A killer brand strategy will be your business’s north star as it navigates the fundings, failings and scalings of the start-up world. Whilst nobody knows your business quite like you do, it can be a difficult thing to put into words - especially words that establish important lessons to live by, in order to stay true to your mission.

Building a brand strategy can seem like an exploration in interchangeable words that ultimately mean the same thing. But there are fundamental nuances in the language you identify with, and your brand statements - its values, principles, purpose, mission and vision - are a key reflection of that.

Before we get bogged down into individual brand statements and their sentiments, let’s touch on the importance of each statement complementing the next - and why they should look good next to each other.

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Don’t forget where you came from

All brand statements should be formulated with three things in mind: your long-term business objectives, your connection with your audience, and your competitive landscape.

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Link values to principles

Your values will be your most accessible starting point. Liken your brand to someone in the public eye, and analyse their character traits to find your sweet spot.

When you’ve decided on your comprehensive list, write some starter-for-ten rules that tie a couple of them together in one. These ‘rules’ can refer to the way you like to work, your company culture, your ethics or your standards. Your values are traits that inform your brand identity, your principles define your brand DNA and its essence.

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Link principles to purpose

Your brand purpose is your reason for being. The more worthy, the better. Your principles should act as inspiration, as vehicles towards achieving your brand purpose. If purpose is your ‘why’, principles are your ‘how’.

Take Tesla, for example. Their purpose is as follows: to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. If we were to devise principles that would lead to this purpose, they might be something like ‘innovate for the future’. The chosen language, ‘acceleration’ and ‘transition’, goes hand in hand with innovation; it’s the means of getting there.

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Link purpose to mission

Your mission is an outward reflection of your purpose. It’s just bigger, more rallying, and written with your audience in mind. Think about your purpose; if it serves as your own emotional motivation (which it should), frame your mission in terms of your consumer’s emotional motivation. What mission are you trying to get them onboard with, that only your brand can achieve? How does it appeal to their sense of self? How does it solve their problems?

Your purpose is your ‘forever’, your mission is your ‘today’. You’re solving X, by doing X, for people that X.

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Link mission to vision

If your mission is your ‘today’, your vision is your ‘one day’. Your mission has an inherent practicality to it, as it needs to position your USP, your target audience and your product as a solution.

A great exercise for articulating your brand’s vision is to populate the statement ‘Imagine a world where ______’. If your brand reached stratospheric levels of success, how would the world look different? Be positive, think big, and activate your purpose.