Joined forces with longtime design partner to create an ad agency focused exclusively on digital. With emphasis on brand building, websites, and digital marketing strategies, Out of the Ether helps mid-level companies utilize modern marketing tools to drive awareness and website traffic as a means to increased sales.

Smash Communications is a sustainable marketing consultancy specializing in the integration of authentic storytelling as a marketing and advertising function. Designed to supplement traditional marketing and advertising tactics, sustainable marketing helps organizations provide relevant, authentic content for its audiences while concurrently improving search rankings. Born in 2001 as one of America’s first “virtual” ad agencies, in 2015 Smash was relaunched with a more holistic approach to marketing that Mr. Mitchem honed and perfected while building the Boxman Studios brand and driving sales via inbound marketing.

In 2008, entrepreneur David Campbell had an idea to turn old shipping containers into mobile hospitality lounges. After buying a container and hiring a welder, Campbell contacted Mr. Mitchem for marketing advice. In 2009, Mitchem joined forces with Campbell, branded the company (including naming it), and set off to generate awareness for a new product in a sector that didn’t exist—during a recession. With zero advertising budget to work with, Mitchem built a 3-page website and began to tell the brand’s story, distributing this content through a new thing called social media. In 2013 the brand was named Fastest Growing Company in Charlotte, and in 2014 was named the #120 fastest growing company in America (Inc. Magazine), with over 3000% growth. During this time of tremendous growth, 90% of sales were the result of inbound marketing tactics via Mitchem's sustainable marketing approach and quality storytelling.

Recruited from Jacksonville, Florida, Mitchem was brought on board to help “change the creative direction” at Charlotte’s largest ad agency. In his first year with the firm, his work won the agency their first ever local, regional, and national awards. Mitchem worked with brands like Lexus, National Gypsum, and the Carolina Panthers among others.

Brought on as a freelancer after college, Mitchem learned the nuances of advertising under the tutelage of a senior art director and copywriter team recruited from Saatchi & Saatchi in New York to head up Citibank’s N-House creative department in Jacksonville, Florida. Mainly assigned to direct marketing campaigns, Mitchem learned the value of teamwork in the creative sector, along with how to how to manage the creative process.

Rapid Deployment Logistician for Tactical Air Command’s A-10 units.

During 10 months of intensive studies at three colleges concurrently, Mr. Mitchem took a copywriting course because it had the word “writing” in its title. His copywriting professor, Dr. Greg Stene, said this about him:

“Jim just plain freaks me out ... he's so good at this strategy/advertising thing. My class was the first he'd had in advertising. It was a copywriting and layout course; emphasizing strategy, creative thinking, and developing original and effective concepts. This guy ... from the git-go, bests every other copywriter/art director I knew in my 12 years in the business as a creative, except one (the guy who taught me how to do it). I knew I'd pretty much run out of anything to teach him by the time I saw his second ad. But he found things to learn on his own.

Jim gets that all-important strategy-thing, is incredibly instinctive and dead-on in his creative approach, and is one of the most enthusiastic and decent people you'll meet.”