More Than a Mission Statement: What It Takes for a Brand to Live Its Values

Creative Director Scott Lynch shares his thoughts on the importance of living your brand’s values.

I’ve spent 36 years in the advertising business. I’ve been a creative director at Milwaukee agencies, served as President of the Milwaukee Advertising Club, and founded and ran my own agency before bringing it into the Jigsaw family, which recently joined 5by5. In that time, I’ve sat across the table from a lot of clients who told me what their brand stood for.

Here’s something I’ve learned along the way: you can always tell when a brand doesn’t mean it.

Make no mistake, it doesn’t always reveal itself right away. But when a brand says one thing in its mission statement and behaves very differently in the way it does business, internally and out in the market, people feel it. Red flags go off. You feel it in your gut, and you want to walk away. I’ve seen it working with clients. I’ve seen it working inside agencies. And I’ve watched the same thing happen over and over again. People are drawn in by a message that sounds good. They discover it isn’t real. They feel disappointed and let down. And they go looking for another brand to connect with.

The flip side is just as true. When a brand lives what it says, it earns something that’s hard to buy at any price: extraordinary loyalty from the people who work there and the people who buy from it.

So what does it take? Here’s what I’ve seen.

Watch the Decisions

Organizations reveal themselves in the decisions they make. You’ve probably heard the line from politics: “Show me your budget and I’ll show you your priorities.” Brands work the same way.

Imagine a retailer that says it puts the customer first in everything it does. Then a customer tries to return something they just bought, and the store has a strict no-returns policy. In that moment, the mission statement stops mattering. The customer has just learned what the retailer actually values, and it isn’t them.

There are tons of real-world examples of brand disconnects playing out just like that. The words on the wall say one thing. The policy, the process, the budget or the decision says another. And it’s the action, not the words, that gets measured and remembered.

Living Your Values Is an Investment, Not an Expense

The usual pushback is that living your values costs money. A generous return policy is expensive, right?

I’d argue it isn’t. Not when it cements a customer relationship that has the opportunity to pay dividends many times over many years.

Stay with that retailer for a minute. Say a customer wants to return an air fryer they just brought home. Maybe it didn’t fit under the cabinet, and it was always going to bug them with how it sat on the counter. What does the return cost the retailer? Maybe $45 in margin.

So the retailer loses out on $45. But later that customer comes back to buy a new refrigerator, and the retailer makes ten times that. Then the customer comes back again for a new range, and the same thing happens. That $45 wasn’t a loss. It was the price of living its customer-friendly values and an investment in a prosperous long-term relationship.

That’s what living a customer-first message looks like. It’s worth it in the long run.

Values Are Also What You Refuse to Do

When I ran my own agency, we had a few guiding principles, and we said them out loud to our clients. We told them we wanted to be their “easy button.” We told them we wanted working with us to be the best part of their day.

That meant we were signing up to work a little harder for our clients. It also meant we were signing up NOT to do the things that make working with an agency awful. We prioritized operating with integrity, delivering a quality product and not being pompous jerks.

That last one was never going to hang in a frame in the lobby. But our clients felt it in every meeting, and it built incredibly strong relationships. We had client loyalty that translated into relationships lasting three times the industry average.

To be fair, we were a boutique. I knew every person on the team was up to the task of living what we were saying, and that was felt and appreciated in every conference room of every client we worked with. At that size, living your values is largely about who you hire.

Growing Doesn’t Give You a Pass

Of course, it’s harder to keep values intact as an organization grows. More people. More layers. More decisions made in rooms the founder never walks into. But the brand mission, vision and values can and must spread throughout. And it’s doable.

It comes down to a simple truth: you get what you tolerate or you get what you demand.

Think about some of the most recognizable brands in the world. Nike challenges everyone behind the brand to perform like the champion they can be. Apple asked its people to “Think Different” and challenge conventional thinking in tech. Lexus built its name on “the relentless pursuit of perfection.” At their best, lines like those aren’t just advertising. They set a standard for everyone inside the company. When the people behind the brand fall short of that standard, that’s a disconnect, and customers will notice.

In other words, the line an agency writes for the market becomes the bar the organization has to clear. Which brings me to the agency’s role in all of this.

Keep the Truth Interesting

When a client brings in an agency to help define its purpose, values or brand message, what’s the agency’s responsibility?

To keep the truth interesting.

Not to manufacture a message that sells in the short term. To keep the truth interesting, you have to be a good listener to the client’s brand story. You have to get to the truth of who they are, where they fit in the consumer’s heart and mind and where they can succeed in the marketplace. Then you have to turn all of that into a compelling message that connects powerfully with internal and external audiences.

Done well and done right, it shouldn’t be that hard for a client to live the truth of its brand values, because you didn’t set them up to fail. You set them up to be who they were meant to be, with room for growth and evolution as opportunity presents itself.

A lot of brands struggle to live their values for a simple reason: the values were never true to begin with. No amount of effort can make an organization become something it isn’t.

Why It Matters More Than Ever

The world is different than it was when I started in this business. It’s more connected. It moves faster. Tools and platforms exist today that didn’t a generation ago. A bad experience can be shared far and wide in an instant, and a disconnect that once might have stayed quiet can be exposed overnight.

What does that mean for brands today? It’s more important than ever to get the mission, vision and values work right.

But let’s not think about this only from the negative side. The positive exists as well. When your brand is caught in the act of living its values, someone’s positive experience can be shared just as quickly as someone’s negative one. The same speed that punishes a disconnect rewards a brand that keeps its word.

Where to Start

If you’re a leader reading this and wondering whether there’s a gap between what your brand says and how it behaves, here are two places to look.

First, examine your last few significant business decisions. Would each one make sense to someone who had only read your mission statement?

Second, take an honest look at the behavior your organization tolerates from the team. Is it consistent with what your values say you should be demanding?

If the answers make you uncomfortable, take a deep cleansing breath.

Then call me. We’re here to help.