Brand Identity · Brand values · Component
The stated values
The outward set in its published wording, each with what it rules out — because a value that rules nothing out is describing the category rather than the brand.
The deliverable
What it is
The wording is the artefact. These sentences are quoted on a careers page, in a tender response and by a salesperson under pressure, and the version that travels is whichever one was short enough to be remembered rather than looked up.
Three or four is the working limit here for the same reason it is the limit internally. A longer list is not a fuller account of the brand; it is a list nobody can recall at the moment one of them is being tested.
One level in
What it is made of
Each element is a constituent part of the component. Follow one to see the attributes it carries.
The wording
Each value as it is published, in final form.
3 attributes: Value · Version · Word count
LearnThe exclusion
What the value rules out for the brand.
3 attributes: Rules out · Costs the audience · Reason
Learn
A value stated only in the brand book is not an outward value. Name the surfaces where an audience actually meets it.
The other components in brand values
The proof
What already demonstrates each value — a decision taken, a policy held, a way of working — gathered before the value is claimed rather than after it is questioned.
LearnThe traceability
Which core value each outward value comes from, and what changed on the way out — the record that makes the distance between the internal and the external set visible in both directions.
Learn