Brand
Saying what you believe in without sounding like a slogan on the wall
· 3 min read ·
Put together the values pages of fifty Portuguese companies and you'll find the same five words every time: rigour, integrity, innovation, closeness, commitment.
Nobody put them there in bad faith. The problem is that none of these words distinguishes anything at all — there isn't a single company in the country whose wall says "we work with some negligence and not much closeness." A value everyone claims isn't a value: it's the minimum to be in the market.
The test: what has it actually cost you?
There's a question that settles this quickly. For every value the company claims: when has that value ever cost it money?
If you say quality comes above all else, was there an order you turned down because you couldn't do it well? If you say you're transparent about pricing, have you lost a tender by naming a figure someone else kept hidden? If you say you treat people well, have you ever let go of a client who treated your team badly?
If there's a concrete answer, with a story behind it, it's a value. If there isn't, it's an intention — and intentions don't convince anyone, because everyone has them.
The values that work are specific and arguable
A good value has an uncomfortable trait: it's possible to disagree with it. Someone can hear it and think "that's not for me" — and walk away, which is exactly the point.
"We don't take on jobs with less than three weeks' notice, because rushed work doesn't come out right" is a value. It puts some customers off and attracts others, which is what values are for. "We strive for excellence" puts nobody off and attracts nobody either, because it says nothing.
The difference between the two isn't the wording. It's that the first has consequences day to day and the second has none.
Before you communicate it, make sure you can live up to it
Here's the real risk, and it isn't small. Publishing a value creates a measurable expectation. From the moment the website says the company replies to every enquiry within 24 hours, every reply that comes on day three is a broken promise — and the customer remembers, because that's where they read it.
Companies that communicate principles they don't practise end up worse off than ones that communicate nothing. The gap between what's said and what's done is visible from the outside, and it reads as a lack of seriousness, not ambition.
The practical rule: before putting a value on the website, ask three people on the team whether the company actually lives up to it. If they hesitate, it's not ready to publish.
Where they actually show
Not on the values page — almost nobody reads that. It's in the places where a decision has to be made.
In pricing and what's included. In how a complaint is handled. In what's said to a customer when it's clear a project isn't going to go well. In what gets written in a proposal when the honest answer is "what you're asking for won't solve your problem."
A company whose values show up in these situations doesn't need to put them on a wall. Anyone who works with it has already noticed — and that's the difference between a brand and a logo, which is what we cover in branding and in how to build a memorable brand.
What does your company turn down?
Tell us what work you don't take on, and why. That's almost always where the part of the brand nobody else can copy comes from.