Podcast

EPISODE SUMMARY

MVP storytelling, which stands for mission, vision, and purpose drives B2E marketing. In episode 494, Dave Mastovich talks about how forming a clear mission, vision, and purpose using anecdotes and analogies improves your cultural messaging and communication within your business, as well as communication with your clients, and even your clients’ clients.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

It’s the No Bullshit Marketing Show. I’m Dave Mastovich, CEO and founder of MASSolutions, the world’s only No Bullshit Marketing consultants. This episode, I want to talk about creating clarity and alignment through communication, and how your MVP story can drive business-to-employee marketing. Business-to-employee marketing is all about recruiting, retention, and results. And that storytelling that you do, that cultural storytelling to current and prospective employees, does achieve those three R’s. It helps with recruiting. It improves retention. It increases productivity, or results. So the three R’s, recruiting, retention and results. MVP storytelling comes down to your mission, vision, and purpose, and how all of that is crafted into anecdotes and analogies built by and for current and prospective employees. What’s that all mean? 

Well, your mission is a concise phrase that drives what the company does. So when you think about a company like Apple, what Apple does is they bring the best user experience to our customers. That’s their mission, bring the best user experience to our customers. You see how the mission statement is this concise phrase that drives what the company does? Maybe that’s cliche to talk about Apple and they’re big, international. So I’m going to give you MASSolutions’ mission. It’s to help our clients drive change through marketing and storytelling, help our clients drive change through marketing and storytelling. So the mission is that concise phrase that drives what the organization does. You want to make sure that you focus on your mission statement. You want to do the mission and vision by asking two why questions – your why or reason for being as a company and your customers’ why or reason for buying. When you combine the answers to those two questions, your why or reason for being and your customers’ why or reason for buying, you’re going to see there is some overlap, there’s some common ground, but then there’s also some areas that are unique to a company mission and some areas that are unique to the customer, why they want to buy. You work through that and clearly articulate your why or reason for being as your mission, and your vision can combine those two – your customers’ why, their reason for buying, and your why or reason for being.

The vision provides more direction. It describes the ambitions of the company and how you deliver. So I want to look at Apple’s here again. Apple’s vision now, their vision is make the best products on Earth and leave the world better than we found it. Make the best products on Earth and leave the world better than we found it. Do you see how that is combining their why, leaving the world better than they found it, and their customers’ why, who want the best products and probably also want the world better than they found it. But again, let’s break it down to a company like MASSolutions as opposed to the internationally renowned Apple. MASSolutions’ vision is any company, regardless of size or industry, should be able to grow by leveraging marketing and the power of story. So we talked about your why or reason for being driving that mission, your customers’ why or reason for buying combined with your why or reason for being helping you build that vision statement. 

Then you have to have your core values, that’s your purpose, your core values. And Apple’s purpose or core values gets into some detail here. Accessibility. Apple gives consumers and organizations access to the hardware, software, services, and technologies they need to achieve their goals and aspirations. Support education. Give products, support, and opportunities to schools that need them. Third one is a plant-sized plan. Apple is carbon neutral and wants to make all products with clean energy by 2030. We’re all in. Apple has strengthened its long standing commitment to making the workplace more inclusive and promoting justice globally. Privacy is a human right. Apple designs its products to protect consumers’ privacy and give them control over their information. Supplier responsibility holds suppliers accountable to higher labor and human rights standards, health and safety and environmental practices. As you can see, each of these core values roll up into the vision, which rolls up into the mission. With Apple, you can see these core values lived when you walk into an Apple store. And when they aren’t lived up to, they hear about it. So that’s your P, your purpose or your core values. Again, coming down from the international company to MASSolutions, our purpose, our core values are think – think for yourself, beyond yourself, and about the possibilities. Think for yourself, we want everyone to think and learn and grow. Think beyond yourself means it isn’t just making it about me. And think about the possibilities for marketing for storytelling for our clients. Adapt through accountability, resiliency, and vulnerability. Innovate your approach as a MASS team member, our customers’ approach, and our customers’ customers approach. If we’re doing our job well, and living our purpose, our core values, we’re helping our clients to change, to improve, to better reach their customer. So helping our customers and our customers’ customers, or innovating. Our fourth is communicate clearly with our team, with our customers, and with our customers’ customers. Communication is really what we’re all about. It’s the end product in many ways. So we have to communicate clearly with our team, clearly with our customers, and clearly with our customers’ customers so that they come in and do more business with our customers. And our fifth one is grow personally and professionally, grow our customers’ businesses, grow our business, because if we aren’t growing MASSolutions, we really can’t grow our customers’ businesses, and we cannot grow personally and professionally. 

