http://swashlabs.tumblr.com/

The Work Is The Way: The First Truth

josh-berthume — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 23:28:32 -0600

When I started working in media, I noticed early on that I was able to see things my clients could not: aspects of their products or services they should accentuate, potential problems with their brand identities, market position insights. As a younger man, I thought this was because I was the smartest guy in the room. Now I understand that this is because it is impossible to be objective about your own stuff… or anything else, for that matter.

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jaymug: Fast food advertising vs. reality

josh-berthume — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 23:11:15 -0600

jaymug:

Fast food advertising vs. reality

Happy Swashmas, from us to you

josh-berthume — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 20:57:41 -0600

Happy Swashmas, from us to you

We’re making a fun series of ads for our clients Little...

josh-berthume — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 12:40:31 -0600

We’re making a fun series of ads for our clients Little Guys Movers. We think you’ll like them, and there’s more to come!

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being..."

josh-berthume — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 15:44:37 -0600

“

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.

”

- CS Lewis

thisistheverge: Facebook Messenger for Android drops account...

josh-berthume — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 08:39:45 -0600

thisistheverge:

Facebook Messenger for Android drops account requirement, taking on SMS and WhatsApp

The race to replace SMS is on

what

35denton: The Black Lips are embracing the Egyptian prince...

josh-berthume — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 18:33:48 -0500

35denton:

The Black Lips are embracing the Egyptian prince lifestyle and repping The Hot Wet Mess in tandem. We’re into it. #internationalsensation

The Good Problem

josh-berthume — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 10:03:05 -0500

josh-berthume:

When you are about to start a business, you are heavy on ideas and light on everything else. Every day early on is packed with considerations about what kind of company you want to have, and how you want things to be, and how you’ll innovate and do things differently.

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youmightfindyourself: Anything less would be uncivilized.

josh-berthume — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 21:18:21 -0500

youmightfindyourself:

Anything less would be uncivilized.

Winter is coming.

josh-berthume — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 22:40:44 -0500

Winter is coming.

theneener: Fun Times (Taken with Instagram) This was a lie. I...

theneener — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 08:00:20 -0500

theneener:

Fun Times (Taken with Instagram)

This was a lie. I didn’t get to get have fun times. I stayed at work and slept.

theneener: If you were following my #bnwedding tweets...

theneener — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 15:59:56 -0500

theneener:

If you were following my #bnwedding tweets yesterday, this was the roast beef slider I held onto for half an hour, misplaced, then finished eating before bed. (Taken with Instagram)

I didn’t get to eat this.

We like Starr Studios, you guys. starrstudios: Logo Design:...

josh-berthume — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 00:49:00 -0500

We like Starr Studios, you guys.

starrstudios:

Logo Design: Rio Concho Catering. Just finished for our friends at Rio Concho.

Noodles is sad that no one else got the memo that today was...

theneener — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 09:49:50 -0500

Noodles is sad that no one else got the memo that today was supposed to be Toga Day. / on Instagram http://instagr.am/p/NBmSkUygjD/

The Difference Between What You Do and What You Are

josh-berthume — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 00:15:58 -0500

At several points in the last year, I have had a conversation about what Swash Labs is. I have had this conversation more often than I think is strictly necessary, when what I really want to talk about is what Swash Labs does.

This is a challenging point for most businesses, though, and so I usually try to work through it like an important thought exercise. I am continually on the other side of the table, grilling executives about what their company does and how to communicate about it. If you are my client, you are familiar with the early meeting in which I say, aggressively, “What does your company do?”

If there are five people in the room, I get five different answers, and none of them are concise or, in some cases, even explanatory. People that work hard at a successful small company or a challenge brand often get hung up on identity in a way that makes them combative against the very idea of identity. This makes it hard for even a small group of people to have a unified understanding of how to talk about their brand, or how to broadcast a coherent message, or how to boil down the essence of their brand into just a few words or a sentence or two.

This is the essential identity problem of what a company does, and it is important. Guys at Nike and Volkswagen and Coke and Apple (in conjunction with some terrific advertising agencies) have solved this problem and that has contributed in no small way to their prevalence as global brands and their success as companies. If you ask the top executive and the mailroom guy at Nike what Nike does, they will both say the same thing: “We make premium sports equipment.”

This is an elegant, simple message that describes their function perfectly without getting in the way of an aggressive global ad campaign that is full of other messages that sell products rather than describe the company. The point I want you to dig on here is that they know precisely who they are. That’s a real identity foundation, and the product of hard work.

Too often, smaller companies and challenge brands don’t really know who they are or how to describe what they do in a way that anyone can understand, and that creates problems with every other bit of communication.

With Swash Labs, we know very well what we do but the question of what we are – and how to talk about it – was answered about a dozen times before we really started to get it. At first it was all new media. Then digital media. Then digital strategy, marketing and advertising (bleh.) Then, something much stronger: we are a full service creative agency focused on digital and emerging media.

That fully answers the “what do you do?” question, but for a while I have felt dissatisfied with it as an answer to “what are you?” It doesn’t simply describe or capture us without using industry terms. I am responsible for this, mostly because I was making a fundamental mistake: I was trying to make what I consider to be a unique and elegant business model fit into the descriptive language currently in use.

