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.

My wife informed me of a curious thing on her most recent visit to Hulu.com. Before playing the show she'd selected, Hulu asked if she'd be willing to take part in a brief research survey. If she was, the alert went on, she'd be allowed to pick one of several non-profits which would then be advertised to 250 Hulu visitors. Seeing one of her favorite organizations on the list, she immediately opted to take the survey.

This is brilliant. Not only did Hulu collect information from my wife's responses to the survey, but they also gathered some information about the causes she cares about. And, because of the way they phrased the solicitation, this was information my wife was happy to divulge. When it comes to building marketing databases, that's pretty clever.

This puts the "interactive" in interactive media in a whole new way. Not only did my wife get to watch the content she chose, but she also got to choose the advertising her peers would see. Crazy! And smart!

In a sign of the changing, yet not quite perfected times, popular video website Hulu tried something interesting on Monday. They have partnered with Facebook to try what many feel might be the future of TV: "social TV."

Now, I thought this had been going on for years. Just last week, I had some friends over to watch the season premiere of The Big Bang Theory. It was quite a social event — snacks, drinks, everything. But I guess that's not what Hulu and Facebook have in mind.



During the season premiere of the Simpsons this past Monday, users logged into a special Facebook App that allowed them to watch the show on Hulu live — the same time it was airing on TV — and interact in real time with their Facebook friends. And this is not the first time Hulu has done this.

Perhaps their hope is that, while Hulu and facebook are free, the social aspect is something users would be willing to sit through more advertising for. (When watching previously aired programming on Hulu, for example, you only have to watch ONE commercial per commercial break.) If so, this could be a promising way to monetize interactive media. But I didn't catch it this Monday, so I'm not sure how they did it.

Has anyone participated in one of these "social" TV show premiers? 

Late last month, Meyer & Wallis unveiled a highly visible and creative campaign for our client Carpet Town. With just about anything for the walls, windows and floors in your home, we really wanted to sell the point that Carpet Town is more than just carpeting.

So we took our message to where the shoppers are, and especially where the keepers of the home are — the Mayfair shopping center.

"It's unlike an medium we've ever used," says Carpet Town owner Wendy Werner. "In fact, it's unlike anything I've seen in a shopping center. It's going to be very dramatic."

Complete with floor graphics, window clings at entrances and exits, washroom signage, food court table tents and 5' x 8' hanging banners in the north atrium, this comprehensive campaign is designed to capture attention and challenge the assumption that Carpet Town is just carpet.

"To our knowledge, no one has ever taken over a mall to this degree," said Werner. We hope it helps Carpet Town get their message across and increase traffic to their stores!

Window cling on your way into the mall


Window cling on your way out


Floor graphic


The elegant elevator shaft








Food court table tents, in three flooring flavors












Mirror clings in the restrooms




And, finally, big banners in the atrium declare our message plain and simple




Our thanks to Wendy Werner, owner of Carpet Town, and to Dianne Adam, Carpet Town's head designer. And, of course, to Mayfair shopping center, for letting us take it over for this campaign.

Do you have a message you need to get across to potential customers in a memorable way? Why not talk to Meyer & Wallis? Our strategy-driven solutions are always designed with your success in mind, whether that means traditional media, interactive marketing, in store media, in mall media... whatever. 

For more information on this campaign and others, contact Laurie Kanekoa at lkanekoa@meyerwallis.com.

Here at Meyer & Wallis, we were just working on a presentation for one of our clients. They're an undergraduate university, targeting high school juniors and seniors with their new campaign. In our preparation, we cited a very well-known metrics provider whose published statistic had the average teen online for 11.5 hours a month. A MONTH. Several of us raised a red flag on that one, so we called the company, who said they've since revised that figure to about 25 hours a month. Really? Less than an hour a day? Are you seriously serious?

I suppose when the television came out, there were die-hard naysayers who swore it would never steal market share or significance from radio. They probably even settled into some serious denial about how popular TV was getting.

Let's be clear. Young adults entering college this fall were born in 1991, the same year America Online was launched for home computers. This generation has never known a world without the internet. And it has grown up along side them. They are as infinitely familiar with it as our great great grandparents were with typewriters or telegraphs, or as people always have been with the newest technology of their generation. To assume that teens will now suddenly conform their use of the media to that of us adults is just silly.

