When we speak to groups about creating a mantra, we use the thinking and definition behind Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of Start. A mantra is a deeper meaning for your company. It is the reason you get up in the morning and what drives your company to exist and thrive. Kawasaki’s definition of mantra is: “A sacred verbal formula repeated in prayer, meditation or incantation, such as invocation of a magic spell.”

Your mantra is not a tagline. A mantra is what speaks to you and your team internally and tells you how to conduct yourself everyday while at work.

Your mantra is not a tagline. A mantra is what speaks to you and your team internally and tells you how to conduct yourself everyday while at work. It is that deeper connection to why you are here and how you plan on making the world a better place.

Here are a few examples:

Nike’s tagline: Just Do It.
Nike’s mantra: Athentic Athletic Performance.

Starbucks’ mission statement: Establish Starbucks as the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world, while maintaining our uncompromising principles while we grow.
Starbucks’ mantra: Rewarding Everyday Moments.

Tagline and mission statements are something completely different than having a rally cry like a mantra. Most business owners don’t even remember their mission statements and a tagline is more instructional to their customer than to their team. You need something to inspire your team.

It is that deeper connection to why you are here and how you plan on making the world a better place.

At Switchback Creative, we have found our mantra to be extremely helpful in directing our actions and establishing our goals over time. Our mantra,”DO IT LIKE WE OWN IT”, says a lot to us about our core purpose, why we are here are as a company and where we need to always be focusing our efforts. It tells us we need to understand your brand so well that when we are creating marketing and branding for your company, we are doing it as if it were our own company we are growing, like it’s our own baby. Our job is to bring YOUR vision to life. It is a tough feat to put the same heart and passion into it that you have been pouring into it for years or decades. So we do the research to understand your industry. We ask the questions that get to the crux of your vision. We enter the partnership with so much curiosity, passion and zest that we can’t help but get excited about what you are doing and want to learn more about you. We find all of this works best when we can work directly with the business owners, drawing out and feeding off of their passion and knowledge of their business.

Our mantra “Do it like we own it” gets us up each morning and presents us the opportunity to tell stories that matter to those who matter to us.