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Positioning
When creating a brand, it is extremely important to have a positioning statement. Positioning is essentially your reason for being. Anybody that is thinking about creating a brand first starts with the question why. Why do we need this thing, idea, belief, product? Why does the world need another brand of bottled water? What doesn’t exist that my invention of this new thing, or my evolution of this existing thing, is going to make the world a better place? So the first question has to be why. The second question has to be what is the benefit? People are going to be giving you money for this product, or people are going to be giving you a piece of their soul if it is a movement. And so what is the benefit for people? What is the benefit for humanity in doing this thing? And strategically it should be something that is either brand new and has never been done before, which is real innovation, or it’s doing something that has already been in existence, but in an entirely new way.
So I’ll give you two examples. Let’s go all the way back to 2001: Six weeks after 9/11, the iPod is introduced by Apple. Apple was not the first to introduce an MP3 player. Creative. A number of other companies had really viable MP3 players that were already successfully on the market. So the iPod was not really the innovation. The innovation at that time with the iPod was iTunes. It was the entire infrastructure that was supporting what you could listen to on the iPod. It was that thousand songs in your pocket. That was the positioning. Starbucks. When Starbucks first came into being, they were doing something different that had been in existence before. So there were lots and lots and lots of coffee shops. There’s been coffee shops almost as long as we’d been modern humans, people congregating sharing a beverage. Starbucks came out and did it in an entirely different way, in a way that was so different they could charge about 10 times what the average coffee shop was charging for a cup of coffee at that time. Ten times more, just because of the experience. So they were doing something new in a category that was already well established. Once you have a sound strategic positioning, then the design of a logo, the design of all of your collateral materials, marketing materials, website, and so forth, all of that can then be developed, but it all will adhere to the principles of what you created as your reason for being.
Mission and Vision
One of the most important tenants to a sound strategic positioning is that it really adhere to the honest and authentic beliefs of the creator. And as soon as you say the word authentic, it sort of feels like it’s being inauthentic. It feels like it is being constructed for mass belief. So there’s always that conundrum that you’re playing with when it comes to creating something that is authentic. I like to think of it as being human and real. The ways in which you can hold yourself accountable to that authenticity is by creating a mission statement, is by creating a public statement that allows you to communicate what it is that you believe in, in the most honest and transparent manner.
And if you can construct a mission statement that allows others to instantly understand that as well, it will create a mutuality in a much more expedious way. And this is something that allows you then to share what you do in a way that becomes contagious and becomes something that others can believe in as well. A mission statement is about your way of being. It’s about what you currently believe, what you currently stand for. And it should be very specific to what you’re doing every day and how you hold yourselves accountable. And then you should also think about having a vision, and a vision is where you want to go in the future. And so what’s different about a mission statement to a vision statement is a mission statement is about what you believe you are doing today. A vision statement is what you want your impact to be, through the work that you’re doing, tomorrow. Mission is today. Vision is tomorrow.