What am I saying? This generation is already starting to graduate from college and enter the workplace. As they gain more buying power, more advertising of traditional goods and services will be aimed at them. This will necessarily mean more interactive marketing, and probably less traditional marketing as we've known it. And yet it seems that there are still those big name companies who would have us believe that the standard media mix of the last 50 years isn't really going to change.

Well, change is coming:
$55 Billion Forecast for Interactive Marketing in 2014

With each passing year, there will be more and more consumers expecting marketers to meet them in the digital realm; not for the novelty of it, but because that's where they've lived all their lives.

I would think that statistic we cited should be about 400 hours a week. Not in terms of undivided attention, but in terms of availability and access. Think about it. Kids always have their cellphones on them, and many of these can access Facebook and Twitter, if not the whole internet. When they're home doing their homework, they're in front of their computers. And when they're done with their homework, they're still in front of their computers chatting with their friends. They shop/play/learn/socialize/create online. If teens are awake, they're plugged in.

So, are you ready for the digital realm? More and more, your customers are there. Meyer & Wallis is there. Are you?

Sometimes being an internet ad agency isn't about flashy animated websites. Sometimes the most effective interactive media is the easiest to find, and that has more to do with playing by Google's rules than outside-the-box creative. Yes, sometimes the most important tweaks to your website can seem downright ho-hum. But they make a world of difference. There's a nice summary of the kind of things you need to think about in order to make your website "more than just a website," as we like to say. Check it out here.

It doesn't take a complete redesign to make your website work harder for you. Talk to Meyer & Wallis about ways we can help you improve your existing site today.

One of the oldest and biggest companies here in Milwaukee is Briggs and Stratton. They are one of the largest manufacturers of small gasoline engines in the world. And, at 101 years old, they're the latest long-standing company to try to go viral.

Eddiegram.com allows you to send, surprisingly, an "Eddie Gram" to a someone. In your Eddie Gram, a creepy lawnmower with a human head will brag about the beauty of your lawn, or deride the lackluster status of your recipient's. This, hopes Briggs & Stratton, will turn your mind to lawnmowers, which, in turn, will help Briggs & Stratton sell motors.

If you think this is a stretch, wait until you see the site.

Remember kids, interactive media is no automatic guarantee of popularity... especially if the most engaging thing you can think of is a creepy humanoid lawnmower. This was someone's first idea.

I'd be willing to bet a fair amount of money that you've seen a video of Susan Boyle's first performance on Britain's Got Talent. It's basically the most popular internet video in history, with an untouchable 220 million views since April.

But the company that produces Britain's Got Talent and owns the rights to her performances has struggled to make any profit off of her popularity on the internet. Read the interesting article in the New York Times here.

Interactive Media is a funny thing. We all know the internet is hugely popular, and the place more and more people turn to for fresh content. But they rarely want to pay for it. What to do?

As has been discussed on this blog before, there isn't really a formula for making a viral video. We've seen more than one internet ad agency claim that they can virtually guarantee a viral hit. Even if that's true, ensuring that the effort somehow pays off for the advertiser also matters. A lot.

Meyer & Wallis is a full service advertising agency with the interactive know-how to create hugely "viral" campaigns — even before the help of the internet! (click here) But we also have 40+ years of marketing experience that helps us keep the success and growth of your brand as our top priority. Contact us to find out more.

Okay...

I read this article earlier this week at Advergirl, and have been thinking about it and alluding to its content ever since. But it's so good, I figured I'd just post it and share the love.

Just remember this before you read it: A good ad agency doesn't just make you ads, they help you make your brand and find your brand's authentic voice. This is something Meyer & Wallis is tremendously skilled at, having helped a bank and a realty company (among others) completely redesign and then relaunch their brand with staggering results. We're good at this stuff.

So read the pdf. If the possibility of connecting with consumers via social media in such a powerful and authentic way sounds appealing but out of reach, call us. We are an interactive marketing agency with a firm grasp on what it means to present an authentic brand to consumers.

