This retail brand has decades of rich history but also an exciting future and brand promise to fulfil for customers. Driving the company forwards will involve a delicate balance between recognising the legacy and looking forward to what’s ahead guided by new core values.

The challenge 

New core values were needed to guide the behaviours of leadership and employees; communicate intention to customers and make a bold statement to investors and the wider community. To make a difference, the updated values would need to resonate with different people across multiple markets, articulating something unique but also universal.  

What we did 

Act one: SHAPE  
Develop authentic values 
(applying the science behind human connection,
we worked with the client to develop purposeful and emotionally engaging core values)

Through a series of story workshops with the leadership and communications teams, we developed a deep understanding of the audience, and what they needed to know and feel about the brand – now and in the future. With these fundamental insights, we created a set of unique and personal values for the business, and accompanying storylines that would inspire audiences to embrace the new way of thinking. 

Act two: STRUCTURE 
Embed the values in the minds that matter 
(building the communication approach to keep ongoing storylines compelling and the audience on board) 

We worked closely with the communication team to develop an approach that delivered the new core values in a way that would resonate. As part of this, we built a communication toolkit for leaders and colleagues which explains in a straightforward, practical and inspiring way how they could live, work and play the new core values. 

Act three: SHARE
Get the story delivering on its promise 
(training the leaders to bring the core values to life for their people) 

We took the leadership team through a two-hour workshop in which they were able to explore both the values in more detail and the important role that leadership storytelling plays in embedding new values and culture. This gave leaders a clear understanding of how to use story to bring the values to life and, importantly, how to craft their own experiences into stories that make a real difference in their day-to-day role. 

The triumph

The communication toolkit was used as the focal point for launching the new core values. Feedback from the client was: “We LOVE it. I don’t think there’s another way to describe it. Thank you so much for all your support on this – very much appreciated! We’ve had very good feedback on this entire project and are so very pleased with the outcomes.”

And after we trained the leadership team to bring the values to life through their own stories and experiences: 

“A powerful training session that went beyond what we expected in terms of exploring the values and our own personal connection to them. And importantly, how we bring this to life for our teams”

“Thank you so much again for everything on this – you’ve been instrumental in our ability to move this forward and get it done!”