Mission: Impossible

Mission statements have enormous value, but not to your customers.

Read on to learn why:

① A mission statement serves a completely different audience than a slogan.

② The value in mission statements is the thought process required to write one.

③ It’s a great time to be a big American bank.

④ The UK is far behind in AI, but…err…at least it knows it?

⑤ Marketing tools are evolving fast; marketing fundamentals remain the same.

⑥ It’s not about how fast you go; it’s about how well you use your time.

⑦ Going public has lost its allure.

📸 But first flashback to April 2023 when I showcased DWS (Deutsche Bank’s asset management arm) CEO Stefan Hoops’ LinkedIn posts and told you that social media marketing works when it's personal. This week, Stefan’s candid post about diversity in the workplace (accompanied by a selfie of him in his swish home gym) not only went viral on the platform itself but got picked up by Handelsblatt, Germany’s leading business newspaper. Who said social media was a waste of time? Not me.

What's new

The Washington Post unveiled a new mission statement this week, The New York Times reports.

Source: The New York Times, 16 January 2025

In short:

“After Donald Trump entered the White House in 2017, The Washington Post adopted a slogan that underscored the newspaper’s traditional role as a government watchdog: ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness.’ This week, as Mr. Trump prepares to re-enter the White House, the newspaper debuted a mission statement that evokes a more expansive view of The Post’s journalism, without death or darkness: ‘Riveting Storytelling for All of America’.”
“The statement is meant to be an internal rallying point for employees, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. Executives are not planning to replace its more strident public slogan.”
“Mr. Bezos, [The Post’s owner and] the founder of Amazon, has made comments in line with the new mission statement in conversations with Post journalists in recent years. Mr. Bezos has expressed hopes that The Post would be read by more blue-collar Americans who live outside coastal cities, mentioning people like firefighters in Cleveland. He has also said that he is interested in expanding The Post’s audience among conservatives.”

Why it matters

Don’t worry, this week’s IMTW won’t be adding to the cacophony of commentary on big business compromising its integrity to ingratiate itself with the incoming US administration. I’m showcasing this story because it illustrates how misunderstood mission statements are and how easily they are confused with slogans, vision and purpose statements.

① Whereas a slogan serves to distill the essence of your brand for an external audience, a mission statement is quite different: it should rally your staff, to help with day-to-day operations and decision making.

Some of the best mission statements in finance and technology include:

American Express: “We work hard every day to make American Express the world’s most respected service brand.”
PayPal: “To enable global commerce by making payments easy, secure, and accessible for everyone.”
Goldman Sachs: “We aspire to be the world’s most exceptional financial institution, united by our shared values of partnership, integrity, and client focus.”
Mastercard: “To connect everyone to priceless possibilities.”
Google: “To organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Microsoft: “To empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more.”
Apple: “To bring the best user experience to its customers through innovative hardware, software, and services.”

None of these would resonate with customers, would they? They’re not supposed to. If a ‘vision’ statement is the destination, a ‘purpose’ the reason for the journey, then a ‘mission’ is the road map to get there. These matter to your team, not your customers. Instead, your customers have slogans:

American Express: “Don’t leave home without it.”
Mastercard: “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s Mastercard.”
Visa: “Everywhere you want to be.”
Charles Schwab: “Own your tomorrow.”
Fidelity Investments: “Turn here.”
Bank of America: “What would you like the power to do?”
Apple: “Think Different.”

They work because they’re memorable, connect emotionally, and align with the brand they represent.

What to do about it

Take action

Although it’s considered best-practice to make your mission, vision and purpose statements readily available on your website, I’d suggest that the slogan is the only one of these that has any real chance of connecting with your customers. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think through all of them carefully though, for two reasons.

② The first is that your own team will likely find the others helpful in guiding their actions. The second is that the thought process required to write them in the first place is invaluable.

Forcing yourself to think deeply about the ‘why’ of your organisation, then articulating it as succinctly as you can, can result in profound insight about your commercial model. It brings to the fore your fundamental value proposition:

Who do you serve?
What problems are they struggling with?
How can you help?
Why are you better positioned than anyone else to solve their problem? And
How will your customers ultimately benefit?

Get help

IMTW is brought to you by InMarketing, a strategic advisory service for senior leadership teams in finance and technology. It can help you with:

🔎 Audit 🧭 Strategy 🖋️ Positioning ✅ Planning 🤷🏻 Problem-solving ☎️ Counsel

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Top stories

The other articles that are worthy of your time.

FINANCE

JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs report big profits

③ It’s a great time to be a big American bank.