Okay. I'm all about new technology. I have wireless speakers streaming music off my laptop at home. I long for an iPhone. I have a website, a blog, a Facebook page, a LinkedIn page, etc. I regularly collaborate on music projects with a friend in New York with the help of the internet. I video conference with my parents when they're in Florida for the winter. This is all normal to me. Modern technology is part of the air I breathe.

But i DON'T Twitter.

For the rest of you who don't, Twitter is a sort of "Mini-blog" that allows you to post short (140 characters or less) "tweets" to your Twitter page, that other users can view. Part of the appeal of Twitter is that many cell phones, etc., can post to it, meaning users can update their Twitter pages from virtually anywhere.

I don't get twitter. I appreciate digital technology for what it allows me to do more thoroughly or more speedily, and I honestly feel like Twitter is a dumbing down of human interaction. (If you've already got the cell phone in your hand and you want me to know what you're up to, give me a call, my friend! Then we can have a conversation about it that will likely use more than 140 characters!) But it looks like I'm probably wrong.

Last week, Oprah devoted her entire April 17th show to Twitter. She "tweeted" for the first time with Ashton Kutcher, who was live on the show via satellite to the delight of housewives everywhere.

Now, there could have been some confusion that day. Perhaps several of her viewers thought that Twitter would somehow enable them to chat with Ashton Kutcher. But whatever the reason, the day Oprah's Twitter episode aired, traffic to Twitter's site was up an incredible 43 percent, with 37 percent of their overall traffic that day representing first-time visitors. THAT'S CRAZY.

There are many lessons here, not the least of which being the confirmation of television's staying power and ability to reach a wide audience in an increasingly digital world.

But the biggest lesson, to me, is this: If Oprah thinks Twitter is a useful enough tool to spend an hour talking about it, what's my problem??

You'll be finding me on Twitter soon, but for now you can find Twitter at Twitter.com.

Despite my slowness to adopt a new technology like Twitter, Meyer & Wallis exists on the cutting edge of technology. Our broadcast production, media buying, and account supervision workflows all make use of great digital tools that help us communicate with our clients better and create ads for them in a more cost-efficient manner. Wanna know more? Contact us today.

Our new President has just done a remarkable thing.

Before he suspended hearings at Guantanamo (that came on Wednesday), before he got his Secretary of State sworn in (also Wednesday), before he froze the salaries of his senior staff and enacted new lobbying rules (Wednesday), President Obama rolled out a completely revamped whitehouse.gov at noon on Tuesday, the moment he took his oath of office.

Don't go there yet.

Reflect with me for a moment.

Now, I actually visited whitehouse.gov about a week ago. I was curious if Obama had somehow made his mark on it yet, but it still read and navigated like your local municipal library's website. From 2001. It was moderately attractive, but there was lots of legacy content that seemed to have been carried over and over and over. It was a patchwork quilt of a website, some content seeming relevant and interesting, but other content seemingly outdated or shoehorned into an awkward place. What's more, that was probably the second time I'd been to the site during Bush's entire presidency. It looked something like this:



Okay. Now visit the new whitehouse.gov. Then come back so we can discuss.

"What's this?" you say. "A modern website? In my government?" It's attractive. Clean. Organized. Navigable. Dare I say "cool." Chock-full of up-to-date content.

Clearly, since winning the election President Obama's team has been hard at work preparing this site for a January 20th launch. Before he started flexing his executive powers in any way, he wanted the site in place so the American people would have a place to follow his actions.

If you look for it, you can still find the obligatory but appropriate info on past presidents, White House trivia, etc. That stuff's like the "About Us" page on your website. People will come once to read it. Once. If you want them to come back, you need to give them something new every time they come.

So far, the President's blog — which has been up for two days — has FIVE entries. His first weekly video address will come this Saturday.

I predict that the new whitehouse.gov will see traffic the likes of which it's never seen. Sure, it's a really good looking site now, but it's the fresh, timely, relevant content that will keep people coming back again and again. There are other great interactive features of the site I didn't even mention here. Go explore. You'll probably find a feature you'll want to check again in the future.

So how's your website doing? Are you giving those who would love to know more about your company and the services or products it offers fresh information all the time (and working with an ad agency that's downright passionate about doing the same)? Or are you just hoping people will return again and again to reread your eloquently worded Mission Statement?

There are lots of ways to run a blog, especially when it's a corporate one.

