Do It Yourself Branding Exercises – Core Values, Mission and Vision Statement

Getting to the Core of your Brand

Core values make up the foundation of your business. All future decisions you make for your business will be based on your core values. Identifying these values early on is very helpful when deciding which moves to make for your marketing, sales, finance, and hiring, among many others.

The values you list must be absolutely true – not a wish list, but an honest assessment of your intentions. For example, as much as we all want to be “authentic,” it’s important that what you’re providing truly is authentic. These values do not change due to fluctuation in markets or changes of customer preferences.

Customers in today’s marketplace will flee the minute you violate one of these values or fail to deliver on the promise. Even worse, they’ll tell all their friends. This is not to say every business will not make mistakes with their brand and their customers. It’s OK to mess up, as long as you get back on your horse again with your bag of trusted values by your side.

Big thing to keep in mind: your personal core values are not your business core values. This is a tough one to separate for many people. When you’re figuring out which are the best values to represent your brand, listen to your self describe WHY you chose them. If YOU are PASSIONATE about your business, but your business has nothing to do with passion (or romance), perhaps that is not the best value to select. If you need help with this, contact alison@hatchnetwork.com to set up a quickie one-on-one session.

Once you’ve identified your core values, you can start to build a language that describes all that you do. This exercise helps you in talking about your business, and crafting marketing messages. It also is the basis for deciding what your brand should “look” like – the identity.

While we’ve given you some direction for laying this groundwork on your own, we highly recommend that you work with a professional! They will help you refine what you bring to them (and you’ll get better results from doing a little bit of work up front).

Your brand specialist, graphic designer, or agency will probably have a process for developing your brand identity. It usually starts with a meeting and some exploration by the designer. The more effort you put into preparing for that meeting, the better. It is likely that you will meet with several designers when trying to decide whom to hire, so giving them each the same information will lead to accurate, comparable proposals from each of them.

1. Narrow Down Your Core Values

You will start with a long list of core values, and narrow them down to 3-5 words that really embody the most important things about your business. There are more words that you may prefer, please write them in.

2. Next, create core values statements for your choices. Samples below.

The Core Values and actions that support them:

Knowledge: We value knowledge, so we include educational guidance on our website.

Innovation: We value innovation, and have applied for two patents on our new technology.

Service: We value service; we return phone calls within 24 hours.

Authenticity: We value being authentic; all of our products are made in-house.

Responsibility: We value responsibility, our service people have a strict code of conduct that they adhere to when working on your house.

3. Core Values Homework:

Draft your vision and mission statements. They can be whatever you want them to be! Short, long, funny, serious… come up with what is right for your company and brand.

You have already established your core values, and they are the basis for your vision and mission statements for your company. Having these statements is very valuable even to a solo-preneur, and large corporations have them as well. They are guiding principles and ideas for you and your employees.

A vision statement is your company’s challenge to itself – how great are you going to be in your industry in the future. It is the highest standard that your company will achieve, and should be a lofty goal, but still realistic. It is an inspirational reminder that you are striving toward something bigger, and that there is a purpose to the work being done. The vision statement is a powerful tool, and it should be bold.

Sample Vision Statements:

Apple Computer: “Man is the creator of change in this world. As such he should be above systems and structures, and not subordinate to them.”

Microsoft: “There will be a personal computer on every desk running Microsoft software.”

A mission statement is written to give a worthwhile, singular focus or goal to an organization. It describes your purpose and reflects your values. This can be done in a sentence or two, or a short paragraph.

Sample Mission Statements:

McDonald’s: “To satisfy the world’s appetite for good food, well-served, at a price people can afford.”

Google: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

4. Wondering what to do with these once they are done? Here are two places your core values, mission and vision can show up right away:

- In your business plan

- On your website “About” page

These are dynamic statements about your business, meaning, they may change over time. Start with something today, if it does not ring true in a month or year because of how things are evolving, change them! The best thing to do is take one step, don’t worry about the final destination, at least not for today.