Overview
The most valuable lesson you can learn about manifestos is to make it about one thing. If you’re celebrating your brand purpose, don’t give advice.
Below, you’ll find an overview of 36 common concepts, divided into six categories. Both will help identify the job the manifesto needs to do to be successful.
Categories
There six types of brand manifestos, each named for a line from one of its iconic script. Click or scroll down to explore the most common concepts for each category.
- What We Believe: Core beliefs, perspectives, and founding principles.
- Go with Us Next Time: Differences, USPs, and owning negatives.
- There Is a Solution: Answers, initiatives, and world-changing remedies.
- Here’s a True Story: Factory tours, histories, and unsung heroes.
- Find Your Magic: Good advice, inspiration, and the better way to be.
- They Are the Champions: Admired people and interesting cultures.
What We Believe
This is usually the first and most important manifesto brands write. If your brand hasn’t written any of the other ones on this list, this is a great place to start. This is the manifesto you want to write if you’re going through a rebrand, redefining your purpose, establishing your legacy, or drawing a line in the sand.
The best versions of these are specific and focused enough to guide internal decisions. They set the foundation for new hire orientations, they can rally current employees, and they re-invigorate folks who have been there a long time. The best ones are hung on a wall.
The secret to these scripts is specificity. These manifestos thrive on details. Specifics are the proof that you actually do believe in your purpose as much as you say. You know the pain points. The opportunities. The magic everyone else misses.
This is also a valuable pressure test. If you can’t fill your manifesto with these details, it’s a red flag. You might have the wrong insight or the wrong theme for your idea.
The North Star
Establish a key philosophy guiding your decision making. One way in: show the problem, them pivot to your POV on the topic, then show us the world it creates.
The Sworn Duty
Become the staunch defender of an idea, trait, belief, or practice. Make sure the duty you pick is external and can’t be solved easily. These can launch ten-year campaigns.
The Peace Sign
Give permission to ignore what everyone says we should do. You’re not saying “fuck you,” just “see you later.” Your goal: pave the way directly toward your brand.
The House Rules
Lay out a list of principles that ensure your continual success. Don’t tell a story with the list. Make each one it’s one piece. Make the last one slightly grander.
Go with Us Next Time
Any manifesto designed to separate you from the competition. For this theme, you always want to focus on a perceived negative. Don’t tell us a difference that is positive, such as you care about your customers. Nobody will care. But what if you came out and owned that you don’t care about your customers? Now that’s interesting.
Great versions of these manifestos flip perceived negatives into USPs. To do this, find the thing you’re proud of that’s being attacked, insulted, or doubted. If your competitors insult you for going slow, demonstrate why it’s insane to go fast. If they say you’re behind the times, show how patience gives you perspective that benefits the consumer. Whatever it is, flip it, own it, and make sure you say it so well that they can’t punch a hole in it.
The secret to these scripts is confidence. This manifesto is not for timid brands. You absolutely need to have the confidence to take a strong point of view. If that doesn’t feel good, no problem. Just pick a different theme.
The best ones don’t actually talk about the competition directly. They make hard-hitting points that make the competition’s argument irrelevant. The only choice the opposition should have after this is to pick a new attack or focus on something else.
The Smelly Boot
Recast a perceived negative as a byproduct of quality or value. Good boots smell bad because premium waterproofing also traps sweat. every negative has a positive. find yours.
The Barbershop Quartet
Unleash a deluge of good qualities about your product or brand. Two keys: quantity and voice. This only works if you give us tons of proof points in a charming way.
The Label Maker
Separate our product from the thing it’s most confused with. Think “Mac vs. PC.” They work best when you respect and validate the other thing as good for what it is.
The Glossy Brochure
Take readers on an unexpected or interesting tour of your product. Create an interesting character, device, or concept that’s so entertaining we forget it’s a demo.
There Is a Solution
A sub-theme of the previous theme manifestos that shares your solution to the problem. Make sure you have both pieces: (a) a big problem that threatens something important, and (b) your unique solution that’s just as big or bigger
When establishing the problem, make it vivid and heavy. We shouldn’t be able to shrug this off. We need to be uncomfortable and start to crave the solution. That’s what holds our attention.
Similarly, your solution needs to completely solve the problem. It can’t just start to chip away at it. If you go through the torture of bring us into this problem, you owe it to use to bring us out.
The secret to these scripts is simplicity. Complexity is death here. You have to remember nobody is asking to care about this problem. You’re asking them. Make it easy. Even the most objectively complex problems should be conveyed as clearly as possible.
The best versions reduce the message to a single action. You want people to buy a certain product, change one thing about their thinking, remember one idea that changes everything, and so on.
