We just finished a successful corporate re-brand, a new website launch, and a published style guide for our friends at Eureka. We are excited about the hard work put forth by our team and the success of the project. As we move towards the end of the year, we look forward to what great work is going to come our way! In the meantime we put together this website to showcase our workspace, recent clients, and what we are about. So feel free to take a look, stop by the studio, and spread the word about us. Big things are coming!

So welcome. We look forward to the awesome clients, hard work, projects and potential ahead of us.

Chris Ballard encompasses a level of class, work ethic and pure creative talent unlike any other. As a creative individual his projects have ranged from multi-media brand identities, world class paintings, conceptual sculpture pieces in various gallery shows, to incredibly well thought and innovative motion graphics. His work has taken him to Hong Kong, San Francisco and New York to present to some of the world’s leading branding and design firms.

On top of that Chris Ballard possesses a very thoughtful, inquisitive and insightful demeanor. His knowledge and understanding of design has no doubt been inspired by his world travels and beautifully written observations of the external world around him.

Our past projects and collaborations with Chris have proven great success. So when nation wide financial advisory firm Eureka Capital came to us looking for an evolutionary brand campaign and a world class website, we knew Art Director Chris Ballard would be that perfect ingredient in making Eureka’s website dynamic, effective and world class.

The future holds great things for Sir Christopher Ballard; we see him bringing pivotal growth to not only Command Mass and our amazing clients, but to the entire industry as a whole. We celebrate Chris’s capacity and potential, and look forward to the greatness ahead!

So welcome Chris! ♥ Command Mass.

We wanted to give a special thanks to Stefanie Phan and the staff over at Riviera Magazine for giving us a shout out in the June 2010 issue of Riviera Orange County! Stefanie and her crew came by last month during one of our movie nights to shoot the place, meet our gang and spend an enjoyable evening with the great people who stopped by.

We look forward to future events, movie nights and meeting incredible people within our community! Thanks again Stefanie and Riviera!

♥ Command Mass and the Labracadabra Studio.

Wednesday night we kicked off ‘Summer Oh-Ten’ with a successful community gathering at the Labracadabra Studio. We wanted to give a special thanks to Tim Cully and Jimmy Pham for throwing together a rad video to capture the magic!

Also thanks to SEWcreative for screening the film, Sean Woolsey for being amazing, and Pyramid Beer for sponsoring the event!

Tuesday at the studio: brilliant idea discussion with Tim Cully, followed by an informative phone call from our freight forwarders and an inspiring chat with the noble and valiant Scott Hunthausen (currently residing in Chile).

We just finished lunch and had a rad think tank with Sean Woolsey, and we are jumping into working out some insane websites and products for our current clients.

There is a feeling of excitement all around us. Perhaps its the coming of summer, or perhaps its something bigger that we are closing in on. I sat through our midday think tank and realized what a talented group of individuals I am surrounded by. All of them so brilliant in their own ways, all of them limitless, and all of them on the verge of being great.

There are some exciting developments and ideas happening down at the studio and a potential that is about to be realized. It is a privilege to be a part of.

Our door is always open, and you are always welcome.

♥ Command Mass

In the future all news, advice, information and sales, etc. will originate from your company’s website. The Role of Web Manager will expand from a one person job to a full team dedicated to managing sales, updating the site, optimizing the pages and syndicating content to your social network outlets.

At Command Mass we provide the needs of a full service web staff at a cost that is comparable to hiring a web manager. We believe your website, content, design, SEO and Social Networking Campaigns should all work together to maximize exposure to your brand where it counts.

So if your company is considering a Web Manager, consider a full team for the same price. Command the mass.

Using Social Networking for business is not only a cost effective way to connect with an audience, it can also serve as a dynamic tool to transparently serve your customers. At TOMS shoes (an example we Love using), they utilize the free service of Twitter as a ‘customer service’ hotline. By posting the hours they are available (see above), TOMS transparently and cost effectively open themselves to assisting their customers’ needs. This revolutionary approach to using social networking for business not only empowers their customers to easily reach TOMS for any service needs, but also builds loyalty for their brand through open, honest, and transparent communication.

At Command Mass we seek out ways to use social networking to not only connect you to an audience; but to build cost effective, transparent lines of communication that build loyalty for your brand.

The ’1-800′ Customer Service Line, to elevator music hold, to call center in India combo move is dead. There will come a day very soon when your customers won’t tolerate it. Using Social Networking for business is the future.

In the past, traditional Search Engine Optimization involved ‘stuffing’ the keywords of your choice in as many places as possible (meta tags, descriptions, content, archives, anchor-text, alt tags, breadcrumbs, url names, title tags, post names, html tags, php files, redirects, headers, .jpg file names… I could go on forever…). The result would be a sufficient overload at ‘convincing’ search engine sites like Google that you deserved the number one spot on organic search results.

Given the massive growth of CMS open source products like WordPress (recent estimations suggests 8% of the web is WordPress -that quote came from Matt Mullenweg himself!) offering clean indexed content to Google and the power of SEO plug-ins like ‘SEO-All-in-One” and “XML Site-Map” (oops, I just put half of all SEO guys out of business!), the future of traditional Search Engine Optimization is facing eminent and certain death.

