Displaying Your Mission Statement: Lessons from a Music Producer

You may be wondering whether it’s really worth displaying your organization’s mission statement.

After all, you may already have made the effort to put a mission or values statement in writing; and you may even already be promoting it, perhaps on your website or in some form in a reception or conference area. Shouldn’t that be enough?

Do you really need to go beyond that, to do what some organizations do and give individual employees their own desktop mission statement or table display?

There’s an especially telling moment in a recent documentary about legendary music producer, and Motown founder, Berry Gordy.

In Motown’s earliest days, Gordy apparently not only took the time to write a company song but also insisted that all employees, including his top recording artists, learn it by heart.

A succession of interviews makes clear that these employees not only remembered the song, they could also either sing or recite the lyrics—-word for word—roughly 60 years later.

So, should you immediately stake out the nearest babbling brook and start composing some heartfelt ode to your company or organization? Probably not. 

But you might want to take to heart the lesson of the Motown song: a set of core beliefs, whether you call it a creed, a mission statement or a values statement or whatever, can make a significant contribution to your organization’s culture and ultimate success. The key is keeping that mission top of mind.

Mission statement displays can be a great way of keeping that statement of values and goals prominent, and uniting your employees and other stakeholders behind a shared purpose.

Mission Statements as a Branding Opportunity

First things first: do you already have a mission statement?

Do you have one, but it needs to be updated or revised?

It’s obviously necessary to have a mission or values statement before you can set about displaying it.

This is the point at which many organizations can get stymied.

Most people dread the prospect of any goal-setting exercise, especially one that can require some time and reflection, and seemingly doesn’t bring with it any immediate benefits.

Crafting a mission statement is beyond the scope of this particular post, and there’s plenty of expert guidance on the subject available online.

But there is one relevant insight here that might help you in either making an initial pass at writing or refining a mission statement—-or just thinking about how best to display an existing one.

Promoting a mission statement is essentially a branding opportunity. You could take that statement even further. You could argue that mission statements offer the ultimate branding opportunity since they should define the crucial characteristics and elements that set your organization apart.

Like your logo and corporate colors, a mission statement can be something that links all stakeholders, whether in the case of your organization that means not only employees but also donors or shareholders, investors, suppliers etc.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that many savvy organizations tend to make use of their branding in promoting and displaying their mission statements.

We’ve included some examples here.

The National Football League’s Mission Statement

The National Football League is one organization that probably doesn’t need a lot of guidance in the area of branding.

After all, the N.F.L. has long been recognized as not only a consummate marketer, but also an astute curator of its brand.

As you can see in the photos below, the designs chosen by the N.F.L. for its mission statement displays for individual employees incorporate a relatively subtle, though highly effective, branding element, its Shield.

In the case of the BlackArch Partners mission statement display, also shown here, the design plays off of the firm’s logo.

In both cases, the organizations have opted for a relatively simple, understated design for their mission statement display. That’s understandable, even advisable since the centerpiece should really be the content of their missions.

But, on the other hand, both organizations, in laying out their respective missions, have also taken advantage of the opportunity to promote and advance their brands.

The Corporate Presence and Your Mission Statement Display

At The Corporate Presence, we certainly can’t hold ourselves out as experts at distilling your organization’s mission.

But over the course of 40 years, we’ve gained a considerable amount of experience and expertise in helping clients make full use of traditional awards and commemoratives.

What exactly does that mean?

Yes, we provide clients with conventional awards and commemoratives, the kind you’ve probably already seen on a variety of websites (and the National Football League is just one organization for which we regularly provide not only highly customized pieces but also more traditional, elegant high-end recognition awards).

But our real area of expertise—-our particular mission—is providing our clients with design options that go beyond the same default, off-the-shelf, lookalike “employee recognition awards” and commemoratives.

Our goal is to use significant occasions in the life of any organization, times when far too many organizations just go online and select some random slab of crystal, acrylic, or marble, that’s actually distinctive to that organization.

There are any number of occasions that present themselves to an organization, whether it’s commemorating a new product, a strategic partnership, achieving some critical benchmark, or an endless array of other milestones.

Promoting a mission statement should be approached in the same way: as an opportunity to celebrate your company’s unique goals, but do so in a way that truly reflects its unique and distinctive character.

Contact us today to find out how The Corporate Presence can help you proudly display your organization’s mission statement.