A value isn’t a value unless it costs you something. “Innovation,” “quality,” “service-oriented” are the costs of doing business. Name a highly profitable company that is against any those things. They’re not brand values, they’re just minimum operational standards.
The simple test on whether something is truly a brand value is whether you would continue to do it, even if you lose sales and profit because of it. If you still choose to do it anyway because you believe that is how your business should operate.
CVS recently made a brave move that lives up to that test. Last week, they’ve decided to change their name to CVS Health and to cease selling tobacco products. Selling cigarettes makes them money. They’re projected to lose $2 billion in annual revenue because of this action. It’s unclear whether making this move will bring in more customers. Will people really choose to buy more from them because they stopped selling Marlboros? It’s hard to say. But this decision allows them to stand a moral high ground to make powerful claims on their commitment to health related products. It gives them the ability to say that they truly live up to their marketing messages in a world filled with half-hearted double-speak.
The fast food industry may want to take note. How should they respond to the thousands of workers who went on strike to get higher wages?
What if they said, “we agree it’s not a living wage. We don’t think our non-managerial front line employees should have that job for the rest of their lives. They’re not meant to be sustainable careers. So instead of paying them more. We’re going to use that money and invest in a comprehensive education program to train them for better jobs, so they don’t stay here forever.”
Who could be against them on that? Who could say, “no, we don’t want to better ourselves. We want to do the same job and just get paid more.”
Starbucks recently did pretty much that by offering to pay half of employees’ tuition for Arizona State University’s online bachelor’s degree program. Their mission is to inspire and nurture the human spirit. What better way to demonstrate that than by helping their employees to better themselves, so they have the option to pursue other careers?
The future of branding doesn’t lay in more sophisticated strategic models or clever tactics. The future is in finding new ways on how to demonstrate your brand promise and living by your values.