Brand Core · Brand Identity · Module
Brand values
What the brand stands for outwardly: the small set of commitments an audience is invited to recognise, which are the organisation’s core values in a form someone who has never met anyone here can hear.
The idea
How it works
Core values are what the organisation will not trade. Brand values are what it is willing to be recognised for, which is a smaller and differently worded set — an internal value is written to settle an argument in a room, an outward one is written to be understood by someone who will never be in that room.
The distance between the two lists is what this module is for. An outward value with no internal commitment behind it is a claim, and claims about organisations are checked; an internal commitment the brand has never said aloud is a strength nobody is being given the chance to notice. Both are findings, and neither shows until the lists are read side by side.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Derive them, do not invent them
Start from the core values and ask which of them an outsider could recognise. Values chosen instead from what the category rewards come apart first, because nothing inside the organisation is holding them up.
- 02
Keep only what a competitor could disclaim
The same test that thins the internal set thins this one. A value every organisation in the category would claim is describing the category rather than the brand.
- 03
Gather the proof before publishing
Each value needs something already true behind it — a policy, a refusal, a way of working. A value published ahead of its proof is a promise nobody realised they were making.
- 04
Read the two lists side by side
Put each outward wording next to the core value it came from. What was softened on the way out is where the brand will be caught out, and it is invisible until the two are read together.
One level in
The components of brand values
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
The stated values
The outward set in its published wording, each with what it rules out for the brand.
LearnThe traceability
Which core value each outward value comes from, and what changed on the way out.
Learn
A brand value the organisation has not already paid for is an advertisement for a change it has not made.
The other modules in brand identity
Brand personality
The traits the brand behaves as if it had — chosen deliberately, with things it is explicitly not, because that is what governs the judgement calls no guideline covers.
LearnVisual system
Logo, colour, typography, imagery and layout — specified precisely enough to be reproduced by someone who has never spoken to anyone about it.
LearnVerbal system
Name, tone of voice, vocabulary and how things are named beneath the brand — the half of identity that is used most and documented least.
LearnConsistency
How the system is actually held: where the assets live, who can approve a departure, and how often real output is checked against the intent.
Learn