#baldwin&

[compellingselling]

It’s “Muy Gringo”!

After a day where every brand on social media (and my gym, via text) is desperately trying to make some connection to Cinco De Mayo, Inauthentico from Ponysaurus Brewery in Durham, NC, really hits the spot. 

Wonderful design and copy from Baldwin&. Via LBBOnline.

[baldwinandnews]

Our Love Your Nature campaign for Burt’s Bees gets some love of its own. 

http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/burts-bees-tells-two-young-womens-remarkable-stories-unique-beauty-171461

[carolynhadlock]

I asked David Baldwin about starting an independent agency.

I have been a fan of Baldwin& for a long time. I was able to spend some time with David last February in Tucson at the Creative Leaders Retreat. I was struck by how grounded he was. As a principal at an independent agency, I look to other independents to see what motivates them to carve out their own path. 

How to succeed by being selfish and wrong.

So I admit it. I’m a nice guy but I’m selfish as hell. I don’t want to do things I don’t want to do. I don’t want to work on brands I don’t care about. I don’t want to work 20 hours a day. The list goes on and on.

In fact, if I wrote a business book it would have to be around the theme that we’ve built our company so far by doing things mostly wrong and by being selfish. From Day one.

Don't believe me? Here’s how it went.

BEING SELFISH: I love where I live.

Want to start an agency? How about during the doldrums of 2009 when the economy was cratering and every headline we read talked about the biggest job losses since 1929. We just didn’t know what was going to happen economically. Whether there would even be an economy in the first place. It felt that scary.

But we started anyway. With no clients and no money coming in. Why? Because I love Raleigh and Durham and I didn’t want to move. Simple as that.

We always said we’re a national agency and that’s that. Meanwhile there were times where it was just Bob Ranew, Erin Breddeman and myself looking over our desks at each other with nothing to work on because, no clients.

What it did leave us with was time to figure out who we were and what we wanted to be and how we wanted to do things.

The world certainly didn’t need another advertising agency, but we figured it could always use another good one.

BEING WRONG: Getting an office as a startup is stupid.

Most people will tell you to avoid overhead but we figured we needed to have a place to go, to bring clients, and to build culture from the get go. The great Bob Barrie gave me a wonderful piece of advice he called The Goldfish Theory, which was basically to create a goldfish bowl that we could grow into. This turned out to be good advice because when you’re as small as we were at the time, clients wanted to know if we were real. They wanted to come over and see our space, feel us out, and look us in the eye and see what we were up to. We moved into an old deli space and made it pretty presentable (thanks, IKEA!) and, although if you were there for more than an hour or so and you began to notice the smell of old corn beef, it still worked.

BEING SELFISH: Say no to easy money.

We also have a mission that says we only want to work on things we believe in. That is our most important criteria for new business and where the conversation always started. It was as simple as articulating our values and then looking for like-minded clients. Yes, they had to be able to pay us, because we weren’t going to work for free, but we also had to be excited about what they were up to. If we are excited about a client, get out of the way, because we’re all over it.

BEING WRONG: Them: “Want to pitch our business?” Us: “Nah.”

We refused to pitch with spec work for most of our history. The industry may commoditize everything we hold dear and give it away but we just weren’t going to go that way. We pulled it off for over five years. (In fact, we doubled in size every year for that first five.) Things have changed a bit and we will now pitch a select few things a year but it still has to be the right brand and the right opportunity or we’re just not interested.

BEING SELFISH: I like having a great life.

We don’t work insane hours— never have— even as a start-up. We have a philosophy best summed up as “Give a damn!” Give a damn about what you’re working on. Give a damn about your client and the job they need done. Give a damn about the work you’re doing for them. Give a damn about the people around you. Give a damn about results. Give a damn about everything. If you do, you won’t have to work all hours, seven days a week. It’s a bit counter intuitive but it’s so true.

In fact, I’ll go on record that if you’re working 80 hours a week, not getting a day off for a month, and generally living at your agency, there’s something broken where you’re working. It’s not sustainable and it doesn’t lead to better work. Yeah, there are exceptions where you may get some good work but at what cost? You’ll lose your life and it’s not worth it.

Instead, we asked, can we build a world-class, admired agency, that doesn’t work stupid, long, painful hours? It’s a question that’s in front of us all the time and while we sometimes work into the night it’s not our default setting. The companies that take pride in doing that to people make me sad. It’s no way to treat other humans and I figure if I don’t want to work all day, every day, why should I ask you to do it? Like I said, I’m selfish.

Our philosophy is “get it done in five (days)” and if you can’t, let’s try to figure out why and recalibrate until you can.

BEING WRONG: You need clients to make money.

Expect to get 30% of your revenue from your own brands. Admittedly, we haven’t completely made this happen yet but we’re moving forward and not just talking about it. Since day one we said we’d make our own luck and that meant creating our own properties, technology, intellectual capital, movies, and our own brands. Many agencies are talking about this and some are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams; it’ll be interesting to see where the business goes with stuff like this. But we’re in the hunt. We’ve calved a very cool beer brand and brewery called Ponysaurus that continues to grow, and again, is selfishly the kind of brand we want to work on. There are more things on the drawing board, all pretty exciting.

In these days of massive change, where advertising may not even be around in its current form, we’ve tried to surf over the trends, stay nimble, be all about the work we produce and the ideas we come up with every day. We also change the definition of what we are constantly because once you define yourself there’s a possibility of ossifying into something rigid and unchanging. We refer to ourselves as a hybrid/branding/digital/advertising/social media thingy and we constantly change the definition to suit what we’re working on at the moment.

I realize I may eat these words someday but: so far so good.

David Baldwin Lead Guitarist/Founder of Baldwin& and co-founder of the Ponysaurus Brewing Co

[hollyaiken]

Happy Holly-days to the cool gals over at Baldwin&!

Back in early November, Jerry Bodrie and Tonya Martin from Baldwin& , a local ad agency, walked into Stitch scouting their next holiday gift for their agency and ultimately decided to gift a custom Holly Aiken bag to each of the gals on staff!

They wanted the bags to work within their color palette and chose our Black, Grey, White and Orange that could be used in any combination on the bag of their choice. They also wanted to add something special to go on the bags to commemorate their sixth year and designed a super nice "SIX" woven label that we added to each bag. 

We had a blast going to their office to present their holiday gift right before Thanksgiving (btw their office is pretty killer!) and loved seeing the pattern and color combinations that everyone came up with. 

Thanks so much Baldwin& for choosing us for your Sixth Year Holiday gift! We loved being a part of it and hope everyone is enjoying their new custom bags!

[digitalworkenvy]

A Pinterest Page Comes To Life

This video launches a contest that will have the company turn some Pinterest boards into reality, with $25,000 going towards making each one come true. 

Client: Gud by Burt's Bees

Advertising Agency: Baldwin&