If you're like me, you've probably noticed Verizon's recent ads (and the press they've generated!) attacking the limitations of AT&T's wireless network. In response, AT&T has sued, even though they admit the "facts" presented in Verizon's ads are, essentially, accurate. It's been so fun to watch! Still, many people have been waiting with baited breath to see how AT&T is going to respond to consumers.



I should probably admit that I have a strong distaste for AT&T. I'd probably have an iPhone if getting one didn't necessitate me giving AT&T my hard-earned money. But in this ad, they have responded in probably the best way they could have: they identified a real benefit to AT&T's service, and claimed it as unique. It's a pretty good response.

Still, AT&T's image has been slipping for a while now. Their brand strategy is going to have to include more than responding to Verizon's ads. They should probably improve their network, too. But hey, it's a start!

While he wasn't perfectly clear, Walter Murdoch has suggested that News Corp's news outlets will soon start actively preventing their content from getting onto Google search results.

The problem, according to Murdoch, is that news content shouldn't be free. He believes news content should never have been free online, and that no free news website will ever enjoy the margins a paid newspaper does. But when it is free for the finding on Google, it's also free for the taking, says Murdoch, and countless blogs and other websites plagiarize News Corp's content. This leads to their content being freely available in multiple locations, when it actually originated with News Corp. Even though Google's main purpose is to link to content elsewhere, Murdoch says he'd rather have fewer paying customers intentionally choosing News Corp than a greater number of Google users stumbling upon his content for free.

Is Murdoch digging his heels into a journalistic era that is no more, or is he on to something? Have we come to undervalue what we find online because it's free? Or will this move be, to plagiarize a quote from the original interview below, a classic move by a failing empire?

Further, are 20- and 30-somethings — the generation newspapers really need to start finding a way to sell something to — too used to free news to be willing to pay for it? Can Murdoch come up with a brand strategy to package this move in that will make it appealing to those he needs to appeal to most? If it works, will other news outlets take the chance to follow suit? And then, will free social media replace professional journalism? Only time will tell.

The internets, they are a-changing. Watch the full interview below:

There's a new company in Holland called BrandNEW.



BrandNEW manages a chain of retail locations in shopping malls, etc., that can be leased for short periods of time. Their thought is that, sometimes, you want a convenient place where consumers can come get their hands on a new product, but you don't necessarily want a long-term retail location. BrandNEW will let you lease one of their locations for a few weeks or months. It looks like you can brand them however you want, and make use of the healthy dose of interactive technology installed in each to provide an immersive, compelling brand experience for visitors.

It's a pretty cool idea. I wonder when it'll catch on in the States?

Check out www.brandnewstores.com.

The good people at GoodGuide.com describe their site as "the world's largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental and social impacts of the products in your home." And by compiling virtually all available information relating to the packaged goods you purchase and the companies that make them, they're not kidding. The site is still in Beta, but already shows huge promise, as evidenced by its steadily growing traffic over the past year since its launch.

GoodGuide rates the products you buy on several scales, including their impact on your health, their impact on the environment, and their manufacturer's impact on society (based on hiring practices, etc.). These and other scores, including user reviews, are averaged into a global GoodGuide Rating, allowing users to see, at a glance, which products are the most popular and socially responsible within a given category. And all this content is generated, mind you, without the slightest involvement on the part of the products' manufacturers themselves.

Marketing efforts be damned, this site is like Consumer Reports on steroids, and we think it'll catch on.


There's been lots of talk lately about how the future of marketing will be largely in the hands of consumers and their ability to recommend purchases to each other based on the growing amount of information available to them beyond official marketing messages. Here's a concrete example of what that might look like.

But where does that leave you, o Advertiser? How do you market a product to consumers who largely avoid marketing messages? What kind of brand strategy takes into account and reaches these consumers who are essentially "going rogue" when it comes to traditional marketing practices? Is it "social?" Probably. Is it radically different from what you're doing now? Most likely. Does this mean the death of advertising? Absolutely not.

If you sell something, see how your products measure up at GoodGuide.com. And if the answer is "not very well," let the good people of Meyer & Wallis help you improve your brand's image. With more than 40 years of success behind us, we know a thing or two about reaching a changing world with relevant, effective advertising.

This is a clever move, indeed.

Mercedes Benz, maker of fine — but darned expensive — cars, has opened its Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy in the UK. Here, children as young as ten years old can get behind the wheel of an A-Class and start working on their driving skills. Mercedes' idea is that good driving skills take time to build up, but lead to safer, better drivers. So why not start exposing future drivers to the chance sooner?

For as little as £40, kids get to take a spin in a genuine Mercedes Benz while getting coaching from specially trained driving instructors. There are even classes for parents to help them be more helpful and encouraging to their own kids when they're practicing in the family car.

