Mission and vision statements: make your brand stand out
- Alberto Carniel
- Oct 29, 2019
- 7 min read
Updated: Dec 29, 2025
Any self-respecting #MarketingPlan must have solid business mission and vision statements.
These two elements are critical in determining the difference between a business and a brand.
Keep reading and discover why.
Table of contents
WHAT MISSION STATEMENT MEANS
A mission is a powerful statement that, in a few words, explains the reason for existence of a business.
It’s focused on the present.
It states what the company does, its core business, and (at a high level) how it plans to achieve it.
An organization exists to accomplish something, right?
The classic definition of “Mission Statement”
According to Marketing and management of Kotler and Keller, successful mission statements have few common traits:
They focus on a limited number of goals
They highlight the business’s major policies and values
They define the major competitive spheres in which the company will operate (industry, products/applications, competencies, market segment served, the degree of vertical integration, and geographic scope)
They take a long-term view (you change a mission only when it stops being relevant)
They are as short, memorable, and meaningful as possible
To use the words of Peter Drucker (a management consultant, educator and author whose publications have contributed to define the modern business corporation), the mission statement should answer a few questions:
What is our business? Who is the customer? What is of value to the customer? What will our business be? What should our business be? These simple-sounding questions are among the most difficult a company will ever have to answer. Successful companies continuously raise and answer them.
If you can’t answer these, you don’t really know what you’re building.
Examples of bad mission statements
These are the kind of mission statements that try to say everything… and end up saying nothing:
To build total brand value by innovating to deliver customer value and customer leadership faster, better, and more completely than our competition;
We build brands and make the world a little happier by bringing our best to you.
They’re not wrong.
They’re just vague, forgettable, and interchangeable (which is the fastest way to become a commodity).
Example of Google’s mission statement
Google’s mission is one of the clearest modern examples of “short + specific + useful”:
To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
WHAT VISION STATEMENT MEANS
While the mission drives a company in the present, the vision statement gives it the right direction.
A business envisions itself in the future and provides an aspirational purpose.
Ask yourself:
What problem are we seeking to solve?Where are we headed?
If we achieve all strategic goals, what would we look like 10 years from now?
In two words, the vision statement is a road map.
Example of Google’s vision statement
A vision commonly attributed to Google is:
To provide access to the world’s information in one click.
Worth noting: Google publicly and consistently states its mission, while “vision” lines like this one are often used as a practical shorthand in marketing/strategy discussions rather than an official corporate statement.
WHAT MISSION AND VISION HAVE BECOME NOWADAYS: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE MODEL
Classic definitions can feel… academic.
And yes, many “old school” concepts sound like they were written for a different era.
But mission and vision statements are evergreen in marketing, and Simon Sinek modernized the conversation with Start with Why (2009) and his TED talk “Why good leaders make you feel safe” (TED2014).
The difference between any business and a brand
Sinek’s big contribution is brutally simple:
A lot of companies can explain what they do.
Some can explain how they do it.
Very few can clearly articulate why they exist.
And that “why” is where brands are born.
As he puts it:
People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it..
Why, How, What: the three golden circles
Sinek reframed vision and mission into the Golden Circle Model:
Why: the core belief of the business — why the business exists
How: how the business fulfills that core belief
What: what the company does to fulfill that core belief
Marketing communication should move from Why → How → What.
Similarly, your vision should act as the starting point that leads customers (and employees) to your mission.
When people see the meaning behind what you’re building, it becomes easier for them to buy into it — and to stick with you.
Mastering the Golden Circle Model is one of the most practical ways to turn a business into a brand.
EXAMPLES OF TOP BRANDS’
MISSION AND VISION STATEMENTS
Below are examples that show different styles: some ultra-short, some more descriptive.
Amazon
Amazon’s publicly stated direction strongly emphasizes customer obsession:
Mission:
We strive to offer our customers the lowest possible prices, the best available selection, and the utmost convenience.
Vision:
To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online.
Ikea
Mission:
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.
Vision:
To create a better everyday life for the many people.
TED
Historically, TED has been famous for the ultra-simple:
Mission:
Spread ideas.
Vision:
We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world.
Intel
Mission:
Leverage Moore’s Law to bring smart, connected devices to every person on earth.
