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!
The Good Problem
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.
The Difference Between What You Do and What You Are
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.
What GM Did Wrong (And How To Do It Right)
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.
