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For Immediate Release -- November 15, 2021

Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute and Vrity Announce Strategic Partnership

Collaboration will enable marketers to drive and quantify impact of brand values on customer loyalty.

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Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute, a consultancy specializing in leadership, company culture and customer loyalty, has announced a strategic partnership with Vrity, a data company dedicated to helping brands measure the financial impact of their values.

The partnership will enhance Chapman & Co.’s Truly Human Loyalty solutions, enabling its customer loyalty consulting practice to leverage quantitative insights from Vrity’s Values Return Index (VRI) and help companies make focused, ROI-based decisions about using authentic brand values to deepen customer loyalty.

The catalyst for this partnership was a realization by both firms that the US marketplace is seeing a rapid rise in the “values economy,” as brand values and corporate alignment with social causes are having an increased impact on consumer decision-making across all age demographics.

As revealed through 2021 research by Chapman & Co., 60% of US consumers now say brand values (including a commitment to diversity and a positive company culture) influence their purchasing decisions. In Chapman & Co.’s study, customers identifying as “brand loyal” express the strongest focus on brand values when making purchasing decisions.

These findings are reinforced by research conducted by Vrity showing that 82% of consumers say they will pay more for brands that share their values—with 43% of respondents saying they would pay double.

“Every business is trying to crack the code of customer obsession,” said Barry Kirk, Chapman & Co. Principal and loyalty practice leader. “But, far too often, companies are neglecting one powerful tool they already have right at their fingertips—their brand values. The reason they hesitate is because it’s hard to quantify how you’re showing up in terms of values, and what impact that is having on your revenue. With this partnership, we will help businesses make their values a key lever in building customer loyalty, and measure the financial benefit of doing so, through Vrity’s market-leading VRI platform.”

Jesse Wolfersberger, CEO and Co-Founder of Vrity, further explained: “Values are the most important trend in marketing since digital. However, there has been a black hole of data, which prevents many brands from truly living their values. Data is confidence—confidence to set budgets, confidence to measure results, confidence to justify to executives that values are driving revenue. We see Chapman & Co., with its unique Truly Human Loyalty approach, as the perfect partner to leverage our values based data and transform this information into game-changing customer loyalty strategies.”

The joint offering between Chapman & Co. and Vrity will help companies:

  • Understand how consumers perceive their brand across 20 core brand values categories;
  • Determine how their brand identity aligns with the five key types of customer loyalty;
  • Measure the financial impact their values are having on their business; and
  • Create a strategic approach for integrating their values messaging into an ROI-positive customer loyalty approach.

The two firms see this joint offering as ideal for any company that is currently:

  • Prioritizing its internal company culture and its values commitment, but isn’t sure if those efforts are connecting to customers;
  • Investing in public relations to share with the market its values and commitment to social causes, but is struggling to quantify the business impact;
  • Integrating values-based messaging into its marketing strategy, and seeking to verify the impact on customer engagement and loyalty; and/or
  • Performing market research, and looking to establish an evergreen scoreboard to track its values alignment with key demographic segments, in relation to its competitors.
Learn more about Chapman & Co.’s Return on Values Roadmapping Services here or reach out to Barry Kirk here

ABOUT VRITY

Vrity is a St. Louis-based data company founded in 2020, specializing in measuring the financial impact of values. Vrity’s Values Return Index uses artificial intelligence to track a brand’s values across 20 values categories, such as Equality, Authenticity and Innovation, and quantify how those values impact a brand’s sales. For more information, visit vrity.com.

ABOUT CHAPMAN & CO. LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE

Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute is a St. Louis-based consultancy specializing in customer loyalty, company culture and leadership development to grow companies where people want to work and customers want to buy. Chapman & Co.’s work is rooted in the principles of Truly Human Leadership, an approach pioneered by Barry-Wehmiller’s visionary CEO Bob Chapman.

ABOUT BARRY-WEHMILLER

Barry-Wehmiller is a diversified global supplier of engineering consulting and manufacturing technology for the packaging, corrugating, sheeting and paper-converting industries. By blending people-centric leadership with disciplined operational strategies and purpose-driven growth, Barry-Wehmiller has become a $3 billion organization with nearly 12,000 team members united by a common belief: to use the power of business to build a better world. CEO Bob Chapman shares the story of the company’s transformation in his book, Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family. To learn more, go to barrywehmiller.com