How to Write Mission and Vision Statements

On a mission, with a vision

For your business to succeed, it needs a well-defined purpose, unique positioning, and clear goals. For it to grow, it needs loyal customers and ambitious aspirations. Successful brand mission and vision statements can help your business to convey and achieve this.

If your statements and ambitions for the future are unique to your business, it will help you to stand on solid foundations and set you up for success.

Whilst your mission and vision statements only need to be a sentence or two long, they could be the difference between your business flourishing or flopping.

To stand out from your competitors, your statements must go beyond being merely “good.” They should be compelling, and concise, and help your business to form meaningful connections with its customers.

Strong brand mission and vision statements can help to give a business direction, focus, and provide guidance when making important business decisions.

In this article, we’ll find out more about the key components of mission and vision statements and the process for writing them, before looking at which brands are getting it right.

What are brand mission and vision statements?

Before you can write impactful mission and vision statements, you’ll need to have a thorough understanding of their respective purposes – it’s important to clearly distinguish the two.

One of the biggest differences between them is that the mission statement is all about the here and now, whilst the vision statement focuses on the future.

Your mission statement should succinctly describe what it is that your business does, who your customers are, and what makes it different from its competitors. 

Your vision statement should describe your business’s aspirations for the future or plans for growth. And both should tie in closely with your brand values.

Ikea 

Let’s take a look at Ikea’s brand mission and vision statements to see how it works.

Ikea’s mission statement is ‘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.’

This tells you what they do: make home furnishing products; who their customers are: as many people as possible (they have a broad customer base); and also what they value: making their products accessible to as many people as possible at excellent value for money.

Ikea’s vision statement is ‘to create a better everyday life for the many people.’ This complements their mission statement nicely, emphasising the positive impact they want their products to have on the lives of their customers and their commitment to making their products accessible.

The importance of mission and vision statements

You may already recognise the significance of mission and vision statements in branding, but they can also add value to your business.

Here are a few reasons why getting your brand’s mission and vision statements right is so important.

Clarity 

Good brand statements help to shape a brand’s identity and provide employees, customers, and stakeholders with clarity about what the company does, what it stands for, and what its future looks like. 

Consistency 

Clear mission and vision statements provide employees with a shared and consistent understanding of your business’s purpose and objectives. Employees can then align their work and behaviour to these objectives to help the business consistently deliver high-quality products or services. Businesses that consistently perform well are more likely to have a good reputation and loyal customers.

Guidance 

Your business’s brand mission and vision statements act as a point of reference to help guide employees when making important business decisions. When all business decisions are made in alignment with your brand statements, it helps to ensure a more consistent message and communicate your brand’s personality.

Develop a stronger brand identity 

A strong brand identity can help to drive business growth and customer loyalty. Your brand statements clearly outline your purpose and aspirations, and when used effectively throughout your branding, marketing, and advertising they can paint a vivid picture of who you really are. 

Differentiate your business from its competitors 

Well-crafted mission and vision statements should clearly communicate what makes your business unique from its competitors to attract customers and forge strong connections. Decide what makes your business different and focus on this in your statements, this could be your products and services, social responsibility, values, the customer experience you provide, or even the broader impact you hope to achieve. 

Customer loyalty 

By using clear brand mission and vision statements to forge a formidable brand personality, you can build trust, authenticity, and deep emotional connections with your target market to increase brand loyalty.

Motivate employees 

Taking the time to create powerful brand statements can be impactful for employees and customers. If employees feel that their values align with their employer’s, or if they feel inspired or excited about the business’s mission and vision, it can boost morale, improve engagement, and inspire and motivate them to do better in their role.

How to write a good brand mission statement

Before you can cook up your winning mission statement, you need to know which ingredients should go into it.

Firstly, it should provide key information about what your business’s purpose is, who its customers are, and what its objectives are. It should also incorporate the business’s core values.

Begin by holding a brainstorming session to generate ideas. Try writing down the answers to questions like:

• What is it your business is selling?
• What problem does your product or service solve?
• How do you add value to those who buy it?
• What makes your business different from its competitors?
• What are your business’s core values?
• Who are your customers?

Next, prioritise and refine the ideas and information that the brainstorming session has generated.

Your final statement should connect what your business does with its values in a way that is short, sweet, clear, and concise.

Don’t make do with something generic. Your mission statement should exude the essence of your business and what sets it apart from its competitors.

Should you use a mission statement generator tool?

If you’ve already been doing a bit of Googling around how to write a mission statement for your business, you have probably stumbled across at least one mission statement generator tool on the web.

