Deepak Chopra apparently once said that “mathematics expresses values that reflect the cosmos, including orderliness, balance, harmony, logic, and abstract beauty.”
About five years ago, I came to almost the opposite conclusion about marketing, which more often than not expresses values that reflect the commonplace, including obviousness, short-sightedness, cliché and utter banality.
Like a lot of brand consultants, I spend much of my time looking through company websites and annual reports. I’m not going to pretend I read them top to bottom, but I pay a decent amount of attention to the sections where organisations list the values they use...