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.

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