This is a pretty smart brand strategy. What 10-year-old would say no to driving a real, full-size car? And, at the same time, what parent would balk at someone else who genuinely wants to instill some good driving skills in their child without endangering the family sedan? (And, it's a Mercedes!) These kids will probably grow up to be safer drivers, and might just start lusting after an E-Class early enough to set aside their paper route money with one in mind. Smart.

Check it out at www.mbdrivingacademy.com

Milwaukee has an interesting newspaper history. Though many might consider us a "small" city, Milwaukee had two rival newspapers for decades — The Milwaukee Journal and the Milwaukee Sentinel. They merged a few years ago, and the Brew City no longer has two papers vying for our attention.

But that's neither here nor there when it comes to these interesting infographics from Mint.com. I guess the amount of information Mint has aggregated to pull these stats together makes this one of the most comprehensive views of the newspaper industry so far:



Okay. It looks like 24 of the nation's top 25 papers are DOWN in circulation. (Good job, Wall Street Journal.) But this graph didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know.

Then I saw this part:


Sure, in this graph you can clearly see a sharper decline in circulation starting in around 2004. But the most interesting thing — to me, anyway — is the fact that newspaper circulation basically peaked in the mid 1980s.

The 1980s!?!

Alright. I'll allow that the internet has taken a healthy bite out of print news in the last few years. But since 1984?? I think not.

I think newspapers have something besides the internet to blame lower circulation on. I think it's a marketing problem. How do you sell a newspaper to a generation that grew up with more alternative sources for news than any before it?

You know, these days, everyone is clamoring to brand themselves as an internet ad agency. But the internet is doing fine. Looks like print media is the one that needs some help, and we've got some ideas. Meyer & Wallis has been a turnaround specialist since our inception, and we think we know how to improve newspaper circulation. More on this in the future. In the mean time, check out the whole infographic here.

I like beer. In fact, Meyer & Wallis likes beer. While our intake falls far short of the kind you see on Mad Men, we've been known to wrap up a busy workweek with a round of ice cold "art supplies." Clever, we know.

And it makes sense, too. Meyer & Wallis started over 40 years ago here in Milwaukee — home to four nationally recognized breweries at the time: Schlitz, Pabst, Blatz and Miller.

But where are they now? Schlitz has just recently returned to brewing in Milwaukee, but is owned by Pabst, now headquartered in Illinois. Blatz is being brewed once again by Miller, but Miller has merged with Coors, and, you may remember if you follow marketing blogs like this one, has moved their marketing headquarters from Milwaukee to Chicago. Yup, of the original four independent, local breweries mentioned above, not one remains. The largest domestic brewery left in the US? Sam Adams.

Now I'm sure these breweries have good reasons for merging and moving as they have, and I'm also sure that product quality, not profit, remains at the top of their lists. (Wink.) But how have consumers responded to the mass production of beer that's happened over the last few years. Well, have you been in a Whole Foods lately?
 


Sure, there's a section for your Big Name Beers, but a gloriously massive amount of space is devoted to smaller, local, craft beers. Why? Because they taste better. Because they manage to get something right that the bigger breweries can't.

What does this have to do with Meyer & Wallis?

There's this assumption that bigger is better, even with Ad Agencies. Bigger means more resources, more talent, more sway. Or so it seems at first. But really, when it comes to Ad Agencies, bigger means that your account is only one of dozens. It means if your ad budget isn't in the tens of millions, your campaign gets crafted by inexperienced interns. It means you get to pay for all that a big agency says they have at their disposal, while getting none of the personal attention required to leverage those benefits for your brand. To revive the metaphor, it'd be like paying $5 to drink a bottle of Schlitz when you could have a bottle of Lakefront East Side Dark Lager for $3.50. You haven't heard of it? It's delicious.

Meyer & Wallis is a small, independent, local ad agency with offices in Milwaukee and Indianapolis. We aren't owned by another company. We have relationships with the media going back decades. Our experience in retail marketing management is second to none. Our UK style account planning approach means every campaign is carefully researched and and planned and executed by the same team of people, utilizing a proprietary planning process. We come to know the unique needs of each of our clients as only a small agency can.

So if you're sick of the watered-down taste of your current ad campaign, and yearn for the full-bodied, unique flavor that only comes from a local agency, give us a call. We're the ad agency that made Milwaukee famous.

First Pizza Hut became The Hut. Now Radio Shack, the retailer I'm perennially shocked to see is still in business, is also opting to focus its corporate identity on a type of primitive structure:



Following a big rebranding event call the Netogether, RadioShack will rebrand itself as, simply, The Shack.

