Brand Vision and Mission

Every great brand should have a vision and a mission. These help guide the actions of your brand by ensuring you have a focus. Watch the US retailer Best Buy talk above about what guides its vision, mission and purpose.

Brand Vision and Brand Mission: What’s the Difference?

Some people use vision and mission interchangeably when it comes to branding. But there is a difference.

Your Brand Vision is about tomorrow. It’s what you want to be in the future. Your Brand Mission is about today. It’s what you do right now. It’s how you’re going to reach the vision.

Start with the vision. This is where you get to use your imagination and aim for something more than the everyday. Without a vision, what is your brand aiming for? Why should anyone care about it?

The kind of questions you might ask yourself when defining your vision are:

• What are the hopes and dreams of this brand?
• What problem do we solve for the world?
• What change are we inspiring?

Brand Vision Statement

Don’t underestimate the power of a good vision. It is the guiding principle you can use to avoid going off track with decisions; it is what makes people want to work for and with you.

Nike’s brand vision is to “Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. (*If you have a body, you are an athlete.)”

Meanwhile, charity Oxfam wants to create “A just world without poverty” as its brand vision.

Microsoft wants to “Empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”

Tesla wants “To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy”.

Disney wants simply “to make people happy”.

As you can see, your brand vision can be super simple or more complex. The important thing is that it’s true to you.

Brand Mission Statement

But vision is all about looking to the future. It’s a goal. Your brand mission statement is one rooted in today. This tends to be less aspirational and more descriptive than a vision statement.

Mission statements might cover what you do, which people you serve and how you serve them. It’s what you do and how you do it. It’s also how you’re going to get there. Remember how Disney’s vision was about making people happy?

While that is very broad and doesn’t tell you what kind of business Disney is, the mission statement it uses is much more about what the company does and how it aims to create this happiness through entertainment and information.

It reads: “To be one of the world’s leading producers and providers of entertainment and information. Using our portfolio of brands to differentiate our content, services and consumer products, we seek to develop the most creative, innovative and profitable entertainment experiences and related products in the world.”

Meanwhile Tesla has an overarching vision “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” But its mission statement explains how it plans to do this. It says it aims “To create the most compelling car company of the 21st century by driving the world’s transition to electric vehicles.”