More than ever before, Americans are talking about values. For marketers, it's tempting to do the same. But will a values-driven campaign drive business -- or drive it away?
If there's one thing that Chris McMurry wants you to know about his custom-publishing and marketing firm, McMurry Publishing, it's this: His company has values.
Eight values, to be precise. A full list is available in McMurry's promotional literature. Do the right thing. Help one another. On the firm's homepage, the values flash across photos of smiling staffers. Deliver raving service. Produce quality always. They also can be found on the "about us" pages. Exceed expectations. Embrace change. In fact, once the company finishes renovating its Phoenix headquarters later this year, the eight values will be beamed in yellow light by miniature projectors onto the floor of the foyer, where clients are received.
As you've probably noticed, values are in vogue these days, with so-called moral values credited by many pollsters as having played a key role in the reelection of President Bush. Of course, moral values didn't first appear on the scene on Election Day, nor are they just about politics. Consumers have long said that they buy products and services with values in mind -- whether those values are religious, spiritual, environmental, or political.
More than a quarter of U.S. consumers, for example, say they'd like to see the companies that they do business with get more involved in everything from protecting the environment to fighting homelessness to improving education, according to Roper Reports, a quarterly survey of 2,000 adults. (Only 15% volunteer or donate money for such causes themselves, Roper also found.) Depending on how you look at it, the success of everything from Toyota's environmentally friendly hybrid car, the Prius, to movies like The Passion of the Christ, or books like The Purpose-Driven Life, can be attributed to the values trend.
None of this has escaped the notice of corporate America, seeking to repair its image after several seasons of scandal. That's particularly true in the financial sector, where companies like UBS and SmithBarney, among others, are hawking a hearty stew of moral values, with their trustworthiness, character, and integrity the principle ingredients. "Consumers are fed up with businesses that seem to lack values like honesty, and are frustrated by trying to figure out who to believe," says Cary Silvers, vice president of consumer trends at NOP World, the New York City market research firm that administers Roper Reports.
If you're in business and you've got morals, then it would seem there's been no better time to flaunt them. But you've got to wonder: In our current polarized times, is there a downside to all of this talk about morals and values, whatever they happen to be? Will playing the morality card drive your business? Or does it run the risk of driving it away?
For Mcmurry, the answer is easy. The way he sees it, broadcasting his company's values far and wide increases the comfort level of clients -- and the firm's $22 million in revenue in 2004 is enough to convince him that he's on the right track. "Clients are more inclined to do business with people they're comfortable with," he says.
In fact, social psychologists have found that persuasion -- which, of course, is what marketing is all about -- depends to a large extent on creating the impression that you're substantially similar to your potential customer, because people are more likely to pay attention to those they can relate to. And creating a sense of shared values is a particularly powerful way of communicating those similarities. Jocelyn D. Campbell, president of T3 Design Associates, a 12-employee architecture, engineering, and construction firm in Atlanta, knows that well. Campbell's company typically focuses on projects in the aviation, infrastructure, and education arenas. But she recently found herself meeting with an auto dealer looking to build a new 50,000-square-foot dealership. During her presentation, Campbell mentioned that her company had recently participated in a church construction project. She got lucky: The dealer, it turned out, was a member of that church. As she does in many circumstances, Campbell also related her own strong Christian beliefs. (The T3 in her company name stands for Trinity.) She got the deal. "He was a Christian business owner," she says, "and my beliefs provided a level of comfort that our value systems were the same."
Even if you're not directly communicating your values to your consumers, there's a good chance that consumers are trying to fathom what your beliefs are, says Dwayne Ball, a professor of marketing at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Along with a colleague, fellow marketing professor Ronald Hampton, Ball has spent years interviewing people about how their spiritual and moral beliefs affect their purchasing behavior. The conclusion: As religious practice has exploded in recent years (the percentage of Americans who say they feel the need to experience spiritual growth has soared from 58% in 1994 to 82% today, according to Gallup) those values are increasingly being expressed in the marketplace. Indeed, according to Ball's research, people who say they are committed to spiritual growth also believe that choosing the right products can help them along on that process.
People express their values in the marketplace in two ways, Ball and Hampton have found. Some consumers have what they call a "doctrine-centered" orientation, in which an authority -- a church, a holy book, or some other institution -- creates rules for how to behave. Others exhibit an "other-centered" orientation and are more concerned with how their actions as consumers have an impact on others, such as whether a product or service causes harm to a person or the environment. Most people have a little bit of both orientations. A Jewish consumer, for example, might purchase food products based on kosher law restrictions (a doctrine-centered action) but buy sneakers on an other-focused basis, making sure that the manufacturer didn't use child labor. This can also work outside of a religious context: An environmentalist with more of a doctrine-focused approach, for example, might adopt the purchasing recommendations of an advocacy organization whole cloth.
For marketers, it boils down to this: "If you have doctrine-driven customers, you'd better understand their doctrine," says Ball. But bear in mind that Americans, perhaps because of our long tradition of individuality, generally tend toward an other-centered orientation. Says Ball: "With other-centered consumers, it's much more of a matter of them trying to look into your corporate soul. They're trying to figure out if doing business with you enhances the welfare of the world or detracts from it." Such consumers do a lot of research before pulling out their checkbooks. They listen to what you say, pay close attention to what's reported about you in the media -- and, of course, they look closely at what you actually do.
That's where a values-based marketing campaign becomes tricky. Few people expect advertisers to be sincere. But if you're going to tout your values, you'd better make sure you truly behave according to them, says Bruce Judson, a faculty fellow at the Yale School of Management. Otherwise, you open yourself up to charges of hypocrisy, which could be hard to live down. For McMurry, that's not a problem. His employees' annual evaluations, he is quick to point out, are based on his firm's eight values. What's more, his father, Preston McMurry -- who founded the business and created its values concept -- now has the title of "corporate values shepherd" and is known to walk around the building offering $100 bills on the spot to employees who can recite the eight values and the company's mission statement without making a mistake.
