Swag Rules Summer
How recognizing the season can create new momentum.
What are the Swag Rules?
Swag is not a thing — it’s a strategy — and it starts with three elements:
Alignment: Your swag strategy is an extension of your vision, mission and values (not your logo).
Approach: An impactful swag strategy means relationship-first instead of company-first.
Consistency: If you ideate about content weekly, ideate about swag weekly. Swag deserves as much time, care and cadence as anything else you do.
So, how do you build a swag strategy that generates incredible momentum?
Here’s the Swag Rules framework:
· Foster creativity
· Develop a gratitude mindset
· Start small
· Support the story
The Swag Rules framework in action:
It hit me a few weeks ago that, from a swag perspective, I had been coasting on the momentum of our shoe collaboration and wasn’t consistently committing time to ideating about new swag (rule violation!).
I dusted off the Nymbus narrative* and read it with a Swag Rules lens:
Looking again at our vision, mission and values and how that can be physically manifested in the world.
Asking what new relationships did the company and myself personally have?
Reflecting on how our story has evolved — what new angles could we create to support that?
This led me to thinking about the pandemic — how we are coming out of two years of feeling like every day was the same, how most of my new work relationships started (and have mostly stayed) virtual, how the Nymbus story around #NewStartsNow impacts the way I literally see the world.
Which led me to seasons — then to Summer (I live in Texas so there really isn’t Spring) — then to what could we do with swag to signify a new, bright future for ourselves as people, the company and the brands we serve?
And then I decided to break a CMO rule — changing our logo (temporarily!) and shifting to a seasonal logo (not even sure this is a thing — yet) and having some fun with it.
Importantly (and not just because brand consistency is key) this, like a season, is for a short period of time, which creates excitement, urgency and awareness that we are, indeed, in a very special moment.
So, without further ado, here is a sneak peek of our new sun-set…I had to be convinced on the “belt pack.”
I hope you’ll consider some form of a sun-set for yourself, team or company and, if you do, I would love to hear about it.
Update
We just released our Employee Box (more on them here) and I wanted to share the most popular item — our soon to be famous mix-tape Bluetooth speaker complete with a custom Spotify playlist.
What’s Next?
We’re going to be out there with songs, custom Fla-Vor-Ice (do this!) and adamantine. I’ll do another post on Swag Rules with more examples of the framework in action, so please subscribe to get them via email.
*If you don’t have a narrative document, you could look at your website, sales deck, whatever you have handy.
