9 Companies With Truly Inspiring Mission Statements

Where does customer loyalty come from?

Think about those brands that you purchase from over and over, even when there are cheaper options out there. Do you usually fly on a particular airline? Do you buy your coffee from the same place every morning? Do you suggest a specific restaurant whenever out-of-towners ask for suggestions?

Often, the reason we stay loyal to brands is because of their set of values. The best ones strive to combine physical, emotional, and logical elements into one exceptional customer — and employee — experience.

When you successfully create a connection with your customers and employees, many of them might stay loyal for life — and you’ll have the chance to increase your overall profitability while building a solid foundation of brand promoters. But achieving that connection is no easy task. The companies that succeed are ones that stay true to their core values over the years and create a company that employees and customers are proud to associate with.

So check out some of the following company mission statements for yourself — and get inspired to write one for your brand.

1) Life is good

The Life is good brand is about more than spreading optimism — although, with uplifting T-shirt slogans like “Seas The Day” and “Forecast: Mostly Sunny,” it’s hard not to crack a smile.

There are a ton of T-shirt companies in the world, but Life is good’s mission sets itself apart with a mission statement goes beyond fun clothing. Their mission statement is divided into “Vision” and “Mission.” The former is perhaps a little unexpected: How will a T-shirt company help create a certain world for children? They answer that question in the latter, which outlines the specific program they implemented to support their vision. We really like how lofty yet specific this mission statement is — it’s a hard-to-balance combination.

2) sweetgreen

Notice that sweetgreen’s mission is positioned to align with your values — not just written as something they believe. We love the inclusive language they use in their statement, letting us know that they’re all about connecting their growing network of farmers growing healthy, local ingredients with us — the customer — because we’re the ones who want more locally grown, healthy food options.

Their mission to connect people is what makes this statement so strong. And that promise has gone beyond their website and walls of their food stops: The sweetgreen team has made strides in the communities where they’ve opened stores as well. Primarily, they provide education to young kids on healthy eating, fitness, sustainability, and where food comes from. Their sweetlife music festival attracts 20,000 like-minded people every year who come together to listen to music, eat healthy food, and give back to a cause — their sweetgreen in schools charity partner, FoodCorps.

3) Patagonia

Patagonia’s mission statement combines both the values that bring them market success (building safe, high quality products) and the values that contribute to a better world (philanthropic efforts to help the environment.) For them, “a love of wild and beautiful places demands participation in the fight to save them.” In the name of this cause, the company donates time, services, and at least 1% of their sales to hundreds of grassroots environmental groups around the world.

If your company has a similar focus on growing your business and giving back, think about talking about both the benefit you bring to customers and the value you want to bring to a greater cause in your mission statement. 

4) Trader Joe’s

“The mission of Trader Joe’s is to give our customers the best food and beverage values that they can find anywhere and to provide them with the information required to make informed buying decisions. We provide these with a dedication to the highest quality of customer satisfaction delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, fun, individual pride, and company spirit.”

Trader Joe’s sets itself apart from other grocery stores with an ode to great customer service. If you’ve ever been in a Trader Joe’s, you know that all you need to do is go up to an employee and ask them where something is, and they’ll get up from avocado sorting and physically bring you to the item you were looking for.

Dedication to exceptional treatment of the customer is Trader Joe’s’ trademark, so it’s no surprise you can find it the center of their mission statement. We also love the adjectives they used to describe that customer service: warmth, friendliness, fun, individual pride, and company spirit. The company’s quirkiness, like their Hawaiian shirt uniforms and bells in place of a PA system, makes them feel like a neighborhood grocery store instead of a chain of over 400 stores.

5) Warby Parker

Speaking of quirky, this mission statement from Warby Parker uses words that reflect a young and daring personality: “rebellious,” “revolutionary,” “socially-conscious.” In one sentence, they take us back to the root of why they were founded while also revealing their vision for a better future.

In the longer-form version of their mission, they write: “We believe that buying glasses should be easy and fun. It should leave you happy and good-looking, with money in your pocket,” which further shows how Warby Parker doesn’t hold back on letting their unique personality shine through. Here, the missions statement’s success all comes down to spot-on word choice. 

6) InvisionApp

“Question Assumptions. Think Deeply. Iterate as a Lifestyle. Details, Details. Design is Everywhere. Integrity.”

These days, it can seem like every B2B company page looks the same — but InvisionApp has one of the cooler company pages I’ve seen. If you go to their company page, scroll down to “Our Core Values,” and hover your mouse over any of the icons, and you’ll find a short-but-sweet part of their overall company mission under each icon. We love the way they laid out the statements under each icon: They’re brief, authentic, and business babble-free — which makes the folks at InvisionApp seem like trustworthy, B.S.-free types.

7) Honest Tea

“Real Tea. We embrace the simplicity of tea — water and leaves. For generations, cultures around the world have enjoyed tea grown without chemical pesticides and fertilizers and we don’t see any reason to include them in our recipes today.

“Real Taste. Our goal is to create a product in which the true taste of the leaves come through.

“Honest. We strive to live up to our name in the way we conduct our business. We do this whether we are working with growers and suppliers, answering customer questions or trying to leave a lighter environmental footprint.”

“Real Tea. Real Taste. Honest.” Each of the three sections of Honest Tea’s mission statement begins with a simple punch line connoting their tea is real, pure, and therefore not full of artificial chemicals. They’re speaking to an audience that’s tired of finding ingredients in their tea they can’t pronounce, who have been searching for a tea that’s exactly what they say they are.

Not only does Honest Tea have a punny name, but they also center their mission around their clever company name. They even publish a Mission Report every year in an effort to be “transparent about our business practices and live up to our mission to seek to create and promote great-tasting, healthier, organic beverages.”

8) The Malala Fund

The Malala Fund divided its mission statement into three sections: We Amplify; We Advocate; We Invest. The “rule of three” is a powerful rhetorical device called a tricolon that’s usually used in speechwriting to help make an idea more memorable. A tricolon is a series of three parallel elements of roughly the same length — think “I came; I saw; I conquered.” We also like that each pillar of their mission is concise, actionable, and fits into one, simple sentence.

(By the way, we couldn’t be more excited that Shiza Shahid, co-founder and CEO of The Malala Fund, was just announced as the closing keynote speaker at INBOUND 2022! See the full lineup here.)

9) IKEA

The folks at IKEA dream big. Their mission statement could have been a promise for beautiful, affordable furniture, but instead, they decided their mission is to make everyday life better for their customers. It’s a partnership, they say: IKEA finds deals all over the world and buys in bulk, then we choose the furniture and pick it up at a self-service warehouse. “So together,” they say, “we save money for a better everyday life.” Using words like “together” and “we” makes a huge company like IKEA much more accessible and appealing to customers.

Which company mission statements have inspired YOU the most? Share with us in the comments below!

Source: Hubspot