Affable and inspiring Gary Hirshberg, chairman, president and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farms was the featured speaker at Saturday’s University of New Hampshire graduation. The company makes the number-one selling brand of organic yogurt and is the number-three overall yogurt brand in the US according to Fortune magazine. Through its Profits for the Planet program, Stonyfield gives 10% of profits to environmental causes. 

• “We allowed ourselves to believe in a sort of modern day mythology about the infinite resilience of our finance system, and to allow greedy, short-term thinking to get the upper hand. In a nutshell, we borrowed money we didn’t have, to buy stuff we didn’t need.”
• “We are seeing signs of failure in every single aspect of our relationship to the planet … if we stopped all fossil fuel burning this afternoon, the Earth’s fever would continue to mount for 40 more years before it began to break.” 
• “How far an item travels, is actually a very minute percentage of the footprint of an apple, yogurt or bottle of beer. The far larger footprint is in how the product is grown, that is the type of agriculture accounts for more like 50-60% of the carbon footprint. In other words, buying organic from a long distance may be far more carbon-friendly than buying non-organic locally. The point is, we need to be sure our brains are as engaged as our hearts when making big decisions.”
• “I have learned that, whatever you choose to do, there is no point in producing the same quality as anyone else. In fact, that is likely a strategy for failure, for you are almost certain to be out-competed by someone who is better capitalized.”
• “At a societal scale, those of you who question conventional thinking will be in the best positions to seize the next wave of jobs and economic opportunities. Consider for instance, that with the amount of sunlight that strikes the US each day, we would need only 10 million acres of land – or only 0.4% of the area of the United States – to supply all of our nation’s electricity using solar photovoltaics.
  When you consider that the US Government pays to idle approximately 30 million acres of farmland per year, you can see how confused our priorities have become.”
• “Success will be when you finish eating the yogurt, you will eat the cup.” 
• “Solar isn’t just for Arizona anymore, either; right now in New Hampshire there are homes powered completely off the grid – built at competitive costs. For less than half the normal garage roof space, you can power your house with no fuel, no pollution, and no ice storm outages. Soon it’ll be down to one-quarter of that garage roof. And we haven’t even talked about solar hot water, which is even cheaper than solar cells, or wind power, which is cheaper too. Best yet, these power sources are built, installed, and maintained locally, right here in America, unlike the billion dollars per day we 'export' out-of-country for oil, for example.”
• “Renewable technology isn’t just a energy issue, it’s a global competition. We don’t have a natural monopoly on sunlight or wind, and the Danes, Germans, and increasingly, the Chinese 'get it.' They aim to be the energy technology vendors to the world, and—having paid more attention to it than we have—they’re as good or better than we are.”
• “Questioning conventional authority is a powerful way to succeed in business and in life. A couple of guys from UPS once asked ‘why not try to avoid left-hand turns,’ with their 95,000 big brown trucks.”
• “What we discovered from doing good is a new business formula that is now being mimicked by the largest companies on earth…. when you make a better, higher quality product, you leap all the way to loyalty without having to spend as much on advertising…. When you make it better, you get loyalty. And with loyalty comes the most powerful purchase incentive in commerce—word of mouth.”
• “I can assure you that there will be more jobs in renewable energy, energy efficiency, preventative health care, organic/non-toxic agriculture, textiles and cleansers (I have yet to meet the consumer who prefers to eat the yogurt with more pesticides or synthetic hormones than in the traditional fields.).”
• “The whole notion of service is very attractive to smart employers. From a practical perspective, those of you who volunteer and give your time and energy to work on positive change are exactly who we CEO’s want to hire.”
• “Don’t forget that as consumers, we wield enormous power to choose the polluting, consumptive and failed ways of the past or the renewable and sustainable ways of the future too. When we purchase anything, we are voting for the kind of communities, society and planet we want. And I have learned that corporations spend billions of dollars to tally those votes.”
•  “We stand at the edge of the next wave, the sustainability revolution in which we use green chemistry which leaves behind no toxic residue, cradle to cradle technology which generates no waste, renewable energy with no carbon footprint, industrial ecology with waste from one process being the food for another, will be the norm.
• “Personally, I feel there is no greater societal priority than to embrace the conversion to renewable energy and organic food production with all of the climate, ecological and health benefits. When people tell me that organics is not proven, I respond that it is the chemicals that are not proven, but the early results are poor as we face an epidemic of cancers and preventable disease. The same is true of our energy policy, which has been driven by generations who have grown up in the oil and coal business and believe that mining the earth’s crust is the only way to fuel our needs.”

They’ve been around a long time, are still in demand but the differences are often confusing. (I’m not talking about toothpaste.) Here’s what you need to know to make your own statement. 

Positioning statements
 
A positioning statement explains what a company is, does, and most important, how it’s different from competitors. It’s externally focused.

