Why Your Marketing Should Directly Reflect Your Brand Values

I recently read an article about the importance of brands being true to their values and staying aligned with their customer base. At first glance, that’s so obvious, yet businesses repeatedly go off the rails and their brand and profits take a hit. Let’s examine an example of a well-known business that ran a campaign misaligned with its brand values and ways that small businesses can learn from historical flops and instead promote themselves in keeping with their values.

The Bud Light Debacle

You may remember the Bud Light advertising debacle from April 2023. Bud Light aimed to course correct its declining beer sales and attract younger drinkers. According to Forbes, Alissa Heinerscheid, Bud Light’s Vice President of Marketing, said: “Evolving the brand’s approach to be more inclusive, by appealing to a broader diversity of consumers including women was key. She also commented that this growth plan would require moving away from ‘fratty and out-of-touch humor.’”²

Next the company launched a now famous social media campaign with a transgender influencer, printing her face on beer cans and sending her free product for her to feature in her collaboration. If this decision was based on research and corporate values to support the LGBTQ community, the organization could have dug deeper to responsibly support other initiatives important to this group. Did the company also evolve its HR policies and community outreach to support this segment of consumers? Or did they just look to superficially entice LGBTQ buyers to consider drinking its brand? How the company approached the effort to attract new consumers is where it went wrong.

Furthermore, Bud Light’s campaign was counter-cultural to its core audience of conservative males. As Wilfred Reilly questioned in National Review,³ why on earth would you completely alienate your primary customer base?

What is your customer base telling you?

If you want to broaden your consumer base and be more inclusive, why don’t you ask your fan base how they’d like you to do that? Then carefully create internal and external initiatives that align with that feedback. I can see commercials that show a diverse group of individuals of all ages, nationalities and gender preferences drinking cold beers and even supporting a worthy cause like breast cancer awareness. I don’t mean that to be tongue in cheek. With the fact that one in eight women in the United States will develop breast cancer in her lifetime,⁴ that’s a lot of mothers, sisters, daughters and friends impacted. I’d bet that people of all genders want to correct that statistic, but I guarantee I’d test that with my core buyers before developing that campaign.

Marketing for Small Business Aligned to Your Brand Values

Of course, this is an example from a big enterprise with a big budget. Often when you go big, so does your impact—positively or negatively. However, even as small businesses need to right-size their marketing campaigns, those done well can have a meaningful effect.

As a woman-owned small business, Tell Your Tale Marketing & Design prioritizes working with other female entrepreneurs and small businesses. For about 10 years, we’ve sponsored the Women Driving Business event series, organized by the Houston West Chamber of Commerce and a core group of dedicated volunteers. Sponsoring this annual event series allows us to network with female business owners and women leaders. As the adage goes, “people buy from those they know, like and trust.” It makes sense that by investing in this event series with funds and time, we continue to earn new customers. We also intentionally choose to work with the other sponsors, especially those that are women-owned, from the florist to the promotional products owner. The clothing boutique owner is also a personal favorite!

I also meet monthly with a group of female business owners to share lessons learned as well as challenges. This also aligns with our business values because 1) these are other women-owned businesses and 2) leaning into a broad range of industries with leaders committed to ongoing learning fuels our own continuous improvements. That in turn helps us use more efficient processes, but perhaps more importantly the diversity of thought helps us brake out of our silos and be more empathetic to those with different opinions.

As I touched on earlier, we’re selective about the vendors with whom we work. From our CPA to our promotional products company, we intentionally choose to partner with small businesses. Why is this important? For starters, as a small business owner myself, I identify with the challenges and opportunities facing this market. Employees at many small businesses find themselves wearing multiple hats and pitching in to help when a colleague is out of the office. On the upside, that allows staff to learn how others (even other departments) function, which can breed sympathy and develop new skills. However, the downside is that small businesses typically don’t have the extra capital and headcount that large enterprises do. Pandemics, labor shortages, inflation, laws and regulations can therefore have a more dramatic impact on small businesses.

Also while a small business employs fewer people as individual entities, small businesses make an important impact on the American economy. Consider the following “Small Business Statistics of 2024” in Forbes Advisor.¹

• “33.3 million businesses in the United States qualify as small businesses, making up 99.9% of all U.S. businesses. This number not only reflects the dominance of small enterprises in the business sector but also shows their significant role in generating employment and contributing to economic stability, a trend that remains relevant in 2024.
• These entities still employ a total of 61.6 million people. This figure represents 45.9% of the entire U.S. workforce, a remarkable statistic.”

Keeping in mind the influence that small businesses have on the economy combined with the fact that I identify with these entrepreneurs, I’m cheering for the small businesses in our community and across the United States. Supporting small businesses is part of Tell Your Tale’s DNA, so our marketing efforts focus on supporting these companies. Not only do we partner with small businesses, we are active members of a local Chamber of Commerce that serves this same demographic. If you run a small business and are looking to amplify your marketing or want help translating your brand values into promotions, contact me to discuss ways to boost your visibility and grow your business.

What are your brand values? Do your marketing efforts reflect those same beliefs? If not, take this opportunity to shift your promotions and watch how it can improve employee morale, customer loyalty and sales. If your values are well integrated into your marketing, congrats! What are some new ways that you could explore to garner even better results? As always, you can contact us to discuss marketing that will help you reach your business goals while bringing new trends into your marketing mix.

Sources:

1. Main, Kelly. “Small Business Statistics of 2024” in Forbes Advisor. January 31, 2024. Accessed September 22, 2024.
2. Thompson, Sonia. “3 Inclusive Marketing Lessons From Bud Light’s Fumbled Dylan Mulvaney Controversy” in Forbes. April 21, 2023. Accessed September 29, 2024.
3. Reilly, Wilfred. “Why Woke Companies Deliberately Alienate Their Consumers” in National Review. April 25, 2024. Accessed September 29, 2024.
4. “Breast Cancer Facts & Stats” National Breast Cancer Foundation, Inc. August 1, 2024. Accessed September 29, 2024.