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Beware: Vision Statements and Mission Statements Suck as Communications Tools (July 29, 2008)
Tuned out organizations try to engineer mission statements, corporate vision documents, and poorly executed advertising taglines, say the authors of a hot new business book. Unfortunately these efforts succeed at impressing nobody except, perhaps, the board of directors and turn buyers off.
Scottsdale, AZ July 29, 2008 – Articulating powerful ideas that resonate with your buyers is a natural step in the process of getting tuned in, say the authors of Tuned In the new book about uncovering the extraordinary opportunities that lead to business breakthroughs. The powerful ideas, concepts, and phrases naturally flow from your understanding of buyers and their problems.
“Unfortunately, what we frequently see are egotistical mission statements and corporate vision messages developed in a vacuum,” says David Meerman Scott, developer of the New Rules of Marketing seminar at Pragmatic Marketing and co-author of Tuned In. “These documents are developed based on what’s important to the company, not what’s important for buyers and therefore they are terrible for external communications. Companies that dream up this committee-created junk are doing their buyers a great disservice.”
Scott says there’s no doubt that ideas resonate if they are developed for buyer personas instead of simply relying on a generic set of broad messages for everyone. “When I see gobbledygook language like ‘our flexible, scalable,mission-critical, industry-standard, cutting-edge product’ I think I’m gonna puke! Just like with a teenager’s use of catch phrases, I notice the same words cropping up again and again - so much so that the gobbledygook grates against my nerves and many other people’s, too. Well,duh. Like, companies just totally don’t communicate very well, you know?”
A poorly articulated set of “messages” has the power to turn buyers away from your organization.
The authors of Tuned In offer a model for success used by many companies to create breakthrough products and services. Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities That Lead to Business Breakthroughs by Craig Stull, Phil Myers, and David Meerman Scott is published by Wiley on June 27, 2008 and available wherever business books are sold. ISBN: 978-0470260364
Anyone can use Tuned In to replicate the model for success. It works for well-known companies like Ford, Apple, and GE and those not-so-famous like GoPro and Zipcar. It works for realtors, doctors, ministers and even rock stars. Tuned In will teach you how to transform your everyday activities into those which create the kind of culture that builds market leaders.
Authors Craig Stull and Phil Myers lead the team at Pragmatic Marketing, the company behind Tuned In. David Meerman Scott is an online thought-leadership strategist who teaches the New Rules of Marketing seminar for Pragmatic Marketing.
