The ten commandments of Danish business
A strategy consultant once said that most companies' values resemble the ten commandments: the same fine generalities, no matter who wrote them. We could not leave that untested. We collected 1,744 values from 349 Danish brands and tested the claim. It holds, and it is more precise than the consultant knew: only one in four brands has more than one value outside the ten.
The commandments exist, and this is what they look like
We grouped all the values by meaning (so "green transition", "climate responsibility" and "sustainability" count as one). The ten most common in Danish business are, with the share of brands that mention them: community (50 percent), quality (49), customer focus (39), responsibility (37), sustainability (35), trust and security (34), innovation (29), care for people (28), transparency (26) and diversity (16). One brand in two professes community, and almost as many profess quality.
And now the test: almost every brand carries at least one of the ten commandments (348 of 349), and eight in ten of all values are one of them. The real finding is how little sits outside them: just under four in ten brands have a set of values made up entirely of the ten. Not one value that does not also appear at the neighbour's.
Outside the commandments it gets more personal: "simplicity", "local roots", "independence", "courage". These are values you can recognise a sender by, and that is exactly why they are rare. A little over one brand in three has exactly one value of this kind, and only one in four has two or more.
Preached more than practised
Our analyses also measure how consistently the declared values can be found in what the brand actually shows the outside world: texts, channels, actions that can be read from the outside. The typical brand gets its values across in just under 60 percent of its expression, and at more than one brand in four the values live in less than half of it.
This needs reading carefully: we measure the visible expression, not the culture behind it. But that is exactly the point. A value that can be neither seen nor felt from the outside does no work for the brand. It sits on the wall and in the strategy document, while the communication talks about something else.
We also distinguish between values the brand has formulated itself (the declared) and values that can only be inferred from what the brand does (the implicit). A little over two thirds of the values are declared. What the difference means is explored in the article “Eight in ten brands have values they do not say out loud”.
Values everyone shares are not values
The consequence is measurable: on our scale for how far the values set the brand apart from the field, the typical brand scores low. The ten commandments are not wrong (no one should choose irresponsibility), but they have become entry requirements, not distinctive assets. Quality and responsibility are today what a CVR number is: a precondition for taking part, not a reason to be chosen.
Differentiation lives in two other places. In the eleventh value: the one only you can state, because it comes from your history and your practice. And in how the values are lived: a value that can be seen in what the brand does counts for more than one that only appears in the list of values.
What this means for your brand
Try the test on your own set of values: is there anything your neighbour could not also have written? And can each value be found in what a stranger meets on your website today? Two noes are not a crisis but a task, and it is more concrete than most brand tasks.
How we measured (method)
The figures are based on 351 brands analysed in brandvju as of October 2026, all measured with the same method; the values could be read for 349 of them. The values were read automatically from the brand's own publicly available channels and then classified automatically into ten groups of meaning, or into "other" when none of the groups fits reasonably (for example, "green transition", "climate responsibility" and "sustainability" count as one cluster). The groups are our choice and can be checked, and the shares show how many brands mention at least one value in the group. Because the ten groups were chosen as the most widespread themes, it is no surprise that they cover most values; the finding lies in how little sits outside them. The distinction between declared and implicit values was read automatically from the analysis's own text on the values (for 351 brands). The consistency measure expresses how large a share of the brand's visible expression matches the declared values, and it measures what is communicated, not the culture behind it.