Can we skip to the good part? This is the good part.
Can the strategy part be the real hero of the guidelines, not just a prelude?
And if it can, what makes it good in 2026? We wanted to know whether brand strategists are still building the classic strategy house, with the mission on the roof, values in the walls and a positioning statement holding up the floor. Or has strategy moved on to something more practical and tangible?
So we opened dozens of strategy chapters in brand guidelines on Corebook and read them like a competitor’s pitch, asking one question: do they add real value to everything that follows, from the taglines to the colors to the messages?
TL;DR: the boxes are being demoted. What’s replacing them is usually something better: strong storytelling and a practical set of brand attributes.
Story beats mission, 50% to 43%.
We only counted labelled sections, so a page called Mission counts and a stray sentence with the word “mission” in it doesn’t. The block that shows up most often is the brand story.
- Story, origin or narrative50%
- Mission43%
- Values37%
- Vision37%
- Personality / attributes30%
- Purpose23%
- Positioning statement20%
- No strategy chapter at all3%
What comes after mission, vision, purpose.
The boxes haven’t disappeared, but they’ve lost their place at the top. Most get shrunk to a single line or folded into the brand story, and some get replaced by tools a team can actually use in a brief. These four moves came up again and again.
One idea sits above the boxes.
Many chapters now hang everything on one coined idea, and the other blocks point back to it. The strongest ideas come straight from the product, which makes them hard to drift away from. Two brands trademarked theirs.
- “everyone comfortable in their own shoes.”Casual footwear · “comfort” runs through vision, purpose, values and the annual report
- “The [brand] Difference™”Family homebuilder · the proposition, trademarked, with rules for using it
- “Reactive Intelligence” · “Find your Happy Place”Sports-tech gadget · holiday parks
- “Feel Good Mex” · “PROGRESS” · “The living heartbeat”Fast-casual food · heritage denim · faith media
The strategy names an enemy.
Only one guideline names a real competitor, and it backs that up with brand-share data. The others pick something customers already dislike, like stagnation, downtime, plastic, sameness, red tape or software silos.
- “The enemy of progress: Anything that keeps the world stuck, stagnant or unchanged—or sets it back.”Heritage denim · a labelled section of its own
- “Every hero needs a villain. Ours is plastic.”Sustainable bottled water
- “…differentiates itself from its peers and in particular [competitor]”Heated-tobacco brand · with brand share and brand fit against the rival, segment by segment
Strategy becomes a mixing desk.
Instead of fixed statements, these chapters give the team settings to adjust depending on the job. The two brands landed on the same audio metaphor with no apparent connection.
- “Think of them like dials on a soundboard. Do you have to use all of them equally at once? No. You can turn up or turn down the volume depending on the story. But they all have to be there.”Heritage denim · three brand filters
- “Not everything needs to shout all the time. Restraint is what makes the loud moments land.”Fast-casual food · creative anchor, with dial-up rules for photo, motion and voice
Values become verbs.
Here the values are written as principles, promises or instructions rather than single nouns. You can tell whether someone actually did them today, which is hard to say about “integrity.”
- “Move first, open the door” · “Long-term thinking, urgent action”Textile-regeneration startup · “action principles”
- “Treat guests, colleagues, and partners as part of your family… If someone is struggling, someone else comes to help.”Holiday parks · each value written as an instruction
- “You’ll be seen and celebrated.”Juice-bar chain · four numbered promises to guests
Paste your mission. We’ll tell you who else wrote it.
Every flagged phrase below was used by at least one brand in this issue’s sample. Your text is never stored — we only count results.
The Frankenstein is stitched together entirely from phrases in our sample.
Congratulations, you’ve written everyone’s mission.
Start again from the one thing a competitor couldn’t put their name to.
- “More than” / “not just”48% of strategy chapters, e.g. kitchen appliances, low-cost airline, family homebuilder
- Community38% of strategy chapters, e.g. design-software platform, disaster-relief nonprofit, EV charging network
- Innovative / innovation34% of strategy chapters, e.g. university enterprise arm, cleaning robotics, marketing SaaS
- Future34% of strategy chapters, e.g. engineered probiotics, EV charging network, textile startup
- Quality31% of strategy chapters, e.g. probiotic supplements, Nordic dairy, family homebuilder
- We believe28% of strategy chapters, e.g. holiday parks, university enterprise arm, heritage denim
- Leading / leader24% of strategy chapters, e.g. design-software platform, engineered probiotics, property manager
- Journey17% of strategy chapters, e.g. faith media, heated-tobacco brand, kitchen appliances
- Sustainable17% of strategy chapters, e.g. EV charging network, bottled water, exec education
- World-class / first-class10% of strategy chapters: Nordic dairy, exec education, bottled water
- EveryoneHoliday parks, casual footwear, juice-bar chain
- UnlockTextile startup (twice)
- ElevateKitchen appliances
- “We” 4 times, the customer 0.Try writing more about the customer and less about the company.
How we got here
This issue reads the strategy chapters of brand guidelines hosted on Corebook.io. Every chapter was scanned by humans, and quotes originally in other languages are translated. Section percentages reflect labelled sections; word percentages cover the guidelines that have a strategy chapter.
Brands are described by category, from Europe and North America across consumer, B2B and non-profit. Treat this as an early read, not a census.
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This newsletter is put together by Brandisaverb™ — a platform for research, insights, and discussion on branding and visual identity.
