Christmas 2007

My second Christmas as Sway Media rolls around and things continue to grow and blossom and are looking good for 2008. Turnover this year looks like being twice what it was last year and Sway Media currently employs four people - a growth of 100% since this time last year.

I continue to spend a lot of time in Scandinavia although this year my main commute is to Oslo to work with Canal Digital rather than Stockholm as it was last year. Through this work Sway Media has also become a client of Creative Services agency Red Bee which has been an interesting change in dynamic.


One of the most creatively rewarding projects this year has been helping the 24 Hour Museum to redefine themselves and creating a new name and identity for this Brighton based organisation - you can read about this at 24 Hour Museum

New clients this year include:

Virgin Media
BBC Worldwide
SBS Holland
VRT Belgium
24 Hour Museum

To add to the overall client list of:
TV4 Sweden
Canal Digital
Disney
Chellomedia
RTL TVI
BT Vision
The Biography Channel
International Film School of Cologne
Skaramoosh
Via Worldwide
Einstein Multimedia
CICAE
Oxbow Media

Promax/BDA USA - New York

Yet another conference and yet another opportunity to preach the gospel of true branding, this time to an American audience (although there were a lot of European mates in the audience as well). I did a session on the relationship between truth and branding and that the only way to really be able to create a meaningful brand is to understand who you are and who your company is.
It seems to me that so many Americans understand the need for counselling and psychotherapy etc. - it's time we introduced a bit of that into our corporate cultures and did some company therapy to work out what kind of corporations we're building for the future.

The session seemed to go well, at least the room was packed and people were being turned away, and I had a few responses afterwards. If anyone reading this wants a pdf of the presentation please email me on martin@swaymedia.co.uk and I'll send you a copy.

I also wrote another state of design article for C21 about the US broadcast design scene which seems to me to be in a pretty difficult situation. You can download images of the article here or again email me and I'll send you a pdf. Just looking at American culture and particularly at American TV I wonder what is going on designwise as very little of it seems to be very carefully considered. The US way seems to be to shout as loudly as you can in the hope that you'll get heard above the rest so there's lots of brash graphics and loud colours and little sophistication or thought going into the work. That's how it looks to me as a Brit - if anyone can correct me I'd be very pleased to hear arguments to the contrary.

Promax/BDA Europe - Berlin April

I've just finished a session at the Promax/BDA Europe conference about the branding process as illustrated in four case studies from across Europe. I've also written a review of the TV branding market across Europe for C21 magazine (www.c21media.net)

Then straight after that I headed off to Lucerne to the EBU Connect conference to talk to public broadcasters from all over Europe about doing your branding in-house, so it's been a busy few weeks and I'm quite glad to be home.

I will post more information about both of these and copies of the presentation and report as soon as I can. I'm going to post a copy of the C21 article here as a series of images but if you want a pdf of this or the Berlin presentation please email me at martin@swaymedia.co.uk

One year old today!

Sway Media Ltd. is officially one year old today and it's been an incredible year. I've had the time of my life doing work I enjoy with people I really like being with and achieving quite a few things of which I am very proud.

I want to say an enormous thank you to all the people who have helped me during this year and for all the wonderful clients who have put their trust in me and given Sway Media work. For the record here's a client list.

TV4 Sweden
Canal Digital
Disney
Chellomedia
SBS
RTL TVI
BT Vision
The Biography Channel
24Hour Museum
International Film School of Cologne
Skaramoosh
Via Worlwide
Einstein Multimedia
CICAE
Oxbow Media

November Promax/bda tour

November has been busy with trips to speak at three different Promaxes on three different continents in less than two weeks. I began with the first weekend in November at Promax UK which was my last one as a member of the board of directors. I chaired a session on selling programmes where we asked a number of sales professionals from outside TV to show us how they would pitch a programme in their own selling style.

Straight after that I headed off for my first ever trip to Singapore for Promax/bda Asia where I spoke twice doing an Asian version of the DIY session first aired at Promax Europe and a new session about Emotional Branding. I hope to post an abridged version of that presentation here for those who've asked for a copy.

Then off to South Africa for the first ever Promax/bda Africa and to catch up with lots of old friends. I repeated the Emotional Branding session with a few added extras gathered from my trip to Asia.

It's been an exhausting few weeks of networking and speaking but it's been great to meet so many people and see so much work from around the world.

Here are a few shots from Singapore



And something from South Africa

TV4 Identity Relaunch

September saw the unveiling of Sway Media's first major rebranding project in collaboration with the fantastic in-house team at TV4 in Sweden. We launched on 18th September at 5.45pm with a special little programme called 'TV4's new clothes'. This has been the culmination of 9 months work for myself as a consultant working with the in-house team of designers to create something that really expressed a new attitude for TV4. The theme of the new positioning is 'Welcome to our World' and it is an invitation to all viewers to come and share something of the magic that goes in to making great TV at Sweden's number one commercial channel.

There have been a number of news articles about this - mainly in Swedish of course, here are some links to those. The first one is English:
C21
Dagens Nyheter
Dagens Media

For those more into the technical details and discussion about the work:
TV Forum


Here are a couple of pictures.