Mission statement as a representative of the brand identity

"About Us," "Who We Are," or "Our Profile" - on every corporate website, sections are publicly accessible in which the company is presented. However, companies are often unaware that these mission statements are not simply presentations, but should convey the brand identity including the brand values. Yet mission statements are enormously important, especially in external communication: After all, this section is the first thing that new customers, potential specialists or interested parties read and perceive when they want to find out about a company.

To make this first impression as positive as possible, the language used in the mission statements should be consistent with the corporate values. This is because the style, choice of words or sentence structure can evoke positive, negative or neutral reactions and associations - the so-called brand perception. For example, if a company wants to appear innovative, terms such as "modern," "future-oriented," or "new" are advisable; adjectives such as "classic" or "traditional" would be less appropriate. If a company manages to represent its brand identity through its language in the mission statement, it can become its flagship.

But the new study by H&H Communication Lab in cooperation with the University of Hohenheim shows that this basis - the language - is often still given too little attention in corporate mission statements. In this study, those responsible for the study identified the 160 companies with the highest turnover from Germany, Austria and Switzerland and analyzed their mission statements for their comprehensibility, gender-appropriate language and their language climate or their value concepts.

How comprehensible are mission statements?

Even the results of the first area of investigation - comprehensibility - show some need for improvement. Oliver Haug, communications scientist and managing director of the H&H Communications Lab, and his team used tried-and-tested instruments for the evaluation, such as the Hohenheim Intelligibility Index (HIX) for clear, comprehensible texts. The Corporate Language Index (CLIX), the world's only index for measuring brand language, was also used. "As might be expected, the range of how 160 companies describe themselves in their mission statements was very wide - from very understandable to not very understandable," says Haug, adding. "What is striking, however, is that the target group - shareholders, customers, employees, suppliers, journalists - is often forgotten."

The fact that the mission statements are not scrutinized more critically is all the more surprising because they are not about complex, technical approaches, products or solutions, but about brand values. "We were surprised by the complex sentence structures, word types and grammar that were used in some cases," notes Haug.

It was also noticeable that there was sometimes a large discrepancy between the company information and the rest of the impression of the company websites: other sections on solution-, product- or marketing-oriented websites were understandable and clearly formulated, so that the complexity of the language in the mission statements stood out all the more. Language expert Oliver Haug can imagine why this might be: "At times, reading the mission statements gave the impression that they had been taken over from outdated company descriptions. An adaptation to the medium "online" has not yet taken place."

The overall sector comparison shows who communicates most clearly: The winner here is the construction industry, followed by consumer goods and retail, and only then by transport and logistics. The automotive industry's mission statements bring up the rear.

Gendering - yes or no?

Taking into account the social moods and surveys on gender-appropriate language, in which 60-70 % of the respondents reject gendering, the studied corporate mission statements differ linguistically a good deal from the public's opinion. This was revealed by the second area of investigation in the study. According to this, 58 percent (69 out of 120) already use gender-sensitive or gender-appropriate language in their mission statements. However, since many gender-neutral terms such as "employees" or "students" have now become part of normal language usage, the first impression is again put into perspective. This is because there is still no consistent counter-gendering: "Numerous gender-specific terms are still prevalent," explains Oliver Haug. "Nevertheless, you can see a clear trend toward gendering - even in more conservative industries."

Language climate and value concepts

A mission statement should appeal to people, motivate them or possibly touch them emotionally. The fact that companies succeed in doing this much more often than one might expect is evident from the last point of analysis in the study on language climate and value concepts.

Many companies have apparently recognized the importance of emotionalizing their mission statements in order to better reach their target groups and also become more accessible themselves. One small fly in the ointment: some mission statements still lack terms that focus on the topic of innovation. As a result, the companies often appear less innovative and future-oriented to their target groups than they are.

To avoid such inconsistencies, it would be advisable for some companies to analyze the value concepts in their mission statements. Values in mission statements should be consistent with the company's brand values and considered in the overall context: Value concepts such as trust, reliability or even sustainability can quickly come across as trite, superficial or even meaningless. But if they are used in a targeted manner and illustrated by company-specific examples, they can convey precisely the values that suit the company and make the difference to potential competitors.

Conclusion

Since value concepts in mission statements do not stand alone, but are part of the entire text, it is worthwhile to review the entire mission statement language in relation to the brand identity: Does our mission statement deliver on the promise the brand wants to make? Does the language used correspond to the company language, the corporate language? What improvements can be made? Is it enough to swap individual terms or should the entire approach be improved? By examining the mission statement on their own corporate website, companies can take a critical look at themselves, can review their corporate language, or can even begin to build their own corporate language, which can then serve as the basis for brand communication.