Evolving brand values: Messaging for today’s consumer

Measuring motivation

Brands from the hospitality, retail and distribution, and health care industries have already started to put insights from the Compass into practice for their customers. It’s helped improve understanding of not only segments who have the highest propensity to spend, but also those whose values are most aligned with their organizations. Other companies have been able to better pinpoint employee values in order to make better decisions on which initiatives might provide the most motivation to their teams and bolster their morale and internal culture.

For marketers, the benefit of these discoveries is clear: The Human Values Compass offers a sophisticated means through which to proactively deliver on human needs and values. Marketers may know their target broadly as consumers who buy product X in category X, but companies may not have specifically identified the segments that will drive incremental growth, or understand how (and why) people make the choices they make and take the actions they take. For example, we recently used the Compass to help a client understand its total potential market population by assessing segmentation clusters along certain patterns of behavior based on characteristics such as income, spending motivations, and enthusiasm about the brand.

That journey can start by asking the right questions. In the case of the Values Compass, we consider questions ranging from people’s willingness to take risks to their views on the importance of personal relationships. Armed with that information, marketers can begin to better understand customer segmentation and develop deeper, more motivating insights into creative, messaging, and tactics. This helps marketers to align business priorities with customer values and develop effective programs and campaigns. For examples, if a company can ascertain whether someone is motivated by belonging or giving back to their community, they can begin to identify how to interact with those prospects with greater precision.

We have also discovered that, in a world in which people are seeking control and need reassurance from organizations, companies should also clearly communicate their ethical practices and actions through campaigns and actions that bring these values to life. Deloitte Digital’s Heat agency used interviews and Values Compass data to help a Pennsylvania-based health care provider find ways to communicate its commitment to addressing how social, economic, and environmental determinants drive health system usage and customer behavior. The resulting solution included a visual brand identity that brought these values to life, demonstrating that a nuanced, informed understanding of an audience can give rise to emotional creative campaigns that drive meaningful, positive health outcomes.

With improved understanding of values in a changing world, brands can pursue empathy at scale and drive deeper, more meaningful connections with their communities and customers. The essential human values such as control and caring are often driven by a lifetime of experiences, but can be shifted or amplified by a dramatic shakeup like a pandemic. What the pandemic has taught us is that organizations can position themselves to thrive if their purpose overlaps with what we all share and experience as human values.