These tools claim to be able to create a unique mission statement for your business with just a few clicks. All you have to do is answer a few questions and click a button to generate a mission statement for your business based on your answers. They usually do this by stitching together your answers and maybe adding a few buzzwords.

Whilst they may provide some inspiration, they are not capable of accurately or emotively capturing your business’s spirit in the same way that a human could. With this in mind, we don’t recommend using anything written by a generator tool as your final brand mission statement.

Developing a vision statement

Whilst your mission statement focuses on your business’s here and now, your vision statement is more aspirational, it details the direction in which you see your business growing and its future goals.

Your vision statement should excite and inspire, it should paint a bold picture of what your business is striving to achieve in the future.

Vision statements often focus on the positive impact that you want your business to have on a community or the world.

Questions to ask when brainstorming ideas for your brand’s vision statement include:

• What problem is your business addressing?
• Who is affected by this problem?
• How would the world look if you solved this problem?
• What are your business’s core values?
• Where do you see your business in 5 or 10 years?

Once you’ve got all your ideas down, it’s time to narrow down the key points and stitch them together. Just like your mission statement, your vision statement needs to be clear, to the point, and combine or tie in with your core brand values.

Avoid being generic and don’t be afraid to dream big, your statement should be ambitious, but practical and believable too, it’s all about striking the right balance.

After composing both statements, some businesses opt to merge them into a unified brand statement. Whether you do so or not, is a decision that ultimately rests with you.

As your business grows and evolves, it is perfectly natural for its mission and vision to change with it. It’s important to review your brand statements regularly to ensure that they are still relevant and revisit them if they have become outdated or are no longer an accurate reflection of your business or the direction that it is going in.

Successful brand statements

Some of the most successful brands in the world are being guided by well-crafted and inspiring mission and vision statements.

Let’s take a look at some of the most cleverly constructed brand statements and analyse why they work so well, to help inspire you when writing yours.

Tesla 

Mission statement: to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.

Vision statement: to create the most compelling car company of the 21st century by driving the world’s transition to electric vehicles.

First, let’s point out the use of the words ‘accelerate’ and ‘driving’ – for a car company, using these words in a punny way helps their statements to stand out and stick in people’s minds.

The focus on sustainable energy and electric vehicles in their statements also highlights that they are not just another car company and that they value protecting the planet and want to drive positive change in the environmental impact of transport globally.

Using phrases like, ‘the most compelling car company of the 21st century’ and ‘the world’s transition’ is also ambitious and exciting. It shows that they’re dreaming big.

Google 

Mission statement: To organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Vision statement: To provide access to the world’s information in one click.

Google’s number one brand value is ‘focus on the user and all else will follow’, this is communicated in both its mission and vision statements where it expresses that its purpose is to make the world’s information universally accessible and useful.

Their vision ‘to provide access to the world’s information in one click’ is successful in sounding both exciting and ambitious whilst demonstrating their dominance as an online service provider.

Heinz 

Mission statement: Let’s make life delicious.

Vision statement: To sustainably grow by delighting more consumers globally.

Heinz’s mission statement is more of a call to action, reminding everyone that they are dedicated to producing food products that bring joy to their customers. 

Its vision statement supports the message in its mission statement about producing food products that customers enjoy but adds that it wants to do so globally. They also emphasise that they aspire to grow sustainably, in a responsible way that looks after the environment and local communities. Both statements reflect some of their core brand values including ‘customer first’, ‘integrity’, and ‘quality’.

Netflix 

Mission statement: To entertain the world.

Vision statement: To be the best global entertainment distribution service.

Netflix’s mission and vision statements are very concise and to the point. Its mission statement ‘to entertain the world’ clearly defines its purpose whilst also expressing the scale and ambition of the company. 

Netflix is known as an innovator, trendsetter, and disruptive brand in the entertainment industry and its vision statement is equally as clear in demonstrating its pursuit to be a top dog.

Disney 

Mission statement: To entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling, reflecting the iconic brands, creative minds and innovative technologies that make ours the world’s premier entertainment company.

Vision statement: To be one of the world’s leading producers and providers of entertainment and information.

Disney’s mission statement emphasises how it wants to produce entertainment that has a positive impact on people globally. This supports its image as a company that values social responsibility and believes in giving back to the community through philanthropy. It also ties in with one of their brand values ‘community’. The words ‘storytelling’ and ‘innovative’ also reflect Disney’s products and brand values.

Need help writing a vision or mission statement?

If you require help defining your brand’s mission or vision statements, get in touch with our team of branding specialists and content writers.

We can help to craft concise, unique, and inspiring mission and vision statements that will guide your business to success. Contact our team to find out more and start your project today!