Brand Values & Brand Value: How Do They Relate in Brand Building?

Don't allow the AI Tech threats to disrupt your brand-building process and journey. Stick to your brand values by focusing on creating value in the market. In brand marketing, brand values, and value are always confused and mingled in their significance in brand building. With my exposure and experience as a solopreneur and my passion and drive in brand marketing for brand building, I realized most entrepreneurs and marketers overlook these two terms and their interdependence in brand positioning to the detrimental effect of failing to see their significance in brand building. 

You cannot create a valuable brand devoid of human values, and best of all, holistic entrepreneurship focuses on humane values that promote customer-centric and human-centric values. The underlying principle is you can only build a valuable business by creating and providing value to your target audience. There is no other way around it, dear colleagues. Let’s dig in and see how we can define and apply these concepts in your brand-building process and journey.

Brand Values

Brand values are the principles you uphold in all your brand-building efforts for the effective execution of all your brand positioning strategies and value-creation activities in the market. Brand values are guidelines for the day-to-day operations of your business. They are principles for daily actions and choices in long-term decision-making that impact the overall performance of your brand in the market. Values are central to brand building, for they spell out what you believe in and uphold that contributes to your industry and niche market and makes the world a better place to live, learn, work, and do business. Brand values help shape your brand reputation and integrity.

They say a brand is as good or bad as its founder. So, the first step is to look at your principles and beliefs. Link these to your brand values. Your values as an entrepreneur shape and define your brand identity and influence in the market. They serve as a compass for all your brand-building efforts. They guide your brand story, actions, processes, and decision-making. That involves your brand standards and the business model itself, whether based on instant gratification, competitive and reactionary short-term principles, or delayed gratification, collaborative, proactive long-term principles. Values are the cornerstone principles and beliefs that drive and direct your business processes for optimizing value-creation activities. Let’s now dig in and see what is brand value and its relationship to brand values.

Brand Value

Generally, in business, value is how much something is worth. And mind you dear colleagues, brand here, can mean you, as a brand, your product, service, business, or company. That can be in terms of monetary value or the importance of the social value attached to the thing. However, in brand building, value is the worth of your business in the market created with guidance and direction from the brand values of your business. The total worthiness of your brand in all its value-creation strategies in the market should be brand values guided and directed. It is kind of complicated to understand. But that is what it is and should be in brand building. That will clarify how brand values are not a plural form of brand value.

And brand value is not a singular form of brand value. But a business concept you should understand separately in the brand-building context. So, brand value in brand building is the degree to which your brand products or services meet the needs and desires of your target audience. That can be measured and guided by the brand values that help you focus on your vision, purpose, and promise. Your business cannot claim brand value outside the context of its brand values. But on principles and beliefs to guide you in value creation, pricing, packaging, advertising, marketing, and sales.

So, is your brand value creation aligned with the human-centric principles of today’s world or still existing in the traditional business mindset that lacks customer-centric principles? The brand value based on human-centric brand values can be defined and clarified in five ways to brand value creation. Let’s dig in, and remember this is to help you understand your brand value in connection to your brand values that can differ from one founder to the other, one company to the other, and guided by your brand vision, purpose, and value creation in the market.

Functional Value

The basic underlying meaning of value in brand marketing is satisfying human needs. And the main objective of any business is creating value to deliver value to its customer and boost its value in the market. The Functional value is a solution-based offer in the market. There is no such thing as brand value without offering valuable products and services. So, you can only achieve functional value guided by standing principles and beliefs that uphold high-value creation standards in your value creation processes and procedures. These principles, beliefs, and standards are the values that shape the business model and brand you are creating and building and how functional and practical its products or services are to boost its worth and reputation in the market.

Monetary Value

Crazy as it might be in the AI tech apps and software gold rush, monetization, and monetary value mindset has become the underlying principle in engaging in any online business in the creative digital economy. The monetary value is the customer's perceived value based on the perceived benefits and costs, which is the price paid relative to the product or service's perceived value. This value is more on the traditional mindset of doing business. It focuses on delivering high returns consistently on capital provided. Its interests are in value creation for investors mainly interested in seeing high returns, especially in the AI Tech industry.

So, it hardly inculcates human-centric values. Its focus is money and big profits on a short-term basis. Though they should achieve this by delivering sustainable value-creation strategies for customers, their value is more monetary than functional. The Monetary value is the main focus of the solution and the benefit the consumer gets. That is the factory or wholesale type and AI Tech gold rush style of business that delivers fast and high quantities at the expense of quality delivery. That way, compromising and leaving out brand values that uphold brand reputation in the market.     

Social Value

Any business is created and built to improve other people’s lives. In traditional business, social value was never a priority. Inclusivity, compassion, and empathy were never part of the principles of the business game. They created a manufacturing industry to work and produce, nothing else. However, today’s entrepreneurial approach to business and branding represents a human element in which employers, consumers, partners, and the community should identify with your brand. 

The customer-centric and human-centric values should guide our brand-building efforts and strategies for optimizing social value in contributing to making the world a better place to live, learn, work, and do business for the benefit of everyone concerned. That means being guided by bold and powerful principles and ideas to achieve alignment with your brand value creation.

Psychological Value

You can easily measure your brand value by its psychological effect on your target consumer, guided by the principles and beliefs you uphold. The feel-good adrenaline thing is commonly associated with status and privilege. It is like imagining yourself in an Autopilot Tesla and having that floaty feeling of the autopilot that an advanced technology and electric system car offers. That reminds me of The Night Rider, where one of the minor actors appearing partly in the movie remarks, "Calling this a car would be an insult to technology. Cars do not speak and should not." However, that is what brand value creation does sometimes to uplift target customer morale to make them feel better and express their status with zipped mouths of themselves and awe from their spectators.

That can happen when your brand can offer products not just for human needs but wants for those with the buying power. That might result in high demand for your product and services guided by consumer psychological value aligned with their financial ability to demand products and services of high value and benefits to maintain their social status symbol and satisfaction. The principle is to remain ethical and offer the best brand value without compromising your standards and brand promise.

Equity Value

High-value profit turnover is what investors are interested in and looking for in seeing in your brand-building strategies. However, your brand values should guide you to remain ethical in your quest for achieving excellence and success in the market. Brand equity happens when your brand creates high-value products or services. That needs a systematic value-creation business model. So, your brand values should be consistent with your principles and beliefs in how ethically you can churn streams of high-quality products and services with high value-adding services and marketing strategies like advertising, blog marketing, and digital transformation for innovation and maintaining quality and trending in the market. That will offer unique and compelling benefits to your specific audience. 

So, you need to pay attention and keep up with product innovation. You need to adopt and adapt to the needs of your target market and leverage emerging technologies to boost your equity value in the market. The more current and compelling your brand offerings are, the higher and more relevant is your brand equity to most investors in your industry and niche market. However, keep it relevant by focusing on your vision, purpose, and value for solid brand building.