Brand val­ues are inex­tri­ca­bly bound to brand iden­ti­ty, which is defined as “the way a brand wants its con­sumers to per­ceive its brand.” Brand iden­ti­ty and val­ues now evolve and becomes shared, not only by the com­pa­ny, but by all of those involved in the cus­tomer jour­ney. Com­pa­nies old and new are tasked with clear­ly defin­ing their brand val­ues as part of brand iden­ti­ty. Here are four signs that Uber has­n’t yet clear­ly defined their brand val­ues, and five lessons for brands.

On-demand ride ser­vice Uber has strug­gled in recent weeks with PR dis­as­ters rang­ing from their VP of Busi­ness rec­om­mend­ing that they spend $1M for dig­ging up dirt on jour­nal­ists to vio­lat­ing state law and get­ting shut down in Neva­da to Uber dri­vers strik­ing for bet­ter fares to ques­tion­able use of the data they col­lect. It earned them this head­line from the New York Times: “We Can’t Trust Uber”.

So why are con­sumers los­ing trust in Uber?

1. Leadership Isn’t Believable

Uber CEO Travis Kalan­ick pub­lished a post Dec. 4 on their com­pa­ny blog, “Ride Ahead”. His state­ment focus­es on their finan­cial coups, which include recent­ly get­ting an addi­tion­al $1.2 bil­lion in fund­ing with an expect­ed val­u­a­tion of more than $40 bil­lion.

His only nod to recent neg­a­tive events in the blog post was, “This kind of growth has also come with sig­nif­i­cant grow­ing pains.” It does­n’t include any specifics about recent events or how Uber will han­dle them mov­ing for­ward. The post focus­es on con­tin­ued growth strate­gies but does­n’t illu­mi­nate how they will define brand val­ues or improve brand per­cep­tion.

2. Continued Abuse of Technology & Privacy

Uber staff was recent­ly accused of abus­ing their “God View” tech­nol­o­gy to track jour­nal­ists. When they launch their pres­ence in new cities they have been accused of using their tech­nol­o­gy to aban­don ride requests from city or oth­er offi­cials that could lever­age fines to the com­pa­ny or dri­vers.

In the New York Times arti­cle, writ­ers Zeynep Tufek­ci and Bray­den King out­line real and poten­tial abus­es of Uber data. To date the com­pa­ny has­n’t shared a pri­va­cy pol­i­cy that would pro­tect rid­er data and enforce stricter guide­lines.

3. Not Learning From Their Mistakes

When Uber launched in Port­land, Ore­gon last week, city offi­cials spoke against their sup­port and legal­i­ty of the ser­vice.

“Peo­ple should know that Uber’s action is ille­gal,” May­or Char­lie Hales said in a Face­book post, “The city will enforce exist­ing reg­u­la­tions. That could include fines for the com­pa­ny, as well as fines for dri­vers.”

Though stonewalling on the city of Port­land’s part may not be sus­tain­able, ignor­ing local reg­u­la­tions con­tin­ues to be a part of Uber’s growth strat­e­gy. After being shut down in Neva­da, their recent actions in Ore­gon illus­trate they have no inten­tion of aban­don­ing their approach of com­ing to a city and bul­ly­ing their way in.

When they vow to become a “more hum­ble” com­pa­ny, but con­tin­ue to ignore local reg­u­la­tions and pro­vide ser­vice ille­gal­ly as they are doing in Port­land, it’s dif­fi­cult to take their mea cul­pas as a seri­ous effort to change brand val­ues and learn from their mis­takes.

4. Resources Aren’t Prioritized To Address Brand Values

Their first big move after their recent PR dis­as­ters was hir­ing Gold­man Sachs to raise mon­ey from the bank’s clients. Though efforts need to stay focused on growth and invest­ment par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of a like­ly IPO, Uber isn’t invest­ing in defin­ing their brand val­ue the way they are invest­ing in brand val­u­a­tion.

A recent NPR arti­cle (“Uber Is Rich­er Than Ever, But The Com­pa­ny Still Isn’t Play­ing Nice”) high­lights the com­pa­nies con­tin­ued focus on growth and lack of focus on eth­i­cal behav­ior.

