By: Tom Laplaige
Most brands have a mission and a vision. Almost all claim a set of values. Integrity. Openness. Empathy. Aspirational words that operate more as decorative self-description than usable tools. But when you stop and ask people to explain what the brand actually is, how it behaves in the market, or why it wins, and you’ll get ten different answers.
This isn’t a culture problem. It’s a language problem.
Mission, Vision, and Values were never designed to do the job we now expect of them. They articulate aspiration and belief. They do not enforce positioning. They do not reframe categories or guide speech. They do not hold up under competitive pressure. They describe what a company hopes to be, but they don’t describe how a company shows up.
What’s missing is a Brand Narrative.
Positioning Changes How You Think. Narrative Changes How You Talk.
Brand positioning creates internal clarity. It defines the frame you want customers to use when evaluating you. It names the pain, exposes the weakness in the status quo, and claims a point of view. But positioning doesn’t travel on its own.
It doesn’t scale across teams. It doesn’t automatically turn into usable language. And it doesn’t prevent drift once the work leaves the strategy deck. Brand Narrative is the translator.
A real Brand Narrative takes strategic intent and turns it into language people can actually use. It gives the organization a shared way to describe itself. Consistently, confidently, and without constant reinterpretation.
Without it, teams improvise. They soften edges. They borrow category language. They default to safety. Over time, the position erodes. Not because it was wrong, but because it was never enforced in words.
Narrative is how strategy becomes durable.
Where Mission, Vision, and Values Fall Short
Mission, Vision, and Values answer internal questions. What do we believe? Where are we headed? How should we behave? They are useful for alignment and intent. They are not designed for market contact.
Brand Narrative answers external questions. What kind of company is this? Why should I trust them? How are they actually different? Why do they matter now?
MVV lives on walls, onboarding decks, and internal portals. Narrative lives in conversation. In sales calls. In leadership interviews. In moments where judgment is required and language has consequences. MVV doesn’t tell people how to talk. It doesn’t guide copy decisions or sales language. It doesn’t reduce ambiguity when teams are under pressure and speed matters.
Brand Narrative does.
The Four Questions a Brand Narrative Must Answer
Every effective Brand Narrative resolves into four simple questions. Not because it’s elegant, but because it mirrors how people actually make sense of things.
Who you are.
What you do.
How you do it.
Why you exist.
Each one does a different job. Together, they form a spine the entire organization can speak from.
Who You Are
This defines your role in the market.
It is not personality. It is not culture. And it is not an origin story. “Who you are” describes the role you play in the customer’s world. It’s the shorthand someone uses to explain you when you’re not in the room. It orients perception before features or proof points ever enter the conversation.
When this isn’t clear, everything downstream fizzles. Teams ad-lib. Language floats. The brand starts to sound like everyone else, usually without realizing it.
What You Do
This is your value, without navel-gazing.
“What you do” is not a product list. It’s not a business model. And it’s not a claim about changing the world. It’s a clear articulation of the value you create through the specific pain you solve, in terms customers actually care about.
If it sounds impressive but doesn’t help someone explain your value to another person, it’s not doing its job. Strong narratives choose clarity over ambition here. Credibility is built by saying exactly what you do, and stopping there.
How You Do It
This is your method, made visible.
It’s the most overlooked part of the narrative and often the most valuable. “How you do it” explains why your approach works. It operationalizes your point of view. It turns positioning into something concrete and defensible.
This is also where de-positioning tends to show up. Not through direct attacks, but by making the “normal” way of doing things feel inefficient, risky, or outdated by comparison. When done well, competitors don’t sound wrong. They sound tired.
Without this section, claims float. With it, they land.
Why You Exist
This names the problem you refuse to accept.
It is not a purpose statement. It is not a moral posture. And it is not a vague appeal to impact. “Why you exist” defines the tension that animates the company. The condition you believe should no longer be tolerated. The reason this brand, with this point of view, had to exist at all.
When it works, it doesn’t sound lofty. It sounds obvious. Usually in hindsight.
What Narrative Actually Does
A real Brand Narrative does three things at once.
It aligns internal teams without constant explanation.
It guides language choices without policing tone.
It makes competitors feel risky or ill-equipped by comparison.
That last part matters. When language does real work, it doesn’t just differentiate. It de-positions. It reframes the category. It makes the old way feel out of step. It put alternatives into question without needing to name them.
This is how brands stop competing on features and start competing on meaning.
The Real Test
If your Brand Narrative can’t be spoken naturally by leadership, sales, and marketing without translation, it isn’t finished. If it doesn’t reduce debate about how the brand should sound, it isn’t finished. If it doesn’t make bad copy feel wrong, it isn’t finished.
Narrative isn’t decoration. It’s infrastructure.
Mission, Vision, and Values still matter. They just can’t do this job alone. Because at some point, strategy has to turn into sentences. And the brands that win are the ones who know exactly what to say, and why.
