Paul Payne

Purpose Driven Mission and Vision

A Strategy of Principles

 

Mission Statements
How do these statements play into your brand’s personality? A brand mission statement encapsulates a company’s goals, purpose, or strategy for connecting with and serving its customers. It is based on the idea that the company’s actions could affect people’s lives. This statement isn’t a slogan or a campaign; it’s a succinct and realistic description of the company’s underlying beliefs.

This statement encapsulates the company’s underlying ideas about why it exists, the goals it aspires to achieve in the marketplace, and how it plans to accomplish those objectives.it is the way a company connects with its target audience and what kinds of products or services it will provide in the future. If the mission of the company changes then the mission statement can change to reinforce this new direction.

A great mission statement has a specific purpose, and expresses your company’s core values. Combine your company’s who, how, what and why : the who is who you serve, how refers to how you serve your customer, what your company offers and lastly why does your company matter to your customers, your employees and to your shareholders.

A few examples of inspired mission statements

    • IKEA: To offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.
    • JetBlue: To inspire humanity – both in the air and on the ground.

    • Patagonia: Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.

Create a Mission Statement
What is Your Unique Selling Point
The unique selling point (USP) is the value of the company and what makes it different from your competitors. A true test is to take your content and brand message and compare them without brand names or graphics. Does one brand “sound” different over the other or are they interchangeable? Does the brand have a distinct voice, is it recognizable in essence, is it different?

Complete a SWOT analysis
In order to understand what your company does well, and could do better, usually a team looks at every aspect of the organization. SWOT stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats. Look at current internal processes and project outcomes.

Strengths can be what you do well, how you are different from your direct competitors, all the skills and knowledge of your team and leadership and any and all proprietary information and capital invested into the company.
Weaknesses are things your company could do better, things your competitors do that set them apart, and any limitations your company may be experiencing.

Opportunities include any underserved or untapped markets, any earned or paid media, and any anticipated gaps that could be exploited.

Threats are any new competitors, changing social or economical landscape that could affect business in the future.

Make sure that your SWOT and any goals that you are that your company wants to achieve in the future are reflected in your company’s mission statement.

Vision
The vision statement is how the brand will impact the future. It takes what the mission statement wants to achieve and incorporates it into action. This vision statement tends to stay the same regardless of mission or strategy changes. The vision statement is generally used to guide and inspire your customers’ well-being while being realistic about how you will meet those goals.

Conceptually and Quality based Vision Statements
Either based on internal goals or the company culture that they plan to build, vision statements are meant to project a company towards the future.

    • Google: “To provide access to the world’s information in one click”
    • LinkedIn: “Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce”
    • TED: “Spread ideas”
    • Zappos: “To provide the best customer service possible. Deliver ‘WOW’ through service”
    • Ben & Jerry’s: “Making the best ice cream in the nicest possible way”

    • Unilever: “To make sustainable living commonplace”

Take the Time
Make sure that you and your team spend the time to understand where the company wants to be in the years ahead and how the company wants to serve their customers better than the competition.