If you allow commentary by outsiders, a blog can challenge the control companies have historically had on the environments and experiences they create. If you're an old-school kind of company, this can seem very threatening and entirely unwelcome. But, companies that fancy themselves forward-thinking and accountable to their customers are increasingly foraying into the blogosphere. Hence, several big companies have tried to maintain a corporate blog (e.g., Dell, a couple years ago) while most don't (e.g., Dell, now). You need to start with a solid philosophy of blogging in order to pull it off.

Our blog here at Meyer & Wallis, in its present form, is relatively young. A post  goes un-commented on pretty often. I like to attribute this to the newness of the blog. This is not how we'd like it to be. Sure, blogging helps Meyer & Wallis increase visability on the web, but we believe that interactive technology at its best is just that: interactive. And since we're trying to be the best internet ad agency around, we're intent on practicing what we preach.

So, here's our corporate blogging philosophy. Blogging can be a tremendous tool for a company. Even before any human interaction, blogging can help increase your company's online presence. It helps get your company's website higher up in search results. From a business perspective alone, that makes sense. But beyond that, the internet has introduced the potential for unprecidented interaction with your consumers and clients. Think of all the time and energy that's been spent over the years in research, surveys, interviews, and questionnaires so that companies could get a glimpse of what others thought about them. Today, all that information is being tossed about daily in online conversations. If a company doesn't just want to eavesdrop, but would rather participate, a corporate blog is a great way to forge a new connection with your customers.

This is where we're coming from at Meyer & Wallis. To a follower of this blog who expressed concern that a post he made never showed up on the blog, we're sorry, and we're just as confused as you are. So far, we haven't had any reason or inclination to censor our blog, and every comment on our posts that we've received has made it to the blog. We truly want our blog to be a place for conversations to take place: conversations between M&W and our clients and other consumers, and conversations among this blog's community. We don't believe you'll close your Facebook account because of what you find here, but we do want to have a reason for existing.

So, please, comment on our posts if you have something to say. It's your input that will make this blog great. Meyer & Wallis has built its 40-year track record of stability and success on our flexibility and adaptability. Being a full service ad agency doesn't mean the same thing it did in 1967, and we want to use this blog to not only keep you up to date on the ways we're changing to stay current with the needs of modern marketers, but to hear from you in the process.

Now, someone please comment on this post!

I just happened upon an article that is not only written by a company whose logo bears a striking resemblance to a slice of our own, but contains some well articulated truths about one of the ways marketing is being affected by the digital cultural shift we find ourselves in.

In the recent past, as the article suggests, it was the norm for marketers to tell consumers stories about themselves. When life was about keeping up with the Jones's, telling us that the Jones's want what they sold and we should, too, was basically enough. But, as the article asserts, we are increasingly less concerned with what the masses have and more concerned with niche products and services that fit our unique wants. This shift is powerfully supported by our present ability to get information about niche interests and needs like never before, via the Internet. Within the vast community of the World Wide Web, we find others using the same products or services we're interested in, so we can find out about them and research them in unprecedented ways. But as we've turned to virtual communities for information about these niche interests, we've come to trust them immensely, often more than the marketers themselves. I'm pretty sure I've blogged here before about the rising percentage of consumers who consistently research significant purchases online instead of in person — like reading several user reviews of a Toyota Camry before ever considering an actual test drive. Thus, when we hear advertising messages from marketers, our instinct is increasingly to go corroborate what we've heard with stories from consumers like us. The article puts it pretty well:

As more brands (have to) go niche and therefore tell stories that aren't known to the masses, and as experiences and non-consumption-related expenditures take over from physical (and more visible) status symbols, consumers will increasingly have to tell each other stories to achieve a status dividend from their purchases. Expect a shift from brands telling a story, to brands helping consumers tell status-yielding stories to other consumers.

What a fascinating thing to say: "Expect a shift... to brands helping consumers tell status-yielding stories to other consumers." But I'd argue the shift isn't just in who's delivering the message, but it's also in the content of the message itself. As consumers, we're moving from a sales-pitch mentality to a narrative mentality. So if you're an awesome Milwaukee ad agency like Meyer & Wallis, you see double opportunity here. I'll explain.