Granted, analog radio isn't as big a deal as it was when radio shack got its start in 1921, but at least it suggests technology, or media, or gadgetry. At least, it always has to me. So it remains to be seen how successful this will be. It also remains to be seen what the new logo/brand strategy will be.

Original story via engaget.

Brand Autopsy reports on a second recent venture by Starbucks aimed at reclaiming much of what the brand has lost. While Starbucks' brand strategy was initially built on creating unique, intimate spaces in each of its locations, the demands of scaling up the company's operations required "homogenization," to put it kindly.

Now, Starbucks is looking for ways to get its soul back. How? By emulating the very "ma and pa" cafés it competes with to learn first hand what it is that draws customers to them.

It's quite a fascinating case of the shoe being on the other foot, or however that saying goes, and probably exactly what Starbucks needs to do. Good for them.

We've talked about Starbucks here before — the veritable icon of the personal luxury that characterized pre-recession America — and the trouble their brand is in. McDonalds billboards touting their cheaper line of coffee drinks with the simple headline "Less Bucks" hit Starbucks right in the beans. Stores have been closing across the globe.

Will Starbucks remain viable? Can they reinvent their brand in time?

It's funny. At least here in Milwaukee, several locally based coffee shops have popped up all over the place over the last decade, almost in response/defiance to Starbucks. They've sought ways to differentiate themselves, and have found quite a few — live music on the weekends, local pastries and produce... some have even taken to serving select wines and beers.

Well, it seems that Starbucks is now looking to the local coffeehouse scene it helped create for its own salvation.

in an experimental move, the company just dropped the Starbucks name from one of their Seattle-area stores, and the rebranded cafe is adding beer and wine to the menu.

Will this brand strategy be the future of Starbucks? Will the one-time hangout of yuppie teenagers become the future hangout of yuppie 20- and 30-somethings?

They sure seem to hope so.

Read the full article here.

Well, well, well... A couple weeks ago, I wrote about  KFC's new grilled chicken options. This, from the restaurant chain that has been systematically removing any hint of deep fryery from their branding for over a decade. Given other fast food chains' recent and similar moves, my hopes were not high for this one. Still, even a fried squirrel finds a grilled nut sometimes.

The launch of grilled chicken has been KFC's most successful product launch to date.

Well, I for one can't wait for the KFC Chicken Salad.

Whole Foods added its one millionth follower on Twitter. So what, you say? This makes them the first retail brand to do so. How did they build such a monstrous following? Buy tying in a promotion to following them on Twitter, of course. If you still have any doubts that Twitter can be a viable retail marketing tool, perhaps you should read the rest of the story here.

Disney has readily admitted that this video was staged, and intended to go viral. Still, doesn't it make you feel the "magic" of the Disney brand?

 

Almost 800,000 views so far. Clever, yes?

Just caught this tv spot for Barclays. I haven't seen an ad speak this frankly and creatively about the economic troubles we've been having. I don't know too much about Barclays, but they play up the stability and safety of their company like they've been saying it for 100 years. Not sure if that's a new brand strategy for them, but they do it very well.

Can a static ad be "conversational?" How do you feel after the Pringles brand after clicking on this banner for a while?



If you think it's pretty clever, you're not alone. It won gold at Cannes last week. As online advertising strategies go, this one feels pretty unique. I can't think of the last time I paid more than half a second of attention to a banner ad. What do you think?

Though we're but a local Milwaukee ad agency, we've had several supermarkets as clients over the years — located throughout the midwest and beyond. You could call retail marketing one of our core competencies.

Anyway, many of them offer private label brands along side the local and national ones. As private labels are less expensive by nature, the recession has caused many to consider them. And a new study indicates that 91% of people who have recently switched to store brands because of the economy think they'll make the switch permanent.

WOW.

now if only supermarkets actively advertised their private labels.

Check out this recent spot from AMV BBDO in London. Is your brand so strong you could REMOVE IT ENTIRELY from your ads and still get your point across? Check it out:

A few weeks back, I mused about what it must be like to be Starbucks right now. Born in an era when being able to afford a $4 cup of coffee was an indication of status, but finding itself in an era when spending $4 on coffee seems a bit imprudent, Starbucks is out of its economic element.

But this week, and not a moment too late, Starbucks' brew has been named the "#1 fast food coffee" by Zagat's survey. "Fast food?" Isn't this award kind of a dig at the same time, then? I mean, Starbucks used to pride themselves at being in a totally different category from fast food places, but I digress. (Full disclosure: this author is a former Starbucks barista.)

Starbucks has wasted no time in unleashing a new ad campaign touting their recent praise. It goes without saying that this is an honor McDonald's would have loved to win, and half expected to.

