"This is the Story of Furthur"

Werbewoche.ch: How did the idea of founding "Furthur" come about?

Dominik Lämmler (DL): We have Furthur was founded because the growth in social media is unlimited. Our goal was to create an agency that specializes in social media marketing instead of doing everything.

Alice Talotti (AT): This focus is important. With Furthur, we position ourselves as the "Scientific Social Media Agency of Switzerland".

What does the "Scientific" stand for?

DL: We hypothesize and measure. Our goal is not to simply publish posts that generate likes and views, but to understand what works and how it aligns with our clients' marketing goals. But really, Alice is the specialist in that.

AT: Our goal in each case is to find out what works best for our customers. We create hypotheses, as Dominik said, run tests and then can deliver results directly. Based on these results, we develop best practices and continue the learning process.

What are the challenges?

AT: The particular challenge is that we take a strategic approach. We don't want to just randomly run AB tests, as I've unfortunately often seen, but we consider from the outset how we plan the entire social media campaign to get the most out of our clients' budgets.

What are the reactions of your customers?

DL: Our customers are responding very positively. They realize that social media is too important to leave to chance. They understand that specialists are needed to create a well thought-out concept that is tailored to the marketing objectives. In the first six weeks, we were already able to convince six customers of our approach, which makes us very satisfied and spurs us on.

You came to Furthur from Meta. How much meta is there in Furthur?

AT: At Meta, we backed every activity with numbers. Every insight was backed by studies to show why certain best practices work for most customers. This mindset is an important part of Furthur as clients increasingly calculate their budgets with precision. Our approach, Test, Learn and Implement, provides a blueprint for making the most of every franc invested.

What was the first step towards the creation of Further?

DL: The most important step was to put together a strong team. Alice Talotti and I decided to start Further after working with the biggest agencies for the last three and a half years at Meta-DACH. Alice Talotti is one of the most experienced experts in social media marketing in the DACH region. Peter Wälty complements the team in terms of content and is one of the best-known digital journalists in Switzerland.

What skills do you bring to the Furthur team?

Peter Wälty (PW): The skills I can bring to the team are based on the mistakes I've made over the last 20 years. This may sound strange, but I have intensively studied the topics that interest readers and learned how to package these topics properly. That includes choosing headlines and images, which plays an important role in storytelling.

You have extensive experience in digital journalism. What observations do you make regarding current social media campaigns?

PW: What distinguished 20 Minuten for me was its focus on reach. That means focusing on the readers. The same thing is happening now in social media. Example: I saw a video this morning of a Swiss fun shooter. The video showed a skateboarder performing a trick while the fun soda was in the foreground. The video garnered 500,000 views on TikTok. I'm sure the people in charge were thrilled. But do they know why it worked and what impact it had on the brand or other target areas?

What do you think?

PW: Maybe it was the good humor of the algorithm or the story just worked.

That's good, isn't it?

PW: Often the effect of a video remains in the dark. What effect did it have on the recipient? Did it help strengthen the brand, generate leads, or even lead to sales? These questions often remain unanswered. Likewise, we don't know for sure whether the social media experts have ever communicated with the client, i.e. the advertiser, in this regard and agreed on clear goals.

What is your point?

I can only repeat what Alice and Dominik have already said: At Furthur, we work closely with our clients to define their specific goals. Based on these specifications, we develop creative ideas and hypotheses that are translated into different advertising materials, possibly with different variations. Since we don't always know exactly which target group reacts best to which advertising medium, we test these variants specifically. Once we have meaningful results, we implement the successful approaches. This approach is at the heart of Furthur and is implemented in close collaboration with our clients. This is the story of Further, and we plan to follow this path together.