A well-crafted marketing team vision statement is a powerful compass for in-house groups, but when you’re consumed with deadlines, competing demands and putting out fires, carving out time to write a mission statement and vision statement is challenging, especially in the shadow of COVID.

Why do it now? What and who should be involved? How do you get started, work your process and finish triumphantly?

Rest easy. We have actionable advice and pragmatic tips for effectively crafting and implementing a powerful mission or vision statement.

Need help crafting your marketing team vision statement and mission?


What Should Mission and Vision Statements Say?

When writing your statements, make sure that you align with the corporation’s overarching mission and vision. These statements should also embody the unique culture of creativity, collaboration and customer service that help to drive the group’s success. So it’s important to stay in your lane and focus on your area of expertise. Your mission and vision should reflect the business mandate(s) set for your team.

What sometimes perplexes marketing and creative teams, however, is how to make the vision and mission distinct while voicing the same values and similar objectives. To follow are answers to this and other questions that we frequently field from clients embarking on this exercise.

What’s the Difference Between a Mission and a Vision Statement?

Understanding the nuances of mission statements and vision statements is important. A helpful way to begin the writing process is to establish a framework.

Mission Statement Definition
A brief statement of the organization’s fundamental purpose: “Why do we exist?”
Functional purpose + Why we exist + How we achieve it

Vision Statement Definition
This is a bold and ambitious statement of the organization’s desired future state. It answers the question, “Where do we want to go?”
Time frame + Desired future state + How to achieve it

Together, these statements work hand in hand to create positive impacts on a group’s culture, current behaviors and the accomplishments it hopes to achieve.

What are Great Examples of Powerful Mission and Vision Statements?

Here are a few excellent examples of how some organizations phrase the mission and vision statements that guide them.

LinkedIn
Mission: The mission of LinkedIn is simple: connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.
Vision: Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.

Southwest Airlines
Mission: Dedication to the highest quality of customer service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and company spirit.
Vision: To be the world’s most loved, most efficient, and most profitable airline.

Alzheimer’s Association
Mission: The Alzheimer's Association leads the way to end Alzheimer's and all other dementia — by accelerating global research, driving risk reduction and early detection, and maximizing quality care and support.
Vision: A world without Alzheimer's and all other dementia®.

What’s an Example of Vision and Mission Statements for a Marketing Team or In-House Agency?

Bringing our illustrations closer to home, here is an example of how you might write a statement for a corporate team engaged in marketing and creative disciplines:

Mission Statement: Serve as a trusted advisor for internal organizations (or clients) to support profitable business growth through creative, impactful and cost-effective marketing solutions that help build the company’s brand.

Vision Statement: Within three years, be the creative source of choice for all internal organizations (clients), helping them exceed goals by providing industry-leading marketing solutions that differentiate the company brand and deeply engage target audiences.

What’s the Best Length for Vision and Mission Statements?

Mission and vision statements should be no longer than four sentences each. Statements that are too wordy or incorporate too many goals can dilute the effectiveness of the wording and blunt the strength of key ideas.

Hopefully your statements mirror many inherent attitudes and behaviors that are already supporting the team's mission and vision, even though the statements haven't yet been documented in writing. The team’s leadership should hold onto and expand on those ways of working.

Who Should Write a Marketing Team’s Mission and Vision Statement?

Creating your vital statements should not be a project whereby leadership, managers and just a few other team members draft, refine, approve and implement the group’s mission and vision.

As you go about the tasks of crafting your statements, the pointers below will help to ensure that your entire team embraces and adopts them.

  • Bring key stakeholders into the creative process. Include representatives from your team’s clients, internal staff, external partners, leadership team and other individual contributors. Not only will the variety of perspectives make for richer and more accurate writing, but broad, multifaceted participation will produce the upfront buy-in needed to bring your mission and vision statements to life.
  • Keep groups small and nimble. Having too little time and bandwidth to go through the development process is a common pain point among busy marketing and creative groups. Empower individual contributors to participate in the mission and vision effort, and assign small teams to work on different tasks.
  • Avoid overcomplicating the messages (but don’t leave out critical mentions). With the recognition to acknowledge and celebrate diversity and inclusion in the workplace, it’s a good idea to mention it in your mission and vision statements.
  • Get outside feedback and insights. When draft statements are complete, include stakeholders outside of your group that you can solicit opinions and viewpoints from.
  • Develop a rigorous plan for communicating with those not directly involved in writing the mission and vision statements. Identify and engage key influencers in various groups to help ensure that the statements are positively received, understood and adopted.

How To Successfully Implement Mission and Vision Statements

How can you best communicate the new mission and vision statements and spur enthusiasm for them once they’re finalized? Consider these ideas for generating interest, engagement and widespread buy-in:

  • Bake in frequent touchpoints with team members as you develop your rollout plan for the mission and vision. And keep the team apprised as progress goes forward so they will have some ownership of the outcome.
  • Send email blasts leading up to and then unveiling the new mission and vision statements. Some teams have even created posters or inspiring videos to share with the staff.
  • Host a town hall to unveil the mission and vision statement.
  • Hold team members accountable for embracing the values and mindset espoused by the statements. Likewise, staff should be rewarded for readily adopting the goals and values of your mission and vision.
  • Integrate the mission and vision into everything. The statements should remain top of mind when it comes to the hiring process, performance reviews, company meetings, and awards programs. Job candidates should be given a clear idea of the group culture they may be joining (and recruiters should be looking for a good fit). You should also communicate them as part of your onboarding process for contractors and freelancers.
  • Establish and measure adoption of these statements. When conducting employee engagement surveys, consider adding questions about the mission and vision. Examples might include:
    • Do you know what your group’s mission and vision are?
    • Does your group embody and express its mission and vision?
    • Do you feel the mission and vision are relevant to you and your role within your team?

Make sure to review and update your mission and vision statements on a regular basis. The impact of COVID on businesses underscores the need for teams to keep their mission and vision statements aligned with the environment the organization operates in. Appoint someone to be in charge of scheduling and leading this exercise.

Final Words

With so many marketing teams and IHAs working remotely, and in-person interactions being more limited, powerful marketing team vision statements and mission statements are more important than ever.

Considering all the fires teams must address on a daily basis, it’s no wonder that creating unique mission and vision statements is often placed on the back burner. Yet defining and accepting these fundamental beliefs can help extinguish those very fires.

Just allow a reasonable amount of time, seek out appropriate advocates for the initiative, and proceed knowing that the end result will reward the entire group with greater clarity and more control over their destiny. Achieving this goal is well worth the effort.

If your IHA or marketing team needs guidance in creating mission and vision statements, please contact us. Cella has worked with many teams on these critical initiatives, and we are happy to help.