Nike’s all-timer mission statement

This bit of copy is probably the single biggest influence on the way we approach copy & messaging.

It's *everything* you need to know about Nike in 19 words.

And in those nineteen words, Nike tell you who they're for, what they believe, what they're selling emotionally, and the identity their customers get to opt into.

And that footnote? *chef's kiss*. So, so good.

This is THE example of a brand having a mission statement as their true north.

Just look at it. It's a thing of beauty.

They manage to distil everything that makes up Nike’s brand down into 19 words.

And notice it’s got nothing to do with trainers or gear?

It’s about what people are really buying: a feeling, a transformation, an emotional outcome…

And it’s this absolute clarity of messaging that means that Nike campaigns, copy, slogans, adverts… all feel like they’re singing from the same hymn sheet. And they have done for decades.

But more importantly for your brand, in 19 words, you have pretty much everything you need to keep your messaging consistent, whatever you’re writing:

• Your emotional core and tone of your copy need to feel inspiring
• You know you’re talking directly to athletes
• You know you should nod to a product’s innovation
• You know you’re writing for a global audience (AKA, no super local terminology)
• You know a large part of Nike’s audience don’t necessarily see themselves as athletes so you’re selling an opt-in identity of athlete, not just to people who already see themselves as athletes.
• You have a strong, crystal clear POV that you can write from.

And that’s exactly why we start almost all of our brand voice projects by ripping this off, big time.

Because in a sentence or two, you have all the ingredients you need to make sure everything you write feels like it’s saying the same thing in different ways.

Nick our process (that we nicked off of Nike)

👆Say that 10 times fast.

We take that Nike mission statement and try and write our own version of it for whatever brand we’re working with.

And by doing that, we can quite quickly pin down the key emotional core of the copy, the audience, the transformation we’re selling, the broad USPs…

And the thing we love the most about this exercise is that it’s really, really simple.

You can get your team on a call and in an hour tops, have it done, signed off and ready to roll.

Jump on a call together and figure out:

1. What emotional need does your brand fill? AKA what are you giving people outside of the product? (Pro tip: download all of your Trustpilot reviews and run a VOC audit on them looking for words tied to strong emotions like joy or relief or enjoyment…)
2. How do your products tie into this emotional need? What’s the throughline from your brand’s emotional promise to the experience of using your products? What transformation does it give them?
3. Who are you speaking to? AKA, what opt-in identity are you creating that customers can see and say either “that’s me!” or “that’s who I want to be”. And what is your definition of that identity?
4. What’s your worldview? What’s the big, overarching belief that shapes everything your brand does? (Note: it’s important this isn’t just marketing fluff. It needs to be based in how you act.)

Then, when you’ve got them, you can write your own Nike-adjacent line using something like this:

We believe [brand worldview]. That’s why we’re on a mission to bring [emotional need] to [audience descriptor]* through [products] that [USPs].
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*if you do [X, Y or Z], you’re one of us.

That little three-sentence phrase makes everything so much easier to write.

You can read every headline, product description, subject line, social caption, WhatsApp message, Klaviyo email… and judge it against “does this feel like it’s saying the same thing as our messaging statement?”.

And that's a game-changer for making your messaging and voice consistent.