Vision statement and corporate identity for startups

The vision statement should reflect your startup’s vision and motivate you and your team to do everything you can to achieve it. It should be realistic, but not too easy to achieve.

As a first step, set up a working group with your co-founders, managers and key employees. That’ll allow you to gather lots of ideas from different perspectives. Those involved in producing the statement will usually also be motivated to implement it.

In an initial brainstorming session, list all the words related to your mission, your goals or your solution. In a second session, consider the purpose of your startup, your values, the strengths of the business, your aspirations, and what you want to achieve. In a third session, you can discuss which answers and words best apply to your company, and summarise the key points.

Once all the central statements have been defined, the next step is to formulate them as simply as possible. Don’t use technical jargon and over-complicated words, and avoid ambiguity and negative formulations. Fine-tune your vision statement until you have a single sentence that perfectly encapsulates your message.

Your vision statement should clearly communicate your corporate goal. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is it concrete but not too specific?
• Is it ambitious, but not unrealistic?
• Is it inspiring, clear and understandable?

How do you want to communicate with your customers? Always start with the target group and ask yourself what your customers expect from your startup. While the staff at a skateboard shop might have an informal relationship with their customers, insurance advisors may choose more formal language to explain a complex product to non-specialists in a way that inspires confidence. In any event, uniform communication is very important for your corporate identity. You should set clear language rules or specific guidelines for this purpose. For example, you should decide whether to use ...

... short or long sentences.

.. basic or complex terminology.

... simple language or jargon.

... active or passive formulations.

... gendered or gender-neutral language.

• Where does the name of your company come from?
• What values do you and your employees seek to represent?
• Do your products have their own story?

By selecting a consistent colour scheme, you set the mood you want to convey. So when developing your corporate identity, you should consider which colour best suits your company and define a colour palette. Red draws attention. Blue tends to have a calming effect. But you don’t necessarily have to adhere to conventional colour symbolism. What really matters is consistency. Ideally, customers should recognise your startup from the chosen colour scheme alone. It’s no coincidence that PostFinance is known as the “yellow bank” or that red springs to mind immediately when you think of Coca-Cola.

The font you choose contributes to a uniform corporate identity. Select one or a few fonts and only use these. What brand personality do you want the font to reflect? Is it speed, strength, trustworthiness or perhaps attention to detail?

You don’t need lots of images to create a successful visual world. It is much more important for your corporate identity to use good quality and meaningful images. So consider what feelings you want your customers to associate with your startup. Based on that, define the rules for your visual world. Should you use light or dark images? Should your images mainly feature people, animals or landscapes? Should they have a modern or retro look?

You’re bound to know Mobiliar’s cartoon characters. Swiss Mobiliar sketches are an excellent example of how a company achieves recognition on the market through a simple drawing alone – even without a company logo. Decide on a consistent image for all graphics, animation and drawings used in relation to your startup’s corporate identity.

The corporate design is the visual implementation of the corporate identity. Not just the logo, the business card or the website, but the entire identity. This includes the packaging, if you’re launching a product, or the fittings and employee clothing, if you are providing a service. Field staff should also ideally be on the road in branded vehicles.

A company rarely just conveys its image visually. Are you familiar with the Swisscom ringtone? Or the fizzing sound on the Rivella advert that comes with the satisfaction of opening a bottle? Give your startup a consistent sound. That way, you provide your customers with an integral experience for all the senses – ensuring you remain etched into their memory.