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Marketing leaders today face a dual challenge: standing out in a fragmented, hyper-competitive media landscape while proving ROI under tighter budgets. Values-Driven Marketing (VDM) offers a new way forward — one grounded in Behavioral Science and proven by fresh research from WARC (World Advertising Research Center, the leading authority on advertising effectiveness for marketers and brands) and Aletheia, the leading values-driven marketing intelligence company and media agency in the U.S.
Here are five reasons senior marketers should test VDM today:
Demographics tell you who someone is. Values explain why they act.
Behavioral Science shows that values — like Tradition (family, heritage, stability), Freedom (independence, creativity), or Achievement (success, recognition, luxury) — are universal, deeply held, and predictive of behavior.
Research demonstrates that values-based targeting is significantly more effective than demographics alone. When combined, the predictive accuracy of media plans improves by up to 193% for certain ValuesTypes.
The consumer mindset has shifted. Ipsos found that 69% of people buy brands that reflect their personal values, up from 53% just a decade ago. Google Cloud and Harris Poll report that 82% of shoppers prefer brands whose values align with their own.
For marketers, this means aligning messaging and targeting with values isn’t optional — it’s becoming a baseline expectation.
Values-Driven Marketing consistently delivers stronger outcomes. Research by WARC and Aletheia found:
In-market tests validate the results. For example, GoHealth Urgent Care saw 82%–100% higher CTRs when targeting by ValuesTypes such as Achievement and Freedom versus demographics alone.
What once sounded like theory is now practical and scalable. Advances in AI and clustering technology mean values-based media plans can be deployed across major DSPs today.
Aletheia’s patented AI platform, Pluralytics, analyzes messaging for values signals and aligns it with values-driven audiences to boost performance. This means brands can operationalize VDM — from segmentation to media planning to content optimization — at scale.
One of today’s biggest marketing challenges is balancing long-term brand building with short-term performance. VDM does both.
By connecting with consumers at the level of their motivations, brands spark emotional resonance (a driver of brand trust and equity) while also delivering higher engagement and conversions in performance channels.
As Amazon’s Chris Marchegiani puts it: “There’s a role for motivations and values irrespective of whether you’re brand-building or doing performance-driving activities.”
The Bottom Line
Values-Driven Marketing gives brands a sharper bullseye in a world of attention scarcity and rising ROI pressure. It’s predictive, scalable, and performance-proven.
Testing VDM doesn’t require a full strategic overhaul. Start small: identify priority ValuesTypes in your category, align a few pieces of creative, and measure the difference.
