A huge part of having a brand is how your company lives the brand. And a big reason people develop an affinity for a brand is that they intuit ideas or values in the brand that they also share. And the only reason people stick with a brand is that they feel the brand delivers what it promises.

These ideas or values can be found among the indistinct attributes of your company culture. The most authentic of these attributes are brought to light, then honed and refined to sharp clarity.

Consumers today select brands, not products and services. And they are experts at spotting a brand that’s all smoke and mirrors or the real deal. While the Brand Roadmap reveals paths for exploration during our brand process, it is the values and ideals your company embodies that are essential to an authentic brand.

The second step in our brand process is to establish the brand’s Core Values.

Core Values, which we distill into Principles, Personality, and Promise, are the foundation of the brand from which all other elements will take shape.

Because what we value determines what we become.

Following our brand discovery workshop, attributes, characteristics, values, and aspirations are synthesized. Our analysis guides us toward those with the strongest potential and uniqueness. This sets you up for success because nobody is better at being you than you.

Principles:

A company’s Principles are its true character. These are the distinctive and internalized qualities that emerge when nobody is watching.

Personality:

A brand’s Personality consists of the qualities and attributes it projects to the public. This is how the world sees you.

Promise:

The Promise is the synthesis of a brand’s Principles and Personality attributes. It is the core value that serves as the genesis for the entirety of the brand platform.

Now we’ll break each of these down and show you how we’ve applied them to our own brand as a working example.

Our Principles:

Authenticity + Drive + Loyalty

We are very much a what you see is what you get group of people at Traction, and we operate under a come as you are philosophy. We don’t switch modes when we move from working independently to working collaboratively to making a client pitch to meeting with a potential new client. To us, that feels authentic to who we really are rather than trying to be something we’re not.

We are driven. It is hard to succeed in this industry riddled with deadlines and timelines without leaning far forward. We’re driven to produce stellar work. Driven to produce measurable results. We’re driven by the idea that we and our clients are accountable to each other. We are driven in the pursuit of creative excellence and creating something original in a carbon-copy era.

Our loyalty is first and foremost to each other, then to our craft, clients, and community. We place a high value on loyalty. And we reciprocate loyalty every chance we get.

Our Personality:

Relaxed + Creative + Technical

Like a duck, we may be working crazy hard just under the surface, but always strive to remain free of chaos, anxiety, and stress in how we handle ourselves outwardly. This mellow approach to work flies in the face of the “hustle” culture that breeds burnout and is endemic to our industry.

When it comes to creativity, it’s not what we do… it’s who we are. No matter one’s position in our company, work can always be approached creatively. It’s about using one’s intellect, life experiences, and dreams to problem solve.

Paradoxically, we don’t just go freestyle creative all over the place. Our work is meticulous, conscientious, precise, and exact. We see beauty in order and structure equally to color and form. We stretch ourselves, oftentimes not to break outside the box, but to create something new and fresh within the boxes we often must work within. Specifications, parameters, guidelines – they serve our creativity, not the other way around.

Our Promise:

Creative, objective-driven approaches to business problems in need of being solved.

Our promise is our default mode of operation. It is easily kept because it aligns with our principles and personality. There is a reason behind each decision and move we make. Is it creative? Does it contribute to meeting an objective rather than just being subjective? Does it solve a business problem? And did that problem need a solution?

And there you have it. Our brand’s core values describe how we approach our work and what we always deliver for our clients.

On that note, if you have a business problem that you think needs to be solved, and would like a creative solution, then you’re speaking our language. We’d love to connect and talk shop. Let’s meet sometime?