Source: The New York Times, 15 January 2025

“A swath of the nation’s largest lenders, including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs, reported quarterly and annual financial results on Wednesday that beat analysts’ expectations, and largely expressed a go-go attitude about what’s ahead after President-elect Donald J. Trump is inaugurated next week.”
“JPMorgan said it earned $14 billion in profits in the fourth quarter, and nearly $59 billion for the full year. Wells Fargo made $5.1 billion in the fourth quarter and $20 billion for the year and said wealthy depositors were plowing more money into its higher-end savings products. Citi, which topped estimates, reported net income of $2.9 billion in the quarter and $12.7 billion for the full year. Goldman Sachs, which saw fourth quarter profits of $4 billion and $14 billon for 2024, said it had particular success connecting risky companies looking for money to clients willing to lend it, typically a sign that credit conditions, as Wall Street puts it, remain fluid.”
“Bankers traditionally cloak themselves as a risk-averse bunch, and given the questions about the future for interest rates, deal making and the geopolitical world, their optimism about what’s ahead is noteworthy. There’s nothing an investment banker likes more than an easy, enthusiastic environment for corporate-financing activities like mergers and acquisitions and initial public offerings. All the major banks that reported earnings on Wednesday said they saw boom times ahead.”

TECHNOLOGY

The key points in the UK’s plan to be a ‘world leader’ in AI

④ The UK is far behind in AI, but…err…at least it knows it?

Source: The Evening Standard, 13 January 2025

“The central pillar of the plan sees the Government commit to building new AI infrastructure and expanding the UK’s ‘sovereign’ compute capacity by at least 20-fold by 2030 to keep pace with global development, […] by delivering a new state-of-the-art supercomputing facility to double the country’s existing AI research resource, with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to lock in a site and other key details this year.”
“This will be combined with plans for so-called AI Growth Zones, designated areas where the Government would partner with the private sector to deliver large amounts of computing power to support ‘key national priorities’ and create jobs in those areas.”
“In addition, the implementation of the action plan will see the creation of a National Data Library – a bank of securely held and managed public sector data, which could be used to support AI research and innovation.”

MEDIA & MARKETING

Metia’s B2B marketing trends report

⑤ Marketing tools are evolving fast; marketing fundamentals remain the same.

“Seven essential trends for the strategic CMO:

AI expansion is inevitable, but the AI adoption journey will need to become more considered. Changes to the marketing engine must be rooted in identifying the right enhancements and maximising profitability.
Investing in robust data foundations, scalable infrastructure, and continuous optimisation enables teams to move past pilot fatigue and transform AI from an experimental tool into a competitive advantage.
Intent data is not just another tool—it’s the foundation for a new era of predictive marketing. By embracing this evolution, businesses can not only meet customer needs more effectively but also anticipate them, staying one step ahead.
A highly targeted ABM programme should be the centrepiece of your marketing strategy.
AI is here to serve people and businesses—not the other way around. By starting with strategy, focusing on tangible problems, scaling thoughtfully,
maintaining ethical standards, and ensuring human oversight, organisations can unlock AI’s potential while mitigating its risks.
Content, campaigns and creativity are changing. The interplay between creativity and data has to remain front and centre. Organisations that are prepared for the pendulum to swing back to creativity and strategy, which will stem from content homogenisations will be those that continue to reap the gains that are sown with their AI systems.
Ethical and authentic marketing campaigns are as essential to AI as they have been to sustainability. Marketers will need to make great strides in 2025 in building effective strategies to ensure they are truly delivering revolutionary customer/employee experiences.”

WILDCARD

The insidious effects of hurrying

⑥ It’s not about how fast you go; it’s about how well you use your time.

Source: Harvard Business Review, 13 January 2025

“As the demands of work and personal life blur in an era of hyper-connectivity and hustle culture, hurry sickness — characterised by behaviours and emotions like impatience, chronic rushing, and a constant sense of time scarcity — is more insidious than ever, quietly sabotaging productivity, relationships, and health.

Consider:

Implementing forcing functions
Pausing before saying yes
Writing down the consequences of saying yes
Writing down the benefits of slowing down
Using a tool to help you prioritise
Prioritising grace over accomplishment
Practicing mindfulness”

Off cuts

The stories that almost made this week’s newsletter.

The last word

⑦ David Solomon (who has just been handed a $80m retention award), CEO of Goldman Sachs (which has just signalled its intent to deepen its exposure to private credit), on why startups should resist the urge to IPO (yes, I made it a verb):

David Solomon. Source: The Financial Times, 16 January 2025

“It’s not fun being a public company. Who would want to be a public company?
Today you can get capital privately, at scale . . . you can also get liquidity in the private markets. So the reasons to go public, when you really reach an incredible scale, are getting pushed out. If you are running a company that’s working and it’s growing, if you take it public, it will force you to change the way to run it and you really should do that with great caution.”

Don’t settle for marketing.

Strive for InMarketing.

Wishing you a productive week,

P.S. Like me, do you baulk at the cost of home maintenance? Try not to worry; it could be a lot worse.