For Immediate Release

Lily of the Desert Selects Swash Labs for Expertise and Success in Digital, Social Media, and Brand Development Strategy

Denton, TX – May 10, 2012 — Lily of the Desert, an industry-leading, family-owned, vertically integrated grower, processor, and manufacturer of aloe vera-based products, has selected Swash Labs as its agency of record for all advertising, brand positioning, and strategy initiatives.

“We chose Swash Labs because they understand Lily’s commitment to excellence, as well as our philosophy of transparent, rigorous scientific testing of our products and communication about how they work,” said Jack Brown, vice president of sales and marketing for Lily of the Desert. “We needed an agency skilled in digital and emerging media as well as research, strategy, and creative brand positioning. We’ve worked with Swash Labs on projects of increasing sophistication and importance over the last year, and have found them to be an excellent fit for us as we grow the brand.”

“Working with Lily of the Desert is a privilege, and we’re very excited about where we can go together. As a business, Lily enjoys a customer base of loyal and educated people in over 40 countries,” said Josh Berthume, chief executive officer and creative director at Swash Labs. “We look forward to introducing Lily of the Desert to new markets and new consumers. They are a proud and trusted brand with a heritage of excellence, and we’re honored to be their agency of record.”

In January, Swash Labs launched Aloe Awesome, a successful national digital campaign for Lily of the Desert. The campaign generated over 25 million media impressions in the first quarter of 2012 and solidified Lily of the Desert’s industry leadership in digital and social media. A new campaign, called Companion, launched May 1.
 

About Swash Labs

Swash Labs is a full-service creative agency focused on digital and emerging media, social business, and brand development. Swash Labs has a simple philosophy in advertising and brand development: tell compelling stories and create authentic interactions. Swash Labs has built robust communications strategies and creative campaigns for several exciting and innovative brands, including 35 Denton, Denton Animal Shelter Foundation, Nuconsteel, AccessBank Texas, Space Dog Books, and Baker Distributing. Additional information is available at http://www.swashlabs.com.
 

About Lily of the Desert

Lily of the Desert Organic Aloeceuticals is a family-owned vertically integrated grower, processor, and manufacturer of aloe vera-based products. As the largest certified organic grower and processor of aloe vera, Lily of the Desert branded products are successfully marketed in over 40 countries around the globe. Lily of the Desert products have been distributed throughout natural products and health food stores since the business began. The company has been known consistently to set a high standard in the industry for quality aloe vera products.

The Lily of the Desert brand of aloe vera products is the leader of the category in the natural products industry with over 50% of the total United States market share (based on SPINS data). The company’s aloe vera farms, laboratories, and processing plant are located in the Texas Rio Grande Valley citrus region and in the desert area of Mexico along the Tropic of Cancer. Additional processing facilities are located in Carrollton, Texas and corporate headquarters are located in Denton, Texas. More information is available at http://www.lilyofthedesert.com.

Media Contact: Josh Berthume

josh@swashlabs.com | 940-808-0071

If you want to learn about business, or advertising, or the business of advertising, you should really read this book. I just did, and these are some of the quotes I came away thinking about.

Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.

This is the first and best case I tend to make to my clients about good advertising practices, especially digital. The more we learn, the better the ads get, and the more we sell.

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

Empirically, my team knows this to be true. Sometimes it takes us a while to get rolling, but once we start making each other laugh, something good is just around the corner.

Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.

This always has to be the deal, or you don’t belong in my shop; and if I’m not inspiring this behavior in my team, I scarcely belong there, either. We sometimes fall short of this - hell, we usually fall short - but if this is where we’re aiming, we’ve opened ourselves up to the universe of possibilities instead of cloistering ourselves away from good ideas with narrow or passive thinking.

I have a theory that the best ads come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.

This is about authenticity. The more we know about a company allows to speak about that company in a real way, drawing on that understanding and our own lives to tell good stories.

If you ever have the good fortune to create a great advertising campaign, you will soon see another agency steal it. This is irritating, but don’t let it worry you; nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else’s advertising.

I think the more you try to be good the more original you end up.

I don’t know the rules of grammar… If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.

This is also about authenticity. Often copywriters create a character. The character has to be believable. Natural language is the fastest path there.

Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.

I think this speaks directly to the kind of work we want to do. All we can do is amplify what is already true about our clients. The clients and products that benefit from this will garner extraordinary results from our work. This won’t work for every client, but I don’t want every client. I particularly don’t want a client about which we cannot tell the truth.

“The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.” & “You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.”

If you respect your audience and give them credit for being intelligent, your work will stick with them and they will respond. This is what separates Louis CK from Jeff Dunham, and Patton Oswalt from Larry the Cable Guy.

First, make yourself a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you are. Third, leave them to go get on with it.

Every time I hire somebody new, I have to make Swash Labs significantly better. This doesn’t mean just filling a gap in capabilities. Rather, it requires that I find someone with extraordinary energy and talent and then demand it of them every day. If I have lower expectations than this, I am being a terrible leader and don’t deserve their talent or their time to begin with. Getting this part right is the most important job I have, because it determines what not just what we will be, but what we can be.

Denton, TX - March 7, 2012 — 35 Denton, a walkable 4-day music festival programmed in the heart of downtown Denton, Texas, has selected Swash Labs its agency of record. Swash Labs has worked with 35 Denton in 2012 on marketing and advertising as well as digital and social media strategy.

“We chose to work with Swash Labs because we’re both growing forces in this community. Their staff is packed full of forward thinking creative people who want to make a difference. They get social media, but they also get us.” says Kyle La Valley, creative director, 35 Denton. “In the past few months working with Swash we’ve seen tremendous growth in our social media numbers as well as brand recognition”

“35 Denton is a great client to work for, and they are particularly well suited for the digital space,” said Josh Berthume, chief executive officer and creative director at Swash Labs. “They have a history of putting on successful, groundbreaking festivals, and the opportunity to help develop and grow a brand that speaks to a young, social, and digitally engaged audience is exciting for us.”

Swash Labs worked with Andy Odom, 35 Denton’s director of social media, to combine 35 Denton’s excellent digital content with social media marketing and advertising in January and February of 2012. This resulted in over 30 million paid media impressions, contributing to record ticket sales and brand growth of more than 10,000 Facebook fans.

About Swash Labs
Swash Labs is a full-service creative agency focused on digital and emerging media, social business, and brand development. Swash Labs has a simple philosophy in advertising and brand development: tell compelling stories and encourage authentic interactions. Swash Labs has built robust communications strategies and creative campaigns for several exciting and innovative brands across the United States, including Lily of the Desert, AccessBank Texas, Space Dog Books, and Baker Distributing. Additional information is available at http://www.swashlabs.com

About 35 Denton
35 Denton is a walkable 4-day music festival programmed in the heart of downtown Denton, Texas, March 8-11 2012. This year’s festival features over 150 bands including pop legends Jesus and Mary Chain along with seminal Idaho rockers Built to Spill, Houston rap trill-o-naut Bun B, Southern California’s lo-fi tradesmen Best Coast, and Northwestern indie folk giants The Mountain Goats. For more info visit 35denton.com