Slow Is Smooth: Our Intentions for 2023

The first week of January is prediction season. Every agency newsletter in our inboxes is forecasting the year of AI, the year of recession-proof creative, the year of some platform we will have forgotten by summer. We read them. Some are smart. But predictions are cheap, and they let you off the hook. An intention costs you something, because you can be held to it.

So instead of predictions, here is what we are committing to at Slipway in 2023. Print it out and check us against it in December.

Fewer projects, held longer

Last year we said yes to more work than we should have. Nothing shipped badly, but a few things shipped merely fine, and merely fine is not why clients come to a studio like ours. This year we are capping concurrent engagements and protecting the second and third rounds of craft that separate good from unmistakable. The math is simple: depth compounds, volume does not.

AI is a tool in the room, not a strategy on a slide

Yes, we have been living in ChatGPT like everyone else since November. Yes, it is genuinely useful for first drafts, research summaries, and unblocking a stuck writer at 4pm. And no, we are not rebranding as an AI studio. The interesting question for 2023 is not whether these tools write passable copy. They do. The question is what happens to the value of passable, because we think it goes to zero. Our bet: taste, judgment, and accountability become the scarce goods. We plan to sell exactly those.

Engineering and design stay in one room

The studios we admire most refuse the handoff. In 2023 every brand engagement at Slipway ships with a working prototype, not a PDF, and every build has a designer in the standup. We watched too many beautiful systems die in translation last year, in the industry if not in our own shop. The fix is not better documentation. The fix is proximity.

We show our work

This blog is intention number four. Twelve people work here, and each of them knows things the industry pays consultants to half-explain. Priya on positioning. Alex on the web platform. Ruben on why your shoot went over budget. You will hear from all of them this year, roughly weekly, with opinions attached. If a post could have been written by anyone, we will not publish it.

What we are not doing

A short list, for accountability:

We are not opening a second office. San Francisco is enough city for us.
We are not launching a productized "brand sprint" offering. Sprints produce sprint-quality brands.
We are not chasing every platform. When something new matters, we will show up late and well-dressed.

The economy is uncertain, the tools are shifting under everyone's feet, and half of our industry is nervous. We get it. But studios are not built in easy years. They are built in years like this one, by people who decide what they are for and then refuse to be talked out of it.