As Google continues to adapt semantic technologies, we at Command Mass are declaring right now the future of SEO: Semantic Search Engine Optimization. The diagram above represents this idea at its most basic form: Instead of ‘stuffing’ keywords in the traditional sense of SEO, we build content that optimizes the elements that make up your keyword. The final product is Semantic Google recognizing that ‘bread,’ ‘tomato,’ ‘lettuce,’ ‘meat,’ and ‘cheese,’ are the basic elements of a ‘cheeseburger.’ Compare a site that has the keyword ‘cheeseburger’ stuffed in it ten billion times to the comprehensiveness and thoroughness of our strategy- and the latter always comes out on top.

This approach works wonders in any industry or field. For a Real Estate Company we explore the elements that make up Real Estate (mortgages, loan modification, short sales, homes sales, etc.) and build the story of your brand while winning complete optimization in the eyes of Google. It’s an idea that revolutionizes cost while maximizing your brand as the comprehensive ‘expert’ on the internet.

If you are still paying for traditional SEO and arguing about the effectiveness of bread-crumbs and parameter/depths of your URLs, know that all of these will eventually fade out. What will remain is world class, transparent elements that Google will ultimately index and reference accordingly. If you are ready to take command of your market share, then its time we had a chat.

There is a whole new way of doing things, and Command Mass is leading the charge.

Generation Y. You’ve heard that they don’t watch TV, and you’ve probably been told that they don’t read that much. Your research tells you that you can’t target them through MTV anymore, and you certainly can’t tell Gen Y what is cool. So how do you reach these 71 million “Millennials” that spend over 200 billion dollars annually and will soon replace the baby boomer generation as the largest percentage of the workforce?” -Bea Fields (StartUpNation.com)

Generation Y represents the most advanced and individualistic grouping of people in world history. They are unaffected by nearly every form of traditional advertisement; socially and globally conscious (thanks to the transparency of the internet and the accessibility of travel); tainted by malice corporate greed and largely overexposed to the point of immunity by the thousands of ads bombarding our periphery daily.

Pardon the bluntness, but traditional forms of marketing and advertisement are not working. And if you are a company that continues to spend a slice of the almost ‘trillion’ dollars each year on marketing, then consider that these forms of spending will not work for your business either.

So, how do you connect to Generation Y and capitalize on the burgeoning gap that grows everyday between your brand and the attention of this new age consumer?

First off, your company needs to be telling a story. Whether you offer a product, service, or lifestyle, your brand needs to be transparent and deeper than the end product. As consumers in the information age, Generation Y is hungry for information, driven by curiosity, and empowered by making their own decisions. Look at the success of TV shows like NBC’s The Office, which offers their viewers an entire website dedicated to getting to know the characters through blogs, vlogs and even a Twitter feed to keep you updated on the latest drama at Scranton’s favorite paper supply warehouse (you’re going to love this: @theofficenbc).

Companies like Patagonia, TOMS, 31 Bits, and Krochet Kids, have successfully developed a brand that tells a deeper story than just an aesthetic product; and ALL have used the internet to cheaply and effectively get their story across. Generation Y is hungry for the transparency that empowers them to find your story.

This idea transcends every industry, field, service, etc. of what companies must do to be the leading experts in the new millennium. Generation Y seeks the advice, insight, consultation, and the story behind your product or service… so give it to them.

At Command Mass we are taking a revolutionary approach at marketing to Generation Y. We build the transparency of your product or service by building up the story behind it; then use the power of a dynamic website, beautiful design, world class content, social networking, and amazing media to share your brand and story with the world. It is an idea that kills all traditional forms of marketing, but beckons to the ‘information’ appetite and the loyalty of Generation Y.

The leading companies of the next age will be the ones that articulate these principles today. The companies that fade will be the ones who continue to spend money on traditional marketing.

Tell them your story. Show them your transparency. Entire industries are yours for the taking. The future has never been brighter.

Command the mass.

When we scheduled a Saturday morning ‘Corporate’ shoot at our studio with professional photographer Jimmy Pham (JimJims.net) we weren’t expecting the Spring morning to be so temperate and divine. So, without much hesitation (actually none at all) we ripped off our ties and stuffy suits, slipped into our summer clothing and headed out to take a completely new approach at capturing the brand and transparency of Command Mass.

Now to be perfectly honest here, two men with dapper demeanors and mighty fine looks (I just had to throw that in) frolicking in the fields and dancing in the darling buds of May, might very well come off a bit- well you know… but Jimmy was right there with his camera masterfully blending our companies style, passion and culture with the external elements of a gorgeous day in the Newport Back Bay.

As a photographer, Jimmy not only produces world-class work; he has the ability to capture the story behind his subjects as well. From products, services, to lifestyle shoots, we can’t stop boasting of his ability to capture life on a two dimensional plane. At Command Mass we are confident that Jimmy’s drive and natural talent are the perfect fit for giving our clients the images they need to connect with their customers.

The ‘new’ consumers of this day and age demand every product and service tell a story. At Command Mass we believe every element of your website and marketing campaign should dynamically connect to their needs and demands.

So one final thanks to Jimmy! Learn more about his work at JimJims.net.