The Debate: Mission vs. Vision

What's the difference between defining your business's mission or vision? How does one answer that? What's more important to know is how a marketing agency can guide their clients in this answer, too.

Over the course of the last century of marketing, the imagination and attention of the consumer has become harder to understand and capture.

Consequently, developments such as various persuasion models, acronyms and abbreviations, promotional habits, and advertising jargon have been used to "facilitate clarity". Some of these ideas have been crafted for our industry, while others are merely re-applications of time-old knowledge.

The questionable appropriation of "vision" and "mission" is a wonderful example of this scenario.

These concepts are often used as mere statements. In a worst case scenario, these two statements are just fluffed up pieces of writing stuffed with grandiosity and poor punctuation; they become better suited backs to business cards than carriers of ideology in the employees and the brand's consumers. In the best case scenario, these things are the simple, well-stated beliefs of a brand that knows how to be useful and be seen as a resourceful authority.

This means that "vision" and "mission" can be wonderful assets for leading consumers who share a common interest.

So where does the confusion originate? 

These two concepts have gone from similar bodies to synonymous. How are they supposed to be used? How are they different and how do they work together?

Here's how:

• A vision and a mission are complementary statements. 
• Vision takes priority over mission. 
• A vision is a goal or aspirational objective that a company may never meet but hopes to do so. 
• A mission is a way to achieve success by delivering specific action(s) that will flow with the vision. 
• The simpler, the better. The better they are, the more likely they are to be remembered and used. 
• Simply put: vision= internal, mission = external. 
• Or, the vision wins the war, the mission wins the battle. 

Does your business need help defining its mission and/or vision? Then contact Integraphix, a leading Chicago creative marketing team with over 25 years experience with branding. 

GIF source: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/blues-brothers

How Do You Reach Your Audience? Do This One Thing

When clients come to our Chicago marketing agency desiring marketing assistance, they always ask, "How can we break through the clutter?" or "How can you make us noticed?"

Be useful.

Find a way to make yourself useful to consumers. If they have no reason to call you because you're just "one of the boys", then they will not call you. No matter how much promotion work you do. Give a great deal, make your product offerings unique, something to stand out.

You may hear a lot of chatter about the latest and greatest thing in digital marketing and other forms of creative marketing, such as who's the brightest, most suave, biggest, etc. If we are honest with ourselves, that stuff just adds to the clutter sometimes. Consumers are smart! Consumers know what advertising lingo to avoid or forget; think about this for yourself, what words or phrases are you tired of hearing and seeing in ads?

Being useful is solving a problem and meeting a need. This can only be accomplished if you understand your consumer. If your business is ignoring the wants and needs of its audience, then it will not survive as a business. The art of listening and understanding is often overlooked in many business strategies.

Listen. Understand. Find where your business fits in. And go there.

Being useful to consumers is nothing new in business, so why do so many businesses skip this step? Or assume they are useful without any information to back it up?

Companies that last decades and have good relationships with their consumers are businesses that make sure they are meeting the needs of their consumers. Not businesses that expect consumers to change to them.

Being useful is a simple theory but the practice is hard. For help understanding how your business can be useful, contact Integraphix.

Why Your Business's Marketing Has to Evolve

Every business has to market themselves to some degree, whether they realize it or not. However, some businesses get stuck in a rut, sometimes a good rut, and stay there. Marketing has to change, it has to evolve.

Now, it can work to keep the same message, mascot, color schemes, branding, etc. But it does not work to keep the same platforms, techniques, and strategy. Very few businesses have succeeded because they kept with the same techniques & strategy.

Industries change. Consumers change. Interests change. You get the point. 

That's why a business's creative marketing has to evolve. If you don't evolve, you miss your market. Then you're like that owl wondering, "Where'd they go? Did we miss them? What happened?"

Industries change. Every industry in the world has likely changed in the way it operates over the last decade or two. For example, marketing. This industry has massively changed in the last five years, alone! Now there's a heavy emphasis on digital marketing and digital advertising; things like social media, YouTube, blogging, or search engine marketing have all become points of interest.

• Take a look at your industry, how has it changed? 

Consumers change. Every generation thinks differently than the last. Every demographic has its own interests. Every culture has its own way of doing things. If you haven't heard, Millennials are a big topic to talk about in marketing. So let's talk about them! They are vastly different than previous generations, Gen. X and much different than Baby Boomers. If your business targets a demographic like 20-30 year olds, your target market in 2015 is vastly different than your target market was in 1975. Even from year to year, consumers change; our minds change all the time.

• Take a look at how you shop, how has it changed? 

Interests change. As hinted in the last point, our minds change all the time. What seems like a good idea now might not be in a few months. Look at the K-Cup. At the beginning, people loved it because it was easy, personal, and no prep/cleanup. Now, it's one of the most hated ways of consuming coffee on the planet. Or, for us techies, look at how fast apps come and go in popularity. Draw Something? What's that? Maybe fashion is more your fancy; how often does fashion change?? There was a time when baggy jeans, K-Swiss shoes, and bull-cuts were popular. Now, it's skinny jeans, boots, & fades.

• Take a look at your interests, how have they changed?

The bottom line is that in business, especially marketing, if you stand still, you will be left behind. Don't stand still and become a static business! Hire Integraphix to help your business get going forward, not become irrelevant.