If I am truly mindful of the present and the era in which we are operating, the best answer to my own question is not that we are a digital advertising agency or a digital marketing agency, but that we are a creative agency in a digital age. When they were getting started, you would never have heard anyone say that Ogilvy & Mather was a print advertising agency, or that BBDO was a great tv advertising agency. They were and are just advertising agencies operating in the current time. Although the intentions are expository, appending all these extra words to the idea of what a company is ends up being reductive. A creative agency advertises, markets, designs and develops brands and products, no matter what year it is.

We are a product of the world in which we live at the time in which we live, but the answer doesn’t change: Swash Labs is a creative agency. We are mindful of the present even as we’ve begun actively exploring the future of media.

So, answer these questions about your company and find your path: What do you do? Do you know what you are?

What GM Did Wrong (And How To Do It Right)

josh-berthume — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 14:00:30 -0500

Ahead of Facebook’s recent IPO, news that General Motors was pulling $10 million in media budget from Facebook ads set off dozens of media stories doubting whether spending ad money on the most giant of social networks is worth doing. Many outlets were certain this would spell doom for Facebook, and possibly for digital advertising in general.

There are several problems with that assumption, and most of them have their roots in the fact that General Motors was, to put it simply, doing it wrong.

First, many corners were cut in explaining General Motors move away from Facebook’s ad platform without any discussion of context. The truth is that GM has been aggressively restructuring its media budget and deployment in total for well over a year. As Jim Edwards at Business Insider points out, “cutting back on Facebook looks less like a rejection and more like part of a process that’s been going on across the board at GM for a while.”

Second, the way GM structured its digital buys on Facebook was totally strange and almost certainly destined for failure. Later in his article, Edwards reveals that GM’s budget split for their Facebook campaign was the widely publicized $10 million in ad buy along with $30 million in creative development. I’ve been doing this stuff for a while, and I’ve never seen a project that lopsided towards creative.

Over the scope of a year or so, creative for an established brand’s ad campaign generally comprises less than half of the total budget. Sometimes this is out of balance towards creative if a significant amount of brand development is required, or if you’re starting from scratch, redefining the brand, or breaking your brand into a new market. But this always balanced out eventually so that media buys take up more (and usually way more) space in the budget.

$30 million on creative means that GM wasn’t seeking a scaled, 1-1 communication with their fans. They weren’t trying to build relationships. They were trying to make toys and widgets and apps that were most likely targeted at simulating authenticity. For far less in salary, they could have hired someone like Scott Monty, who is head of social media at Ford and has done a terrific job championing the brand and making meaningful connections in an industry that’s long been viewed as cloistered and uncaring. That combined with five or six million dollars in development would have given them an incredibly robust app platform, great content, and tons of opportunities for engagement.

Once that infrastructure was in place, GM could have spent $10 million in media buy very well. As it was, they put the cart before the horse, and as such were unlikely to go anywhere. Ford did it right, and they’ve had incredible success with marketing and brand development on Facebook, doubling down on it several times in the last few years.

So what does this mean for you, as an entrepreneur or a small business owner?

1. Spend your money well

Taking the time and making the effort to tell your story will cost you money. You have to spend money on creative. But anyone who tells you that you have to reinvent the wheel (or create a spaceship) in order to have a good digital or social ad presence is wrong. After you get your infrastructure going, you should spend 25-33% of your budget on creative and the rest on actual media buy.

2. Do what makes sense

There’s a news story going around right now that declares that advertising on Facebook is silly, because “44% of Facebook users say they will never ever click on a Facebook ad.” My response to that is this: more than half of American adults are active Facebook users and 1 in every 7 minutes spent online are Facebook activity. 54% of half of America is pretty wonderful advertising audience. If you’re going global, what’s 54% of a billion people? Is that worth your time? Facebook advertising is currently the most effective and efficient way for small businesses and challenge brands to advertise to consumers. Period.

3. Do what makes sense, Part II

Be real and authentic but also be creative in how you put your business out there on Facebook. Do things that make sense for your brand. If you don’t know how to be on brand with content marketing, you have some infrastructure and brand identity work to do. But go ahead and do it and then get back into the game. It will be terrific time spent on your business, and possibly the best time you spend on your business ever.

4. Be bold

You didn’t get into business because you lack confidence. Social media success - and by extension, all advertising and marketing success that leads to building a lasting brand - is about believing in your product and your company. Do that first.

Meet our new contract worker, Sadie! She works from home most of...

theneener — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 13:27:06 -0500

Meet our new contract worker, Sadie! She works from home most of the time but sometimes she comes in to check on us. / on Instagram http://instagr.am/p/MtYhZ3yglg/

So many high fives to Little Guys Movers who helped us with our...

theneener — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 09:56:24 -0500

So many high fives to Little Guys Movers who helped us with our move! / on Instagram http://instagr.am/p/Mn19LPygj3/

Goodbye 110 W. Mulberry, hello 209 E. University! / on...

theneener — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 18:41:54 -0500

Goodbye 110 W. Mulberry, hello 209 E. University! / on Instagram http://instagr.am/p/MmNK-nSgqi/

"In the past, publishers and authors had no way of knowing what happens when a reader sits down with..."

josh-berthume — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 23:31:15 -0500

“In the past, publishers and authors had no way of knowing what happens when a reader sits down with a book. Does the reader quit after three pages, or finish it in a single sitting? Do most readers skip over the introduction, or read it closely, underlining passages and scrawling notes in the margins? Now, e-books are providing a glimpse into the story behind the sales figures, revealing not only how many people buy particular books, but how intensely they read them”

- Your E-Book Is Reading You - WSJ.com (via interestingsnippets)