What are mission and vision statements?
There are a thousand articles out there that explain what missions and visions are, and how they’re different. That’s why this article will focus more on how you should use them, some good examples to inspire you, and some tips to create your own.
But it’d be remiss if we didn’t quickly summarise what they are and why they’re a key part of your brand development. So, for your sake — and for the SEO cred — here we go:
A mission statement describes what your business does. It guides daily decisions and lets everyone know — customers, investors, employees — what they’re buying into.
It could include elements such as brand values, target market and what makes the business’s offering distinctive. But essentially, it’s the what of your business..
A vision statement sums up your long-term hopes. It describes the ideal future state of your business’s impact on the world. That makes it your why.
A vision statement is aspirational and serves as a guiding principle when making long-term decisions.
Mission vs vision statement
Mission and vision statements should come as a pair, so that it’s really not a case of mission versus vision, but of mission and vision.
Treating your mission as your what and the vision as your why sounds very marketingy, but when you read them together it makes sense.
Here’s an example we’ve made up for Sky Diamond, a company that makes diamonds captured from the atmosphere rather than extracted from the earth.
A mission and vision statement for them might be:
We exist to make the world’s most ethical and exceptional diamonds (mission), ushering in an age where every diamond comes harmlessly from the sky, not torn from the hard-tilled earth (vision).
The mission is a grounded statement that sets out what Sky Diamond does. The vision is an aspirational, emotive statement meant to inspire.
How to write your mission and vision statements
Sometimes, mission and vision statements come to you in a flash of inspiration, perhaps accompanied by an angelic choir or a shouting of ‘Eureka!’ while you’re in the bath.
But usually, they take a lot of head scratching, rewriting and back-and-forth anguish over whether you’ve perfectly summarised your business and its goals. That’s fine. That’s the process — and you should trust it. But to give you a helping hand, here are a few tips to consider:
1. Keep them short. Imagine your mission and vision statements put on a reception wall or social media bio. If you think they wouldn’t fit, you might need to trim them down.
2. Make them emotional. Use positive language to inspire your audience and explain the ‘big picture’ reason as to why your company exists.
3. Ditch lawyer language. While the sentiment should be emotive, the language should be simple. Sky Diamond’s mission could be: ‘To leverage the latest technology to make diamonds that are as exceptional as they are ethical.’ But that feels dry and corporate versus ‘We see a future where every diamond comes harmlessly from the sky, not torn from the hard-tilled earth.’
4. Gather insight but don’t write by committee. Get insight from your various teams but keep sign-off to a small number of people. If you do it by committee, you’ll try and please everyone — and end up pleasing no one.
5. Use the ‘what’ and ‘why’ technique. Remember, your mission is your ‘what’. What you do, maybe how you do it (but don’t go into detail). Your vision is your ‘why’, the ultimate end result of your what.
Mission and vision statement examples
Halstock
For our work with luxury furniture makers Halstock, we wanted the mission and vision to capture their creative spirit, their problem-solving skills and the clear, painless process they take their customers through.
So for their mission, we came up with:
To combine craft, collaboration and creativity to engineer the unforgettable.
The three ‘C’s capture everything about the people behind the brand — and what their customers want to see from them. (The alliteration also aids recall.) While ‘engineer the unforgettable’ is the emotive promise they make their clients.
The vision reflects Halstock’s desire to always make the process a pleasure and the output transformative:
To make every step of the joinery journey enjoyable and every space we create exceptional.
Sofitel London St James
Our brand positioning work with Sofitel London St James — a five-star sanctuary in the heart of London — lead us to a key insight: luxury wasn’t enough. There are a number of other 5-star hotels in London, so we took their playful sense of character and sold Sofitel as a place not just as a place to stay, but to fall in love with.
That’s why we gave them a Lover brand archetype, and why their mission statement is super-simple:
To make every stay a love story.
That’s the goal of every Sofitel colleague: to make each moment in the hotel one their customers will love — and tell their friends about.
This gave rise to an ambitious vision, one that inspires the brand to redefine what the 5-star experience should mean for a customer base that sees luxury as a standard.
For every guest to fall in love with us, so we change what luxury means to them.
Reflect yourself, connect with your audience
Whether you’re crafting a mission or vision statement — or rolling them both up into a singular ‘why’ statement, which we sometimes do — your task boils down to two key elements.
First, you have to capture what makes you who you are — what you do and why you do it. But you also need one eye on your audience. What do they want to see from you? What problems can you help solve?
Our work with Halstock didn’t just say ‘We engineer the unforgettable.’ We made sure to talk about what their audience will want to see from them: teamwork, a brilliant process — and then the fantastic end result.
A good mission and vision statement connects the best of what you do with what your audience really wants to see from you.
And it does it using succinct language that hits home emotionally.
Which isn’t easy, and is why people come to us to help them do it. If you want to do the same, you know how to get hold of us.