Capturing Our Mission
By Mary Ames West
July 21, 2021
Brian, Eric and I have been running this company together for over 16 years. Individually, the three of us had been committed to environmental and social causes for many years, and we recently decided it was time to formally integrate this passion into our work at Active Ingredients. But how do you focus and align a wide-spectrum collective purpose with the trajectory of your digital marketing agency? And how do you then bottle that in a mission statement?
Our team needed a clear intent to rally around. Something more meaningful than our early mission statement — “To build beautiful, useful digital experiences” — and more specific than our general desire “To make the world a better place.”
We were also keenly aware that our experience with both food brands and B2B technology brands had simultaneously (and exponentially) deepened in recent years, and new opportunities to grow our marketing expertise around these verticals were knocking on our doors faster than ever.
Then Covid-19 hit and everything became tenuous. We held a collective breath, waiting to see how things would swing in the crippled economy. Our clients quickly adapted, doubling-down to make their products and technologies more readily available and useful during lockdown. They also started to look more closely at themselves, and asked us to help them tell more revealing, genuine stories about who they are and why they do what they do. And in the middle of this work we realized just how critical these brands were at a time when the world was struggling to have its needs met. We saw clearly the lasting impact brands can have on our lives, our health and our planet.
And during this global crisis — perhaps born from it — our core purpose crystallized.
We made a decision to harness our years of experience working with food and technology brands and marry this with our desire to promote a sustainable, healthy world. We hired an agency consultant. We did the work. We looked at ourselves as individuals, as a team and as a conscious business with a responsibility to make a positive impact with our work. And over the course of an introspective 6 months, we landed on our mission:
To build a healthier world by helping food & technology brands create positive impact.
We know that brands can, and must, play a role in transforming our lives and planet, and with our expertise and our passion, we can greatly amplify that role.
We are clear, our team is clear, and it feels great. Here’s to the future.