There have been many inci­dents report­ed of resources pri­or­i­tized towards under­min­ing com­pe­ti­tion (ear­li­er this year Lyft accused Uber of can­cel­ing more than 5,000 rides on its ser­vice over a 10-month peri­od in an effort to sab­o­tage the com­pa­ny) and very lit­tle dis­cus­sion of cre­at­ing and pri­or­i­tiz­ing brand val­ues.

What Brands Can Learn

Uber’s mis­steps pro­vide five lessons for brands who want to be con­sumer-cen­tric and cre­ate a brand with val­ues.

1. Define And Share Your Brand Values

The world’s most valu­able brands, includ­ing Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Coca-Cola, invest heav­i­ly in cre­at­ing and shar­ing their brand val­ues. If employ­ees and cus­tomers don’t know your brand val­ues it’s not pos­si­ble for those val­ues to dri­ve behav­ior.

“Coke brings joy” – this sim­ple val­ue dri­ves con­tent, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and engage­ment. The brand’s core val­ues of hap­pi­ness, refresh­ment, opti­mism, fun, sim­ple moments of plea­sure, authen­tic­i­ty and com­ing togeth­er are the dri­ving force in their mar­ket­ing and busi­ness efforts. These val­ues are the pil­lars upon which the brand is built and they are not nego­tiable.

2. Believe In Your Product

Uber’s app, its ser­vice and it’s tech­nol­o­gy are supe­ri­or. Uber’s actions indi­cate that they don’t believe that’s enough – or at least that it does­n’t get them to where they want to go quick­ly enough.

3. Invest in Leadership

The lead­er­ship that dri­ves a com­pa­ny sets the tone, the brand voice and brand per­cep­tion. Of course lead­er­ship are expect­ed to dri­ve finan­cial growth and have cre­den­tials that sup­port that ini­tia­tive but lead­er­ship is a soft skill. One that is more dif­fi­cult to test than bud­get­ing acu­men, oper­a­tional logis­tics or tech­nol­o­gy excel­lence.

The world’s most valu­able brands invest in teach­ing lead­er­ship. Google offers lead­er­ship pro­grams for learn­ing and devel­op­ment. Apple devel­ops dif­fer­ent pro­grams for store-lev­el lead­ers as well as exec­u­tive roles.

Uber has grown very quick­ly. While they’ve built in process for hir­ing the right peo­ple to solve busi­ness prob­lems, they have done lit­tle to solve the prob­lem of devel­op­ing eth­i­cal lead­er­ship.

4. Listen To Your Customers & Your Critics

Ulti­mate­ly, your brand voice and brand per­cep­tion isn’t just defined by the com­pa­ny. It’s defined by an aggre­ga­tion of voic­es includ­ing your cus­tomers and your crit­ics.

When Uber ignores dri­vers’ pleas for bet­ter fares or dis­miss­es city offi­cials’ requests to com­ply with local laws they are miss­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pos­i­tive­ly impact the strength of their brand voice.

A brave move by Uber at this point would be full trans­paren­cy into how they are address­ing their brand rep­u­ta­tion as a bul­ly. Their rel­a­tive silence on how they are respond­ing to the opin­ion that their brand is eth­i­cal­ly chal­lenged ignores the voice of cus­tomers and crit­ics.

5. Be in it for the Long Haul

In the book “The Liv­ing Com­pa­ny: Habits for Sur­vival in a Tur­bu­lent Busi­ness Envi­ron­ment” by Arie de Geus, his in-depth analy­sis out­lines four bench­marks to long-lived com­pa­nies. They were:

1. Sen­si­tive to their envi­ron­ment.
2. Cohe­sive, with a strong sense of iden­ti­ty.
3. Tol­er­ant.
4. Con­ser­v­a­tive in financ­ing.

His­to­ry is lit­tered with sto­ries of brand rise and fall in com­pa­nies new and old. As a new com­pa­ny, it isn’t sur­pris­ing that this sec­ond bench­mark, being cohe­sive with a strong sense of iden­ti­ty, isn’t ful­ly devel­oped for Uber yet.

Uber’s tech­nol­o­gy, rev­enue, val­u­a­tion, and growth tra­jec­to­ry are tan­gi­ble. Their biggest chal­lenge may be align­ing intan­gi­ble assets such as brand iden­ti­ty and val­ues with their envi­able tan­gi­ble assets.

What should Uber do to start regain­ing con­sumer trust and define their brand val­ues? Share your thoughts in the com­ments.