I have a dream! Do you?

What's the value of a vision? If your brand has a vision statement, read on and see if it's really an asset to you or not. If you don't have one yet, take five minutes and try creating one. Make it bold. Make it expansive. Make it a permanent expression of your brand's values.

A vision statement needs to be true to your brand, not true to your products. Imagine had Apple's Steve Jobs created his company vision in the eighties based on his product portfolio. There'd have been no room for expansion into home-entertainment. iPod probably wouldn't be around. Instead, the vision Jobs created more than 20 years ago is as fresh and relevant today as it was then: 'Man is the creator of change in this world. As such he should be above systems and structures, and not subordinate to them.' And that's what Apple's philosophy is all about. The primacy of people in every aspect of the business: communications, products and services.

So here are three tips to help you make a vision statement that means something.

First, make it 'smashable'. You might recall my story about the 1915 brief for designing the Coca-Cola bottle. The design had to be so coherent that, should a bottle be smashed into any number of those pieces, any of those shards should be recognizably from a Coca-Cola bottle. The 'Smash Your Brand' test as I dub it works for any brand and for any device that reflects the brand. The principal is simple. Remove the logo and you should be able to recognize the brand by color, shape, graphics, sound…Consider the blue of a Tiffany's box, the Absolute vodka bottle, the United Colors of Benetton picture style, or the rumble of a Harley Davidson. These are all identifiable, 'smashable' devices which reflect their brands.

A vision statement needs to be 'smashable' too. It needs to be so distinct that you can remove any references to the brand name and still instantly recognize who's behind it.

Second tip: stamp the statement with the indelible ink of your values. Here's what I mean. What values would you say Richard Branson stands for? I'm sure you're thinking of adjectives like provocative, edgy, questioning, exploratory. Branson's vision statement for any of the Virgin companies would leave you in doubt as to whose it is, even minus the brand name. But this is not only a matter of semantics. The Virgin tone, as well as the words, in every communication channel - offline, online or wireless - communicates the brand's personality and values.

And that leads me to the third and perhaps most essential ingredient in a powerful vision statement. It should be so solid that it gives a mandate for capitalizing on all creative opportunities by going to the very edge of brand communication while maintaining the brand's core values.

This 'edge' is up for grabs and reveals different opportunities to different brands. 'No lawsuit - no blockbuster' is one Hollywood studio's take on pushing their brand to the limit. The statement expresses what the company lives by: any publicity is good publicity. Virgin used its potent and confident vision to another airline's disadvantage and their own distinct promotion. The major sponsor of the world's largest ferris wheel, the London Eye, is British Airways. When the construction was encountering complications during the erection of the Eye, Virgin seized the opportunity to comment on the difficulties of getting the structure upright. Virgin decked an airship in the distinctive red paintwork and flew it over the London Eye with the message: 'BA can't get it up!' But no lawsuit followed. Why? Because there was no logo declaring Virgin to be the perpetrators of this witticism. Yet every spectator could perceive the brand in the tone, attitude and invention. The Virgin brand was demonstrably 'smashable'.

If your vision statement fails to be smashable, distinctive and enabling, it's not worth bothering with. The purpose of the vision statement is not to fill a space on your reception's wall. It's to arm your research and development, service, marketing and sales teams with the mandate to push brand communications to the edge of every opportunity. A vision statement should be a coherent message that is communicated across every channel - through your online presence, your wireless strategy, your TV presence or instore. The vision statement should be integrated into your company's operations and ethos so that every staff member lives and works by it in every aspect of their job.

So, is your brand's vision statements bold? Is it smashable and distinctive? Does it invite creativity to go to its limits? The more of these boxes you can tick the higher the chance is that you're onto something powerful. But if you're not able to tick any of them, and most companies would fall into this category, go back to the drawing board.

The words of one iconic personality stand as an exemplar of the powerful, meaningful vision statement: 'I have a dream.' The speaker's identity is synonymous with the utterance, a declaration that speaks across time, to all generation and which heralded amazing consequences for humankind.