E12: Brand Promise includes Mission Statement, Vision, and Brand Values

What is up Remote Start Nation! My name Jim Doyon, your host and I wanna welcome you to another episode of Remote Start. In the last couple episodes, we've been looking at branding, and what a brand is, and some of the different definitions and the elements that make up a brand. And my goal is to help you to understand that the more cohesive our brand can be, the more employees understand what we're trying to achieve as a company, the more our customers or potential customers out there in the market understand what our vision is, where we wanna take our brand, what we stand for, the better our voice as a brand comes across, the more opportunity for growth that we have. And so on this episode, I really wanna to look at what brand promises and I wanna look at the different elements that make up your brand promise and what that means, so kind of to put it in the most simple way, your brand promise is your commitment that your company makes to not only your customers but your employees as well, it's what you stand for, and it it's what your customers can expect from you, and the really cool part about your brand promise is that if you understand it and you said it clear and your employees understand what, where you're headed and what your promise is as a company, the more they're gonna get behind you, and if your employees aren't gonna get behind you, and they understand your brand promise and guess what, they're not fit for you anyways. So I wanna take a step back and I know that that I've seen this in the last episode too, a lot of people when you think of a brand or the elements of your brand the first thing that comes to mind brand identity, when someone things oh I'm to start a new company, it's immediately the logo I'm gonna create, or my name, or oh let's get the social set up so we can let everybody know we started this awesome company, but if you actually take a step back and you figure out your brand promise, I think you're gonna find that the rest of the elements your brand are gonna fall into place nicely, it's going to help you put together a cohesive package that's going to represent where you are now and where you're headed. Your brand promise it really sets the tone for all of the company's communications and interactions, and as I mentioned probably the most important part about that is it's a guide for employees to follow and as you grow, that becomes more and more important. So when I say brand promise, I wanna break it down into three different areas that I like to look at and walk our clients through to help them understand and put together the different parts of the package.

So first is your mission statement and I know you've heard that before. Number two is your vision your vision statement, same thing I know you've heard that. And third is your what are your brand values and how do those cohesive we come together to build your brand promise, and not only bring your brand promise, but you're gonna be able to take a look at it once you've come up with these three things for your brain you're gonna be able to take a look and you're gonna have you're gonna be able to come up with your brand voice, the way you talk to your customers, the way you showcase your brand on social media, what you decide to get behind. All of these will help make your brand as I'm gonna say this word a hundred times, cohesive. All of these items make your brand cohesive, so it's important to kinda take a step back, understand them, and then we can move forward.

So number one let's look at mission statement, okay, what is a mission statement? It's just that, it's a statement, it's a brief description of why your company exists, it's what its purposes and who it serves, it's your why, your what, and you're who, and it should be clear, it should be concise, and if you can make it memorable, that's even better. So let's take an example, let's look at Patagonia, if you don't know Patagonia, check them out, take a look at what they do, go to their website, what I'm sharing with you is in everything they do. So Patagonia, their mission statement says, “We're in business to save our home planet”. So I just told your mission statement is why your company exists, what its purpose is and who it serves. Okay, Patagonia at is we're in business to save our home planet, it doesn't come out and say who they're serving or even what they're offering, right? So it's a little different than some of the more traditional mission statements that were probably, we probably think of or we've been taught in the future or in the past on how to write a mission statement, but what they're statement does do and it's very memorable, what it does do, is it relates with an earth conscious consumer and tells you that they are more than just a product, but what they're doing is they're using their products as a way to help save the planet. We'll come back to Patagonia in a minute but next I wanna look at vision statement. So if your mission statement is your company's why your how, and who your customer is, then we can look at your vision statement as the statement that you put out of where you see your company going down the road, what's the vision you see down the road is your company is on a mission to add value to your customer and the same elements from the mission statement can be included in a vision statement, but they'll be described in the future tense, it's kind of those things like alright here's my mission and if I follow my mission, if we get a community behind our mission, if our customers see our mission and we continue to grow and scale and get to this level that we see ourselves, where we see ourselves that level that's your vision and it should be something that can be achieved, it's good to have lofty goals but make it something that can be achieved.

Okay, so the last part of your brand promise I wanna go over with you are your brand values, we talked about mission, we talked about vision, now let's talk about values. The values then are your guiding principles that inform all of the company's actions and decisions, so where your brand values, that's going to show you, that's gonna show what your company believes in and how it wants to be perceived by the world, so let's go back to Patagonia, and I wanna look at how your core values how their core values kind of relate back to that mission statement that we talked about. So here they are, building the best products. Okay, so now you know a little bit more about what they do, they build products, what kind of products, when you look into them you see that more, it's clothing it's, it's outdoor products it's products that you use for you know outerwear or you know wearables and what they do so building the best products, causing no unnecessary harm, using business to protect nature, and their last one is not bound by convention. And really other their website check it out and read more into it, it's very interesting and it's awesome to see they give back 1% to the planet, they put programs in place, they're always trying to research and get new products that last longer and give you more bang for your buck, so you're not constantly buying new product that's ending up in the in the trash. So their core values that we just went over when you go back and look at their mission, their mission is, we're in business to save our home planet, so now you can see how those all relate. So together, when we're looking at brand, our mission statement, when we're looking at our vision statement, and we're looking at our brand values, together these three elements come, they come together to make up a brand promise, and if we do it right, it should be compelling, should be authentic unique, it should help to tell our story, and it should be something that sets you, our company, your company apart from the competition, it should make customers wanna do business with you, because they believe in your mission, they wanna help you get to your vision. And once these are figured out and put into action, now we can take a step back and we can look at our brand identity, it's gonna be a lot easier to develop that. It also helps us to come up with our brand voice, we can form our voice, now we know how we're gonna talk to our audience, we're gonna know how we should reflect our vision, our mission, our values, it'll help us with hiring, we want people on our team to believe in what we're trying to set out and accomplish as a company. So again most important and I, I'm gonna continue to say this with your brand and everything we go over is most important is to remember, that whatever you come up with, it needs to be consistent across all channels and touch points, if you're advertising, if you're answering the phone for customer service, if you're hiring, whatever it is, you need to be consistent and have your know we call it a brand deck or your brand guide, right? And it's important to have your mission, your vision, your values, all of your messaging together in a guide that you can always go back to, you did a signage, use to come up with merchandise, use these to help take your brand to another level. Your brand promise really does need to be at the heart of everything you do, and it needs to be reflected in your products and your services, and your marketing and in your communications, and again not just with your customers, but with your employees, and by living up to your brand values and your mission, your brand's gonna have a competitive advantage.

So with that Remote Start Nation, I hope, I was able to shed a little bit of more light on what brand promise is, so I wanna thank you again for the bottom of my heart for listening to another episode. I'm really loving where this podcast is going I've had great feedback, I heard some awesome stories about how, some of the entrepreneurs that I've interviewed, how other people that are starting out, or even young students in still in high school that weren't sure where they're going or what they're gonna do with their lives, they listen to an episode and they've given feedback on making a change and putting some more clarity.

So I really hope that what I'm putting out here in sharing with you is able to help you, and if it does please share it with me, I love it helps me to keep going, I'm on a mission to help you, I'm on a mission to help you start a business, to build brand, to live your desired lifestyle.

So with that Remote Start Nation, I hope you have an awesome day.

Go start something! Thank you again for listening and I can't wait to see you next time!