Daren Bascome
Daren Bascome
Title: Founder and Managing Director, Proverb
Age: 46
Industry Experience: 20 years
New luxury apartment complexes are a dime a dozen in Greater Boston, so developers have more incentive than ever to differentiate their properties. Boston-based branding agency Proverb helps them create distinct design and marketing themes as they bring projects to market.
Proverb founder Daren Bascome, a Massachusetts College of Art and Design graduate, worked at design studios and advertising agencies in the Boston area before pursuing freelance work. In 2007, Bascome partnered with Christine Needham to found Proverb, a South End agency that has grown to 16 employees. The company has developed campaigns for recent residential developments including the Kensington and Viridian in Boston, The Batch Yard in Everett and the upcoming Meriel in Quincy’s Marina Bay. It’s also worked with local universities, museums, restaurants and hotels.
Q: Were you always interested in art and design as a career?
A: As far back as I can remember. I grew up in a creative family. My dad was a composer and jazz musician who went to Berklee (College of Music) and my family were fourth-generation entrepreneurs who had all done things with a creative component. I’ve always been interested in art and design and architecture. Coming out of school, I worked in smaller design studios and advertising for a bit. But I really cut my teeth at a firm (Joseph A. Wetzel Assoc.) that planned permanent museum exhibits all over the world. It was the golden age of museum design. You work with incredibly smart people and help them winnow down what a series of learning objectives and turn them into a story. You align multiple disciplines to tell that story: an architect, a writer, a film designer. That approach has everything to do with the work we do at Proverb.
Q: How has your industry focus evolved over the years?
A: We’ve always worked across a number of different verticals. I’m a big believer that the way you innovate consistently is to bring new thinking to preexisting problems. And oftentimes things we learn in one vertical can assist clients in another. We’re quite adept at moving from a hospitality to an academic client or a real estate developer. Over the years, we’ve developed a few distinct areas of expertise. A lot of the work we do focuses on the built environment working with large-scale developers on mixed-use, multifamily, placemaking efforts, hotel projects.
Q: How are multifamily developers trying to break through the clutter with all of the luxury apartment complexes coming on line in Greater Boston over the past few years?
A: We recently delivered Veridian for the Abbey Group, one of two significant developments that are helping catalyze a lot of the growth in the Fenway. We also worked with National Development on the Kensington. We’re working with (Houston-based developer) Hines on their Meriel development at Marina Bay, which delivers in 2017, and Workbar on their co-working product.
Q: What services did you provide for the Batch Yard apartment complex in Everett?
A: The Batch Yard is a very compelling story. We developed everything from insights on the competitive landscape, how to position the product, naming and web development and marketing. We’ll help developers sharpen the concept. Oftentimes we’ll come in ahead of interior design or alongside architecture. We’ll develop a story. That story is something you can use to develop a concept for interior design and amenities, but it’s also a story you use to sign leases or sell condos.
Q: Do you find that the sooner you get into a property the more you can develop an effective campaign?
A: It’s the highest and best use of us. I’ll give you an example. We were working on a project in Alexandria, Virginia. They were already under construction. But it was on a pretty nondescript patch of a highway. In touring the comps, doing the commute, developing some intelligence, we knew the money they were saving on their apartments they were investing in their cars and their furniture. We tried to embrace the location and the highway and the time highways were most romantic, and we thought a lot about Route 66 and muscle cars. So the property is called the Shelby, taking its cues from the Shelby Cobra, using car culture and its aesthetics to inform the look and feel of the space. We’re bringing a similar approach to the Batch Yard and Corsair and others.
Q: How did the campaign for the Batch Yard evolve?
A: For people familiar with Boston, in terms of perception, it seems pretty far away, even though it’s only 3 miles from downtown Boston. Given that it’s not on the Red Line and not followed the normal course for development, we tried to create something that is clear and exciting. They have an amenity package that is better than anything else in this market, but we also wanted to overcome those perceptual challenges and underscore all of the things you can do in 10 minutes.
We embraced the history of the site, the history of candy making, the positioning as “The Sweeter Side of City Living.” One of the things we try to do in any tagline is to say something our competitors can’t. You can only be new for so long. So what we try to focus on it giving our clients a platform they can move to as a position of strength and really own.
Bascome’s Five Favorite DJs To Work To:
- Lefto
Brussels, Belgium
lefto.be
- Gilles Peterson
London, United Kingdom
gillespetersonworldwide.com - Aaron Byrd
Santa Monica, California
kcrw.com/music/shows/aaron-byrd - Ryan Hemsworth
Halifax, Nova Scotia
ryanhemsworth.com - Dj Ayers & Dj Eleven
Brooklyn, New York
itstherub.com