So this will be interesting. Starbucks' image is badly marred by the price premium associated with the brand. But the thing they've always tried to drive home is that, at the end of the day, they have the best coffee. Will this recognition help Starbucks turn their company around? Will it be the thing they needed to successfully tweak their brand strategy?

We'll see.

There was a time when Microsoft was spoken of like the Colosseum in Rome: Huge, stable, somehow existing outside of time and reality. We all had and loved Windows ('cause Macs sucked back then anyway) and we all used Internet Explorer, the browser that destroyed Netscape Navigator, its seemingly insurmountable predecessor.

But that was then. This is 2009. Apple has doubled their market share. Internet Explorer is steadily losing market share to multiple competitors. And Windows fans have had to spend more time defending than enjoying Vista. Last, but not least, Microsoft's multiple attempts to unseat Google as king of search have failed, each in its own spectacular way.

Is the empire crumbling? Microsoft would have you think not. This week, they released their newest search product: Bing. As in, "just 'bing' it." Early reviews have been both positive and negative, which is somewhat expected as they make some last-minute tweaks. But the price of beating Google, the indisputable leader in internet search, is a hefty price indeed. Microsoft's marketing budget for the campaign introducing Bing is estimated at $80 to $100 million. In addition to traditional media, Microsoft is paying to place Bing in a handful of prime time TV shows, hoping if you see Jack Bauer Bing something, you might want to Bing, too. And it still may not work.

How often in history has the underdog, even a superior underdog, not been able to come from behind only because of the head start the leader has? The pricing of taking on Google is a hundred million dollars, and even when you've got the financial and technological resources of Microsoft, there's no guarantee your efforts will pay off.

So the moral is: don't let your brand fall behind in a category you want to be a major player in — not even for a moment, because it will cost you much more to regain that market share later on than it would to simply hang onto it. For example: have you tried Bing yet?

Several years ago, there was a supermarket chain here in Milwaukee called Kohl's. It was a higher end food store, and dominated the local market with about 45% market share. That's far more than any one of its competitors. 

The company that ran Kohl's food stores had also recently opened some department stores, also under the name Kohl's. Long story short, ownership of all the Kohl's brands changed hands, and the new management was much more interested in the department stores they had acquired than the food stores. So they started running the food stores almost as an afterthought, devoting no resources or attention to them at all. Within months, market share had plummeted from 45% to about 12%, and public opinion of Kolh's food stores was downright abysmal. People were actually angry over what had happened to the chain.

About this time, Meyer & Wallis (R.L. Meyer Advertising at that time) was asked to help. Bob Meyer's pitch was pretty simple: "You've lost the trust of consumers because you've mislead them. You've changed a store they've come to know and love without any forewarning, and you will continue to hemorrhage customers until you start telling them the truth. I've got a plan that will save this company, but for it to work you have to tell your customers the absolute truth from now on." They agreed.

The first TV spot that aired was much like GM's. It was an apology; an acknowledgement of the trust lost and the expectations unfulfilled. "But give us a couple weeks," the ad asked, "and we'll show you a whole new kind of super market."

Over the next couple weeks, and with our help, Kohl's reevaluated their practices and prices. They got back in touch with what had once made them so popular, and redesigned their stores around these strengths.

The stores reopened as a new TV ad began to air. It rebranded the stores "Kohl's II," and promised a new shopping experience to consumers, combining the high quality they remembered with low prices that might surprise them. Within weeks, Kohl's food store's market share climbed back up to about 21% — nowhere near the 45% they once enjoyed, but almost double where they had been. (As I talked this over with Bob Meyer, he was quick to make an important point here: it's much easier to hang onto market share than to regain it. Getting Kohl's back to 45% market share could have easily taken years, because repairing a brand is a slow process.) After losing money for 10 straight months (sometimes millions per month), Kohl's food stores were able to buy a nearby grocery chain with the sudden and unexpected revenue the campaign helped generate.

Alas, this story does not end well. As happens all too often, management at Kohl's was quicker to credit themselves for the stores' turnaround than our marketing campaign, and cut ties with our agency in favor of a marketing direction they could feel more in charge of.

After losing money year after year, all Kohl's food stores were finally closed in 2003. Nowhere near 12% of the market missed them.

Anyway, there are two morals here: (1) Meyer & Wallis are turnaround specialists. We excel at identifying the unique claims a struggling business can make within their industry and helping them make them in a cost effective yet highly creative way, with the ultimate goal of getting results. Time after time since the Kohl's campaign, we have proven our ability to do this. We'd love to talk with you about it. And yet, (2) No campaign, no matter how effective, can save a brand that isn't willing to match the claims it is making. If a company makes its own advertising claims out to be lies, it has no one to blame but itself if the public picks up on the inconsistencies.

We'll all find out soon enough if GM can match its marketing claims.