Most Companies' Brand Values Are Boring

Craft.

Courage.

Results.

Belonging.

Joy.

Go ahead and try to guess which company those brand values belong to. That’s right, you can’t, because they’re too generic to mean much of anything to anyone, customer or employee. They could belong to an ant farm company as easily as they could to a sex toy manufacturer or a knitting store.

I chose this company in particular not to show a rare example of brand values that suck. I chose this brand because they provide an accurate example of what most brand values out there look like. More often than not, brands adopt single-word, plain, generic, lifeless words. “Integrity.” “Excellence.” I’ve even seen “care.”

Usually, this is good news for me. Brands come to me when their strategy isn’t hitting, both internally and externally, when they don’t know how to differentiate themselves, when they don’t feel like their strategy even suits them anymore. Lame brand values that don’t mean anything are my favorite; so much room to improve. (BTW, if you need a refresher on what brand values are and why they matter, I’ve got that for you right here.)

But when I recently got really obsessed with building a brand diagnostic tool for some reason (it’s called The Brand Clarity Index, check it out), it made me realize that, by and large, everyone is copping out on the brand values. I had to train the tool I was creating to analyze brand values the right way (okay, my way), and to tell brands when they underdeliver on nuance and specificity. The problem is that everyone in the game is settling for mediocrity on something as critical as the mf-ing values.

When I say everyone is settling, I don’t just mean founders or leadership or entire organizations. I also mean brand strategy agencies and even other brand strategists like myself. I know this because sometimes clients come to me with the brand strategies they just paid for that are boring or not representative of their brand in the first place. I’ve seen fresh decks with brand values like “honest” or “team work” in the year of our lord 2026. Like, invest in a thesaurus. That’s how widespread this epidemic is. Check out the brand values of companies you interact with or give your money to, and I bet you’ll see something like the above: sparkling, one-word generalities that are supposed to engage, unite, and ignite audiences, but instead, do nearly nothing.

Okay, so Shelby, stop pontificating and give us something useful: What do good brand values even look like?

In my opinion, good brand values must be:

• Specific enough to be actually useful to employees and customers alike, but broad enough to apply to the business over the long term, even if its core services or functions change.

• They can be a single word, but a short phrase is preferable to achieve the above.

• While not every value has to be fireworks and orgasms, it should have the seeds of excitement, truth, and meaning that audiences can feel, even if it’s just a low rumble or head nod.

• The values had better not be trite. I’m talking no “community,” “sustainability,” “heart,” “customer-centric,” or the like.

• They should feel like the brand in style and tone.

• And finally, they have to matter. These are guiding principles that embody why your brand exists and how it behaves, so treat them with the gravity they deserve.

So what does a strong set of brand values look like? Here are some examples that I think work, and why.

• Google - User protection, responsible AI, opportunity for all, social impact, and building for everyone: While these feel a little straightforward and dry, that’s okay because that aligns with Google’s general tone and style. However, the stakes associated with these values are real. It’s not just “opportunity,” it’s “opportunity for all”—that’s a meaningful claim. It has meat to it, it’s broad without being general. The values guide employees and strategy, and make meaningful promises to users.

• Costco - Do the right thing, respect our differences, contribute to our communities, care for the environment: Bulk retailer of my heart, Costco, of course has solid values. Instead of generic terms like “respect” or “integrity,” they make them livable by turning them into commands. The best part? Costco walks the walk. Keeping the cost of the hot dog combo at $1.50 sure sounds like doing the right thing to me.

• …and honestly, I had a hard time finding another good example. From Coca Cola to Coors to Alo Yoga, everyone had some super meh brand values that weren’t worth the time it took me to skim them.

Why do the brand values need to be good in the first place? Because anything worth doing is worth doing right. But also because they’re the backbone of your brand. They guide employees, contractors, and leaders to stay aligned with what matters to your company, how it shows up for customers, and how the brand presents itself to the world. If you’re Anthropic and you have to decide between aligning with a certain administration or not, and your stated core values include “act for the global good,” your course of action becomes pretty clear (or else you’re gonna have to update that about page real quick).

On a more transactional note, clients are constantly begging for me to differentiate them, help them to find their point of differentiation, help them to not be like their competitor. One of the ways to achieve this is through fully embodying a set of values that is highly specific to your company alone. Think of Costco: no one else is standing firm on $1.50 hot dog combos like them, and no one ever will.

Oh, and by the way: the brand values at the beginning of the post? They belong to Starbucks. I know, right?

Aside from Starbucks flacid values being the definition of underwhelming, they just don’t serve anyone. The word “joy” can’t do that much work. What does joy, devoid of context, mean to a hardworking barista with a line of cars around the corner that she’s just trying to get through the drive-thru? How does a match as dull as “joy” light a fire under her? What I would ask Starbucks is what their version of joy is, what does joy look like and feel like to their customers, to their baristas? What is the importance of joy to the brand in the first place? How do we push this to mean something to someone, anyone?

Adding a little verb can indict the audience into the value. Maybe it’s “participate in joy,” “be a part of joy,” “create joy,” “joy, delivered.” No, you know what I’d propose? “Be a moment of joy in someone’s day.” This is broad enough to encapsulate all that Starbucks does/sells/provides, with an acknowledgement that as customers, the moment we’re handed our orange mocha Frapuccino might be the single most satisfying moment in our day.

The ironic thing is that the brand values do not have to be made up; they are always there, in the business plan, in the performance of the business. You just have to be able to identify them, capture them, and get them on paper in a way that can actually be adopted by your team.

And I don’t feel bad picking on Starbucks because, honestly, they’re doing just fine. But despite their world dominance, one might argue that the brand has gone flat. It used to feel like a brand with a third space created just for us, special, curated, cultured, apart from the torpor of the rest of the world. Like buying a caramel macchiato gained us access to a zen moment of calm and Counting Crows B-sides on an interesting chair.

Now going to Starbucks feels like craft, courage, results, belonging, joy.

But maybe I’m wrong; maybe Starbucks values are a great fit, because the brand itself is what sucks these days. We can save that for a later discussion.

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