Vision:
If it is smart and connected, it is best with Intel.
Like many large companies, Intel’s public “mission” language has evolved over time across channels.
Wikimedia
Wikimedia’s mission/vision pair is one of the strongest examples of clarity + aspiration:
Mission:
To empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.
Vision:
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That’s our commitment.
Facebook (Meta) updated its mission to:
Mission:
Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.
Vision:
People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.
THE OUTCOME IN HAVING
A MISSION AND VISION STATEMENT
You don’t need a mission and vision statement to start a business.
Plenty of companies operate without them and do fine.
So how can mission and vision make a difference?
They represent the crossing line between any business and a brand
A company can be much more than a logo and a product/service.
Think about the Pepsi Challenge.
In blind taste tests, many people picked Pepsi — and Pepsi built a whole campaign around it (source: Wikipedia).
So why do customers keep buying Coke?
Because Coca-Cola didn’t just sell a drink.
It sold meaning: culture, emotion, identity, tradition.
And neuroscience research supports this general idea: when people know the brand they’re drinking, the brain response shifts compared to blind tasting.
That’s basically the difference between product preference and brand preference.
If you clearly state your mission and vision, your marketing and communication activities become easier to plan and more consistent.
They stop being random acts of promotion.
They become a system.
Bonus: you’ll sometimes see claims that Coca-Cola “hits dopamine reward centers” more than Pepsi. These claims show up in pop-health content, but they’re not the cleanest way to explain what’s happening. If you want a more grounded reference, stick to the brand-cue vs blind-taste research instead (source: McClure, S. M., Li, J., Tomlin, D., Cypert, K. S., Montague, L. M., & Montague, P. R. 2004, October 14. Neural correlates of behavioral preference for culturally familiar drinks. Neuron.).
And yes: brands are among the most scalable intangible assets a company can build.
They reduce the need to compete purely on price (and make price wars a lot less scary).
Mission and vision fasten decision making
Mission and vision support a business strategy that aligns company goals with people’s work.
They also empower managers to make decisions faster and with more confidence.
Speed matters.
Knowing the direction means you’re one step ahead of the competition.
In larger companies especially, a clear mission encourages leadership to delegate decision making without losing coherence.
The vision guides you through business opportunities
Opportunities and critical decisions can drastically shift a company’s growth path.
A vision statement helps leadership identify the real pros/cons, so it’s easier to judge if an opportunity fits the long-term plan.
Example: a potential acquisition might look like a dream scenario.
But will it require relocation?
Will it change the culture?
Will it cause talent loss?
Will you still recognize your company afterward?
A strong vision makes those tradeoffs visible.
They boost employees retention and decrease turnover
People want to know their work matters.
Not just inside the organization, but in the world.
LinkedIn’s Purpose at Work report found that 74% of candidates want a job where they feel their work matters.
A vision that shows a company’s bigger perspective helps retain talent and build a stronger team.
As Kirstin O’Donovan (Productivity Coach and CEO at TopResultsCoaching) puts it, an inspiring vision should clarify direction and priorities while challenging the team to grow together.
CONCLUSIONS
In this article, I tried to summarize and define mission and vision statements according to my professional experience, education, and business “taste”.
Online you’ll find dozens of definitions, and many of them contradict each other.
That’s exactly why I like keeping it practical:
Mission = what you do now and why it matters
Vision = where you’re going and what success looks like
If you are an entrepreneur, I’m curious to know what you’ve chosen as your mission and vision.
Drop a comment below and tell me how your business inspires people to action!
References
Kotler, Philip; Keller, Kevin Lane. Marketing Management (14th ed.). Pearson, 2012.
Drucker, Peter F. The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization. Jossey-Bass, 2008.
Sinek, Simon. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Portfolio (Penguin), 2009.
Sinek, Simon. “Why good leaders make you feel safe.” TED2014 (March 21, 2014, Vancouver).
LinkedIn Talent Solutions. Purpose at Work: 2016 Global Report.
McClure, S. M., Li, J., Tomlin, D., Cypert, K. S., Montague, L. M., & Montague, P. R. “Neural correlates of behavioral preference for culturally familiar drinks.” Neuron (2004).