The Ticking Clock
Demonstrate the immediacy and severity of a massive problem. Go heavy on what’s wrong. We need to be crushed by the weight before we care about the solution.
The Easy Button
Provide a simple action that solves a huge crisis or does a lot of good. These work best if people already care about the people. Want to save the rainforest? Just buy this.
The Stop Sign
Take a stand against a specific thing that can no longer continue. Be hyper specific about the change you what. these scripts need to spark instant, distinct change.
The Heavy Lifter
Stuff the problem, philosophy, and plan into a single, powerful piece. Hard one. Best to follow this: what’s so bad? Why should people care? What are we you doing about it?
Here’s a True Story
A close relative of the What We Believe. This is a captivating telling of your heritage, your history, your journey, or the story of someone you admire. Many brands want one of these, so be careful here. Story manifestos can be a trap. They’re rarely needed, which is why there are so few examples of good ones.
The best versions of these tend to come from legacy brands with a strong point of view. The piece should probably follow the arch of resilience or determination in the face of difficult odds.
When crafting your own, learn about the full depth of the story. Own the negatives. Show how that transformed or galvanized into better action.
The secret to these scripts is surprise. It’s crucial to only tell this story if it’s interesting. Nobody cares about your happy perfect story. They want triumph over struggle.
This might be why Story manifestos are often the longest ones in the archive because the only brands who knock out good ones have a lot to say. I recommend waiting until the story is so good you can’t shut up about it, then give it a go.
The History Lesson
Take us through the tumultuous and triumphant history to now. Make this edgy. nobody cares about happy stories. they want victory out of hardship.
The Success Story
Demonstrate the strength in all of us through one person’s struggle. Don’t just tell their story. Show us the potential and power in every human to do amazing things.
The Scenic Route
Create a delightful or hilarious journey to a simple point. The script you write when you need to fill space. Your only choice is to be funny, novel, or captivating.
The Hot Take
Live your values by creating a piece that shows your POV on the moment. Tap into your brand’s ethos. Go very hard and be willing to upset. Anger is the cost of free attention.
Find Your Magic
This is when brands take the opportunity to encourage, motivate, and inspire a specific group. Make sure your brand either has permission to do this, or is related enough to the group that it can ring genuine.
Use these manifestos when you want to help elevate your audience. When you see them making the same mistakes over and over, or when you’re concerned they’re going in the wrong direction. Help show them the right way.
These manifestos work best (and maybe only) when your brand is successful, beloved, or admired. That’s why the secret to these scripts is authority. If you need to establish it, you shouldn’t do one. Nike didn’t write manifestos like this in year one. But now they have the credibility, they can do whatever they want. The reason why this is so important is because you can only focus on one thing. Don’t muddle it up with anything but the point you’re making.
The Best Friend
Extend a message of hope and courage to those who need it. Works best with either gentle acceptance or hardcore honesty. Don’t make this about you.
The Sage Advice
Wake up your audience with life lessons from someone who knows. Be creative. Go past your first idea. Many powerful teachers are the people we least expect.
The Hard Button
Remove the entrenched fantasy that hard things should come easy. You’re entering well-trodden territory here. Do lots of concepting to find a new way in.
The New Definition
Make people feel seen by crushing or reclaiming an oppressive label. Try a U-Shape structure. Focus on the problem for the first half, and the better way for the second.
They Are the Champions
For celebrating cultures. This is when you know want to honor a person, mindset, or lifestyle that inspires your brand. Doing this well means that your audience will likely find inspiration in this thing, too. Find beauty in unacknowledged places. Done well, these feel like gifts to your audience or the group in question.
This is the perfect manifesto to use when you don’t have anything to say—no products to release, no initiatives to announce, no success to brag about. Inspiring manifestos show your values rather than tell them. These also work great in overcrowded categories.
The secret to these scripts is restraint. The hardest thing to do with these manifestos is to only focus on the thing that inspires you. You can’t talk about yourself at all. You might be able to sneak in a single line, but even that is risky.
This manifesto needs to be about them. It’s a tribute. Don’t turn the camera around or it will look like you’re using them. Treat this like a portrait.
The Edward Hopper
Invite outsiders into a group they otherwise might judge or dismiss. Be vivid. Capture the reason being in the group makes life special. Don’t guess. If you don’t know, ask.
The Weekly Meetup
Casually ponder a group’s systemic problems, like two members talking. This works because it’s familiar and inviting. Not judging, not solving. It’s a great script for a montage’s VO.
The Walled Garden
Excite your base by excluding people you don’t care about. The only concept that thrives on resentment. My first draft has a swear word in every sentence.
The Brass Ring
Show how your product solves all the problems for a specific group. The key here is empathy. Don’t just say the solution. Demonstrate why the solution matters so much.
Next steps
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