Marketing definitions: Vision and Mission

My goodness, where has our Mission Statement gone?

 

These marketing and brand management definitions include our thoughts, together with the best definitions we have found from both academic and business sources.

Vision and Mission

The Vision and Mission of a company should be a driving force, setting the strategic direction of the business. But many are ignored at best, and ridiculed at worst.

Most of us would have sympathy with this quote, from Hamel and Prahalad: If we took the mission statements of 100 large industrial companies, mixed them up while everyone was asleep, and reassigned them at random, would anyone wake up tomorrow and cry, ‘My goodness, where has our mission statement gone?’

Do you even know the Mission and Vision of your own company? And what role do they play?

First, let’s be clear about their respective definitions…

A Vision is a description of the business as you want it to be. In dictionary terms it is, ‘a mental image produced by the imagination’. It involves seeing the optimal future for the business, and vividly describing this vision. The description might include HOW things will be, WHERE, WHO with, WHAT you’ll be doing and HOW you’ll feel.

A Mission is the definition of the ‘special assignment’ being undertaken by the business. It is likely to cover the customer groups that are being served, as well as (perhaps more importantly) the customer needs that are being met.

Well, that’s the theory, but in practice everything gets jumbled up. Which doesn’t matter, so long as they help the strategic development of the business. This will only be achieved if the Vision and Mission are able to:

• Bring focus and clarity to the desired future of the business (and what makes it distinctive)
• Inspire people to work towards that future
• Guide people in their decision-making as they reach for this future

Here are three good examples:

• The Mission of GlaxoSmithKline is: to improve the quality of human life by enabling people to do more,
  feel better and live longer
• The Mission of Ogilvy & Mather is: to be most valued by those who most value brands
• And Amazon aims to be the earth’s most customer centric company.

These statements don’t contain the usual corporate waffle about ‘leadership, innovation, and best practice’. All three statements are focused: they provide a guide to behaviour, yet the ideas they communicate are big enough to inspire. This ensures they have a valuable role to play in the development of the business.

Ask yourself:

Do the Vision and Mission of my company:

•    Bring focus and clarity to the desired future of my business?
•    Inspire people to work towards this future?
•    Guide people in their decision-making as they reach for this future?

With thanks to Colin Bates, Building Brands