Could stand for Core Social Responsibility Brand Values. Or Corporate Social Responsibility Brand Values—it’s the same thing. When one talks about Core Values, “social responsibility” had better be included in the conversation. With the high level of transparency offered the average consumer today by virtue of the wonderful World Wide Web, anyone can easily learn about a company’s practices, its efforts, its focus, and essentially, its soul. And it does not count for enough today to simply deliver a product or service that just works well. At least not for long-term brand success. No, true differentiation happens at the “soul” level and consumers gravitate towards brands with soul, and particularly these days, soul that “does good”. It’s obviously necessary to do well in the process of doing good, and consumers are acknowledging this across the board from the way they buy food (Stonyfield Farm, Organic Valley, Earthbound Farm) and personal care products (Aveda, Tom’s), to their transportation choices (Toyota, Honda), technology (Dell, Phillips, and HP), and gradually, energy (Sharp, BP). (We need to keep working on that cheap clean coal concept.)

The President/CEO of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) Bob Liodice reminds us of the importance of brand value in citing a marketing-accountability study from the organization that suggests long-term brand factors effect up to 80% of a brand’s current-year sales. In an Advertising Age article, Want to Build a Powerful Brand? Don’t Forget Core Values he also states that intangible long-term assets such as brand equity and market effects contribute approximately 40% to a company’s overall value. The article goes on to talk about innovation in brand building and keeping brands fresh and relevant in order to prevent slippage—a fancy term for gradual brand death.

While Roger Adams, senior VP-chief marketing officer at Home Depot jokes that hiring a new ad agency is not the solution, at egg we would argue that there are different kinds of agencies out there, and that while a marketing partner cannot generally effect change in the business model — although we are working on that one – the good ones can surely help guide a brand through the way finding process as a company incorporates the themes of CSR that align with its true values.

The article illustrates the example of JetBlue, whose core values are reflected in its mission of “bringing humanity back to air travel” and helped it recover from a public-relations nightmare after two-day ice storm in February left passengers standard on the tarmac. Its response to the crisis was a “direct expression of the brand, said Andrea Spiegel, JetBlue’s VP-sales and marketing. We recognize here the similarities in our past work at GSD&M with another great in air travel, Southwest Airlines, who some might argue re-invented and re-focused the concept of core values as an expression of the brand.

Today, as consumers begin to grapple with the meaning of hot-button issues wrought more pressing by globalization, like global warming, food quality and security, and natural resource management and waste, a key to success will be the authentic embodiment of core values that take into consideration a flatter world and the health of the planet for future generations that will live in our wake. The companies that successfully revitalize their brands to reflect these core values will be warmly embraced by an increasingly dissociated consumer who is searching for meaning and some good brand soul.