My favorite positioning statement template is from Geoffrey Moore. It goes like this:
For (target customers)
Who (have the following problem)
Our product is a (describe the product or solution)
That provides (cite the breakthrough capability)
Unlike (reference competition),
Our product/solution (describe the key point of competitive differentiation)

The template may look simple, but crafting a positioning statement is challenging: (1) the statement must place a company within context of the external marketplace framework it already occupies; (2) competition must be the reference point; (3) the statement has to be brief; and (4) every part must be realistic and defensible. 
 
If a company has a well-crafted positioning statement, it’s a good sign because it means it was able to reach consensus about how to talk about itself in a non-myopic way.
 
The toughest part of the template is the last sentence because you have to identify how the company is competitively differentiated. Here’s an example from Moore when SGI was at its peak:

For movie producers and others
Who depend heavily on post-production special effects,
Silicon Graphics provides computer workstations
That integrate digital fantasies with actual film footage.
Unlike any other vendor of computer workstations,
SGI has made a no-compromise commitment to meeting film makers' post-production needs.  

Mission statements
 
Mission statements are aspirational, intending to unify employees around a common set of goals and objectives. It’s a corporation’s mantra, its raison d’etre, describing the overall purpose of an organization. While it’s primarily internally focused, it frequently appears externally.
 
Mission statements don’t address the issue of competitive differentiation which is the heart and soul of a positioning statement. A mission statement includes a company’s value system.

Mission statement examples:
Timberland: Our mission is to equip people to make a difference in their world. We do this by creating outstanding products and by trying to make a difference in the communities where we live and work.

Starbucks: To inspire and nurture the human spirit - one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.

Elevator statements
 
An elevator statement is externally-focused and the shortest possible explanation of “what a company does.” The term refers to a person’s ability to tell a stranger - in an elevator between a few floors - what their company does with brevity and catchiness. A classic elevator statement would take one minute to say. Positioning statements can be used to develop brief elevator statements.

Elevator statement example: Our company sells software that designs better products. For example, Toyota uses our software to design cars that are more energy efficient. Boeing uses our software to design airplanes including things like more comfortable passenger seating areas. Trek designs awesome bicycles with our software.

Vision statements
 
Unlike a positioning statement, a vision statement is externally focused and defines where the organization is headed. It defines the desired future.

Toyota: Continuing in the 21st century, we aim for stable long-term growth, while striving for harmony with people, society and the environment.

Cisco: To change the way the world works, lives, plays and learns.

Here's a forward-looking vision statement from WalMart circa (1990): Become a $125 billion company by the year 2000. 

I’m not a junk food junkie by any stretch, but when I’m in California, I often give in to In-N-Out Burger. I can’t help myself. There’s so much about this chain I admire.

1. Focus - As a branding nut, I’m always slack-jawed at the visible menu: three types of burgers, french fries, fountain drinks and milkshakes. That’s it. (They have a “secret menu,” but you have to visit their web site to know about it). Most people buy off the menu, savoring sandwiches like the famous “Double-Double.”  Less has proven more:  best guesstimates reveal $200+ million in annual revenues across 180 locations. 
2. Differentiate – Burgers are commodities, competitors are everywhere. But In-N-Out Burger made itself special. They understand that competitors are actually prospects and consumers are looking for more than just a good hamburger.  
3. Happy employees – Realizing they’re not a burger business, but a service business, In-N-Out hires people who are "naturally friendly" (as one manager put it) and can share positive vibes with customers. The chain is one of the only fast food operations paying more than state and federally-mandated minimum wage guidelines (they pay over $10 per hour). Free meals and shakes are given to employees and everyone is treated right. No wonder smiles run rampant.  
4. Do good – In-N-Out Burger helps make the world a better place in each community and via their Foundation which is focused on helping abused and neglected children.  
5. Clear mission – They wrote their mission statement 60 years ago; it still guides them today: “Give customers the freshest, highest quality foods you can buy and provide them with friendly service in a sparkling clean environment.” We can all learn a lesson when authoring our own.  
6. Independent view – They’ve never franchised and have been privately held since being founded in 1948. In-N-Out isn’t afraid to express the personal values of its owners: discreet bible verses are printed on drink cups and wrappers. Despite being a fast food, they’re still considered cool: when pursuing a new restaurant in San Fran’s Fisherman’s Wharf, community leaders approved them over corporate giants because they were viewed as a local, family owned business.  
7. Subtle not overt – The chain hasn’t spent much on advertising over the years, preferring, instead, to build its brand via authentic word-of-mouth. This bottom-up approach has built a global community of converts: many people who visit California mention In-N-Out as a memorable take-away experience.  
8. Loyalty – In-N-Out gets how consumer loyalty is built through steadily repeated positive individual experiences. Despite its low-end category, the chain is steadily rated as one of the top restaurants. 
9. Cult-like popularity – The company motto is “Quality you can taste.” Sure, they’re serving up burgers, fries and shakes, basic stuff, but it tastes healthier than the usual fare. Even Fast Food Nation commended it for its natural, fresh, local ingredients.  
10. Connection – All this adds up to a personal brand experience built on adjectives (cool, great, caring) not nouns (burgers, restaurants, revenues). It’s emotional branding at its best.