You may of heard a lot spoken about ‘Brand Purpose, ‘Vision’ and ‘Mission’ in marketing but few really understand the importance of it, how they each fit together or how long it can take to achieve your mission or goals.

One thing that’s important to remember is that you cannot deliver effective marketing, or achieve sustainable long term growth for a business without them firmly embedded within the organisation and visible for all to see.

When we work with our clients to define their purpose, vision and mission we often use the brand pyramid model below to help communicate and visualise how they all fit together.

This brand pyramid is not unique to Frost or anybody else, it’s a recognised model used by brand and marketing professionals worldwide to help communicate in a really clear and simple way for for how your goals, vision and mission all underpin the brand purpose.

Some business people can find it challenging to write down the vision or mission, but a good way to practice is by making up a fictional story where your brand is the main character. Imagine if your brand or business in 20 years time had achieved what it had set out to do… write down how this was achieved, the key milestones along the journey, the errors made, competitors beat, awards won, new territories that were entered, acquisitions made, technology invented etc… Be creative with it, dream big and believe anything is possible and write it down in bullet form.
It has’t happened yet and is the start of the journey so anything goes, no matter how far fetched the reality may seem. Writing a story can help you to extract a real vision and mission that can then be formatted to form part of your overall brand strategy.

What is the brand purpose, mission and vision? 

  • Your core purpose is the reason a company is in business (beyond making money), and never changes
  • Two related concepts: mission and vision underpin the purpose
  • A mission is an ambitious goal for achieving a purpose
  • A vision is the visualisation of your mission, what does the world look like once you have achieved your mission?
  • Your mission and vision can last 5-20 years
  • Below your mission and vision are the tactics needed to accomplish them
  • Your tactics (marketing) are short-term goals that can last 1-3 years

Why is the purpose important?

Your brand purpose is the one thing that never changes, it’s your reason to exist beyond making money.
Your Purpose is the source of energy from which all employees draw strength from, so making sure your staff know about the purpose is vitally important. Your company’s culture, mission, vision, and goals all flow from the purpose and so without a purpose, there’s no reason for people to work for one company over another, or for customers to be attracted to.

Defining what your the brand purpose is cannot be neglected, it’s vital to the overall long term success of a brand. Expressing what a brands purpose is helps to differentiate your business in the world.
Frost work with clients big and small to define their core purpose as part of the overall strategic brand process. If you would like to learn more about our process please email the team at [email protected] or call 01489 667859