Why We Work With All Industries

If you read this blog even semi-regularly, you’ve seen me say this more than once: “At Swash Labs, we’ve never focused exclusively on any single vertical or industry, and we’ve done it that way by design.”

I’ll say it again, too, because I think it is one of the foundational reasons we have been successful over the years: we begin each new project and each new relationship with a beginner’s mind, and we are not beset by the bad habits and shortcuts that can plague an advertising agency that works in only one vertical.

The Problem With Single Vertical Agencies

Specialization is always bad. Certainly there are ad agencies doing great work while only operating in one industry —whether that’s cars or software or college sports or whatever else. But they tend to be the exceptions in a sea of one-size-fits-all, overly productized marketing packages. 

At Swash Labs, our baseline goal for every advertising campaign is that it will work, meaning that it is successful in accomplishing the goals we establish at the beginning of the project. Many industry-specific shops aren’t so concerned with whether their campaigns or websites or offerings work, because they are in the volume business. They want to get as many HVAC repair shops, or plumbers, or real estate agents as they can, and they want to offer them a consistent, homogenized product or service. 

It is usually imperative, for profit’s sake, for this offering to require as little hands-on management or customization as possible. This means that when a client invariably needs customized solutions or intensive support, the cost is exorbitant. This is intentional, because the goal is to disincentivize the client from seeking such service. 

The Swash Way

Because we do not focus on only one vertical, our incentive is only and always to do the best job possible. This means that customized engagements and intensive collaboration are high priorities for us, and incentives are aligned with doing good work and getting good outcomes. 

Ever since we opened, I’ve always made it a point to have engagements that are purpose-built for each client, precisely because I truly believe that a predetermined marketing and advertising package is almost always doomed to failure. There’s too much nuance and context from client to client to standardize much beyond very basic infrastructural pieces, even if they are in the same industry.  

Client Ownership and Access

The more unseemly side of the single-vertical, volume-driven service involves the agency or marketing company maintaining ownership and restricting access to tools such as domain name management, website hosting and management, and advertising and analytics platforms. If you’ve ever worked with a marketing company that did not provide you with complete ownership over everything they create for you (i.e. domain names, Google Analytics access, website administration, etc), then you may have already experienced this headache. 

We have worked with many clients who have had severe or unresolvable issues with trying to get even simple access to major infrastructural elements of their brand. A common result is for these clients to find out that the domain name or website they’ve been using for years was repurposed and given to a local, direct competitor the moment they separated from the previous industry-specific shop. Another familiar and unfortunate situation is when a small business owner discovers that they do not have direct access to their advertising platform or analytics tools, the stuff that could tell them — and their future agency — what was actually happening beyond a semi-regularly emailed one-page PDF of traffic metrics. 

Multiple Verticals = Custom Services for Every Client

As Joan sometimes says, long story longer: focusing on a single industry or vertical isn’t for us. We’re very serious about making sure that what we’re doing is right for the client in every situation. We use our considerable expertise in design, copywriting, strategy, advertising, and marketing to do so. By working in this manner, we also avoid all of the ways a single-vertical focus encourages an agency to cut corners and incentivizes profit over doing things the right way.