyone’s responses, but the following were some of the ones that came up more frequently:

1. Newly developed and need an internal comms and engagement plan

2. No clear ownership

3. Organisational buy-in

4. Lack of staff resource

“Lack of staff resource, lack of clarity on diversifying brand within individual departments. Too many projects, lack of clear direction.”

— Anonymous

What do marketers need to enable them to focus more on brand values

Internal buy-in was the most popular enabler identified in this research, with a third of respondents stating this. Other common enablers were:

• Alignment with marketing goals

• Values to clearly connect with organisational strategy

• Visibility of values

• Clarity and stability

• Time

• Clear priorities and areas of focus

“Marketers need to be constantly reminded of brand values and ensure that they are worked the into each marketing campaign or brand activation that is done and live and breathe them.”

— Arun Silva, Marketing Executive

What do you think are the main benefits of focusing on brand values?

• Support with prioritisation of work

• Clarity of vision and comms

• Remember why we do what we do

• Differentiation

• Consistency

What tactics do you think are the most effective at increasing the recall of brand values?

• They need to be visible

• Engaging and regular content using the brand values

• Employee advocacy and engagement

• Simple brand values and not too many

Over the next few weeks we are going to be delving deeper into this and what might mean for marketing professionals and the brand work they are doing.