Mumbai: WARC, in partnership with Aletheia Marketing and Media and LIONS Advisory, has unveiled groundbreaking new research titled “Unlocking the Value of Values-Driven Marketing,” revealing how campaigns rooted in consumer values outperform traditional advertising in preference, likeability, relevance, and effectiveness.
The study demonstrates that Values-Driven Marketing (VDM) — which aligns brand messages with audiences’ intrinsic motivations and beliefs — can uplift ad preference scores by as much as 123 points, compared to a 100-point average. Ads that align with an individual’s dominant values consistently outperform others, while values-based targeting drives stronger emotional and behavioral responses across categories.
“Understanding the motivation behind audience behavior and finding ways to inspire action is critical,” said Imaad Ahmed, Principal Strategist, LIONS Advisory and Head of Advisory WARC. “Alongside our partners at Aletheia, we have the evidence to show what a values-driven approach can offer and how to apply it in the real world across audiences, media, messaging and measurement. The opportunity is compelling.”
Alisa Miller, Chief AI Officer, Aletheia, Co-Founder of Pluralytics, and Lead Inventor of the AI VDM Patent, added, “The most effective marketing is built on deep human understanding. This research proves that when audiences are defined by their values and messaging is precisely aligned, ads perform significantly better. Values-Driven Marketing is emerging as a scalable, repeatable and performance-proven discipline for modern marketers in an era of Agentic AI.”
Echoing this sentiment, Chris Schembri, Founder and CEO, Aletheia, said, “We’ve spent years exploring how values shape marketing performance, and this research confirms what we’ve seen with our clients time and again: when brands connect with people around what truly matters to them, engagement deepens and conversions follow. Consistently delivering the right message to the right audience—grounded in authenticity and shared values—is what transforms marketing into a force for meaningful connection and growth.”
The Research and Its Findings
The study, based on responses from 5,016 U.S. adults, tested 27 unbranded, AI-generated ads across three product categories — CPG, QSR, and Financial Services. It identified six core values that most influence brand affinity and purchase intent: achievement, freedom, pleasure, purpose, security, and tradition.
Key findings include:
- Ads aligned with individuals’ dominant values are consistently preferred.
- VDM improves ad effectiveness across all categories, with purpose-driven and achievement-based ads outperforming averages by over 25 percentage points.
- The strength of a person’s values predicts their level of ad response.
- Values-aligned messaging increases likability and perceived relevance, improving resonance scores by up to 18 percentage points.
- Including values in targeting boosts media effectiveness, improving predictive power by as much as 193%.
A New Model for Advertising Effectiveness
Combining behavioral science and AI, the report introduces a new model explaining how VDM helps brands overcome attention scarcity, deepen relevance, and drive precision targeting. The accompanying VDM Playbook outlines four pillars for marketers — Audience, Media, Messaging, and Impact Intelligence — to operationalize values-based strategies.
According to the research, VDM can deliver performance uplifts of 1.8x to 2x on average, helping brands build trust and long-term equity while driving short-term results.
Jennifer Posnikoff, SVP, Global Brand Growth and Experience, Virgin, commented, “If you get Values right, you build long-term brand equity while still delivering short-term performance.”
As consumer trust becomes a crucial differentiator and ROI pressures intensify, the study positions Values-Driven Marketing as a powerful new framework for authentic, emotionally resonant brand communication.
