Your basket is currently empty!
Values-based Copywriting
A values-based copywriter speaks to deeper, cultural principles and shared beliefs to connect audiences with projects, products and services that align with their values.
·
What is Values-Based Copywriting?
If copywriting is 20% words and 80% psychology, then values-based copywriting is 20% words and 80% social psychology.
Values-based copywriting keeps the reader and the speaker’s shared values at the centre of each piece of writing.
Rather than leaning on self-interest, the way traditional copywriting does, values-based copywriting taps into shared interest.
I use values-based copywriting whenever I work with nonprofits and with sustainable businesses – usually B-Corps who work in alignment with their social or environmental values.
In sales-focused copywriting, values-based messaging can help a customer understand why and how a product aligns with their principle of not harming animals.
What are Values?
Values are aspirational in the broadest sense. Not like a goal you can achieve, but a north star that defines the direction you move in.¹
Values are not attitudes either. While attitudes are a snapshot of your personality now, values are what shape the future you.¹
Values are beliefs, and when they get activated, they become infused with feeling.
They are powerful, shared parts of the human psyche that can be put to use in both good or not so good ways.
What is Copywriting?
Copywriting is the most deliberate, thoughtful, empathetic, user-centric way of writing your organisation’s marketing and communications materials.
It’s used to raise money, to connect with the public, to connect with service users, and to recruit. And yes, you can sell things with it, but it’s not just a sales tool.
Anywhere you need to influence someone’s behaviour, that is where you need copywriting – and when you’re a business or a nonprofit with values – values-based copywriting.
Values, for better or worse
In the right hands, values are a powerful tool for building trust, connection, and creating positive social and environmental change. Rallying supporters together to demand human rights, fighting racism, ending domestic abuse, influencing policies.
Name any issue, and you can take a serious crack at solving it by getting enough people together who share the belief that there is another or a better way.
In the wrong hands it manipulates, deceives, and exploits. Like attempting to sell things that aren’t genuinely aligned with those values. Remember when McDonald’s tried to appear healthy?
Aside from it being dishonest, it almost always backfires. When there’s a gap between expressed values (the promise) and evidence of what an organisation does (the reality) you get backlash from the public.
What Does Values-Based Copywriting Look Like?
If you want to connect with progressive audiences, keep your values at the centre of every message.
That doesn’t mean talking about them explicitly necessarily, but letting them shape the conversations you have with your audience.
Here are some of the ways you can weave values into your messages.
- Tell stories that demonstrate those values.
- Promote products or services that align with those values.
- Talk about the situations that led up to the development of your products and services.
- Be transparent when you’re not working in alignment with those values. (We don’t live in a perfect world and most people understand that everything exists within a set of constraints. Who knows, you might even spark the solution for it.)
- Partner with people and businesses that share those values.
- Explain your values.
- Most importantly: Don’t say you value something when your actions suggest the opposite.
Are you doing values-driven work? make it known!
Conscious buyers want to know if there’s a toothpaste that doesn’t harm or exploit during its production process.
Personally, I want to be able to make an informed decision about my purchases. Because while I don’t have the time to campaign for ethical toothpaste, I want to to support the producer that’s doing it without harming the environment.
Markets are powerful things that can reach back into businesses and affect what they produce and how they produce it, and conscious buyers know this. Every pound is like a vote.
A values-based copywriter recognises the things you do that align with your values and highlights them for your audience when it matters.
Combining values with copywriting allows organisations to inspire and mobilise action aligned with their core beliefs, creating a powerful force for positive change.
References