Have you ever tried coming up with a perfect company mission statement? It's really important, and it's a quick route to the funny farm.
Playing off of current events, "Occupy Wall Space" doesn't do the trick, since it ignores the half of our business licensing art for home products that aren't on the wall. We used to state our mission as "To discover and develop innovative, on-trend artwork to create products that people want and can afford." Too clunky. So we edited it to "We find and develop on-trend artwork and bring beauty to the mainstream market."
We thought we had it nailed and were a little proud of ourselves. But at a planning retreat our outside facilitator described it as "just over the Sucky line." Still a little clunky and corporate sounding. So we went back to the drawing board, where we remain with about a million (I exaggerate) versions.
We know what we want to say, we just don't have the exact right words to make it short, compelling, aspirational, and full of pride. The heart of our mission is picking art that is right for the market, and making it accessible. There are infinite choices out there - see Getty or Corbis, for example - so selecting from the art universe is key. Making great art available and affordable has been central to us since day one. In current political lingo, we want the 99% to be able to have beautiful art, not just the 1%.
Discussing our mission statement publicly like this may be a corporate no-no, but I feel like it's OK since we're just trying to craft the right words. Here's a sampling:
- We find great art and make beauty accessible to everybody.
- We bring art to Main Street.
- We make great art accessible.
- We bring great art home.
- We make it easy to get great art.
- We bring art to life
Not sure yet, but after all this, we may end up sticking with clunky!
