Another Milestone in Rapidly Changing Times

Wordsmithie turned 15 years old in mid-June, and what a ride it’s been (and still is)! I’ve been traveling through time by rolling back my inbox to my oldest emails to see how it all began.

Our agency’s story is there, right from the first message. New (and now lasting) clients reaching out for the first time, new (and now long-time) team members joining us, major product launches that are now used by millions. I feel a deep well of gratitude for all the people who helped us reach this point: Our team, clients, partners, and guides who shined a light as we figured things out together amidst a rapidly changing landscape.

While we’ve worked in many verticals, from healthcare to entertainment and travel to financial services, Wordsmithie has been especially embedded in the world of technology marketing over the years. That’s because I was one of Google’s first content strategists before founding the agency, and many folks on our team come from Google, too. We’ve helped launch and tell the world about social media, mobile, gamification, VR, voice, and AI as these technologies emerged. And even before we came together, members of our team were involved in the earliest stages of search, e-commerce, on-demand entertainment, and other digital tools the world still uses every day. We all followed the same path before and after we joined forces: Shaping and sharing the story of how technology and humanity can intertwine — for education, for connection, for entertainment, for productivity, for self-expression. Working with Google, Amazon, Coinbase, Shopify, Square, Eventbrite, NetApp, Palo Alto Networks, Stanford University, and other organizations, we’ve always explored and celebrated the frontiers and opportunities of this remarkable era.

But my inbox time travel has also given me some much-needed perspective about how much we’ve experienced, and (lately) endured. In the past five years, everything has been evolving so rapidly, and we’re all balancing on a knife’s edge. From sharp political divides to global warfare to climate change to the warp-speed development of AI, little makes sense anymore, and sometimes it’s hard to feel safe or stay focused on what matters. 

That being said, resilience has always been a major strand of Wordsmithie’s DNA. Change doesn’t phase us so much as it inspires us to look around the next corner and toward the horizon beyond. More than ever, we all need to sit up, pay attention, listen more deeply, and cut through the noise. Real things are happening all around us. Not just digital things. Human things. Epic things. Things that will shape all of our futures. 

As a creative agency, we’re riding the crest of AI as we’ve ridden every other swell in the past, though this time the wave is a tsunami. We’re learning how to adapt to a world where content and AI play nicely together, helping brands train users to drive adoption of their AI tools, and ensuring that humans in the loop play a critical role in quality creation and control.

The next 15 years will pass in the blink of an eye. I hope that when I look back then, I can say that somehow, in some way, we took hold of this moment and owned it, shaped it, and moved it forward while taking care of our clients and each other with humanity, grace, and courage. It’s the Wordsmithie way.