So what does this all mean to you? I’m giving these examples of mission, vision and purpose, MVP storytelling, and P purpose being core values. You want to build these. And then you want to have anecdotes and analogies that make the point. As I told you the MASSolutions ones, I used anecdotes and analogies. I said, if we can’t grow our business, we’re not going to be able to grow our customers’ business, and our team isn’t going to grow personally and professionally, nor are the clients we work with. So I’m kind of giving you that analogy, an anecdote or analogy. Tell stories that tie back to those core values. And Apple does this. When you see Apple’s stories, they tie back to their mission, their vision, their core values when they do ads, when they do PR on their interviews of their leaders. So clarity and alignment through communication is what we’re talking about today. That’s what the whole episode is about is clarity and alignment, creating clarity and alignment, gaining clarity and alignment through communication. And that communication is your business-to-employee marketing to help with recruiting, retention, and results. And what does that is communicating with clarity to gain alignment about your mission, which is that concise phrase that drives what the company does, your vision, which provides direction and describes the ambitions of the company and how you deliver, and your purpose, which are your company’s core values that you want employees to live by.

I walked you through that famous company Apple because most people see some good in Apple. And Apple has that mission, that vision, their core values. But I didn’t want to make it just pure aspirational. I wanted to show you how a company like MASSolutions has our mission, our vision, our core values, because you can do that too. You can clearly build your mission, your why or reason for being. You can create your vision, which adds into that your customers’ why or reason for buying and still ties it and rolls it up to the mission. You can come up with your core values, which should be three to five, six at the most maybe, that you have of core values that are a word or two or three that then can have a story behind it, like Apple has support education, but they say give products, support, and opportunities to schools that need them the most. That’s adding a story to those two words of support education. But then to completely illustrate that to current and prospective employees, they want to tell stories about how they gave those products and support opportunities to schools. And they want to show examples of kids that were impacted, that grew and learned and went on to bigger and better things and created and lived their dream. When they tell those anecdotes or when they make an analogy about the impact that they’re having, that’s when they’re adding to that cultural messaging. So it’s not just that core value and then the one sentence after the two words. It’s also anecdotes and analogies that are memorable that they can make to current and prospective Apple employees and even to customers. 

We do the same at MASSolutions. We want people to know that we think. We think differently here. We think beyond ourselves. We think for ourselves. Every team member knows they have to think for themselves, because we are nimble. And then we think about the possibilities. And that’s just one. There’s adapt through resiliency, accountability and vulnerability. There’s innovate your approach as a team member, our customers’ approach and our customers’ customers approach, and communicate clearly with our team, communicate clearly with our clients and communicate clearly with our clients’ clients. And then grow. Each team member grows personally and professionally. We grow our customers’ businesses, and we grow our business. We have anecdotes and analogies. We have videos, we have stories that build all that up so that any MASSolutions team member knows this. And any prospective one can decide whether or not they want to work here. Maybe some people don’t like that, thinking for themselves a lot, having to find the solution without asking someone necessarily right off the bat. Some people might not like that. Some people might not like vulnerability, that’s okay. I had one person that said, “I don’t like the V word.” I understand that’s not going to be necessarily healthy here at MASSolutions. But there are places where it’ll be okay. 

So that’s what your MVP storytelling does. It creates clarity and alignment through communication. 

Thanks for listening to another episode of the No Bullshit Marketing Show recorded here in MASSolutions studio in bold, beautiful, downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Remember, ask yourself, what’s the big idea? And build your story around the answer. It’s all about bold solutions. No BS.

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