First, we excel at telling stories. That's what much of the best advertising has always done — given the consumer a narrative picture of what their world would be like with you in it. I'd argue that, given our vast experience and exemplary creative department, we get this better than virtually any full service advertising agency our size.

But second, our understanding of interactive media and online advertising strategies are second to none. Our VP of Interactive is one of the most forward thinkers when it comes to utilizing digital media, and I'm not just talking about websites. Several of our recent campaigns demonstrate there are plenty of ways to use digital media to get your message out, including, in more than one instance, giving consumers a chance to tell their stories on behalf of clients.

And when these two competencies are married into one integrated campaign, our results are consistently remarkable and measurable.

So check out the article linked above. The trend they're talking about is very real. If you have the slightest suspicion that your ad agency doesn't get how to use digital media for all it's worth, maybe you should give us a call.

A while back, I wrote about Campbell's introduction of a huge line of healthier soups that it introduced to compete head-to-head with competitor Progresso. For a company whose oldest products are notoriously high in sodium, this was a daring move that would require nimble and precise marketing messages.

Well, Campbell's efforts have proven highly effective, and Marketing Daily just named them their food marketer of the year. You can read the whole article here, but I just wanted to point out a couple interesting facts for the sake of this blog.

First, Campbell's introduced several new products last fall. They accompanied this introduction with an intensive multimedia campaign. Both these efforts surely required a large amount of capital, amids an economy that was already showing signs of instability at the time of their launch. But get this: when the mortgage/credit crisis struck its first big blow on September 29th last year, Campells was the only company in the S&P 500 to show gains on the stock market that day. But they didn't stop there. As the ecomony continued to reel, Campbell's quickly adapted their marketing messages to tout the frugality of a meal made with Campbell's soup. At the end of the year, company-wide sales were up 8% to $8 billion and net earnings were up an astounding 36% to $1.17 billion. In their first fiscal quarter of 2009, condensed soup sales alone are up 14%. Campbell's is in a comfortable position to release more new flavors this year and continue their marketing push.

What can careful advertising in a down economy do for your company?

That.

Hats off to BBDO New York for a great campaign that included use of cross promotion with Kraft and interactive text messaging. If you're in the Midwest and you find your company struggling in this economy, some skillful marketing by one of the area's most experienced retail advertising agencies might be just the trick. We can't say this enough -- marketing in a down economy works! And Meyer&Wallis knows how to do it.

There's one thing John McCain and Barack Obama agreed on during their presidential campaigns: Health Care Reform. Partisan politics aside, they both agreed that the US healthcare industry was losing money and losing ground by being slow to adopt digital technology.

Multiple companies, including Microsoft, have developed products intended to take medical files online so that they may be securely accessed from anywhere immediately. The benefits — and risks — of such technology are obvious.

But that's internal stuff. What about marketing? What about networking patients who have been served by your hospital?

James Heywood is the cofounder and chairman of PatientsLikeMe.com. Think of it as a Facebook for patients who form social networks around common diagnoses and illnesses instead of interests. Here, people share insights about medication side effects, new treatments, and, yes, the quality of the various treatment facilities they've been too. Heywood thinks, even with the tight security around healthcare and medical records in this country, people are nevertheless gravitating towards online communities where they can openly share with people with similar interests or experiences.

Another new product, called HealthVault, enables people to store their medical records online, where they can be securely accessed by doctors and hospitals, and even synched with meidcal devices like heart-rate monitors and weight scales. The movement to get our healthcare system into the digital age is clearly underway, and it's mostly coming from outside the healthcare world.

There's an enormous potential here for hospitals and other healthcare facilities. Most healthcare marketing tends to stick to mainstream media, but comsumers clearly want interactive options as well.

Imagine creating for your healthcare facility an intranet where inpatients can talk to each other about their doctors, nurses, experiences, even post status updates for loved ones to follow who are too far away to visit. Or imagine a place on your hospital's website where area residents can upload their medical information to your hospital's system in case they're ever rushed there in an emergency and want their medical history to go before them.

This is the kind of digital world we're entering. Consumers, clients, and now patients want communities that connect them with eachother and with information, and if hospitals, clinics and private practices don't work with their marketing teams to come up with these solutions on their own, someone else will do it for them.

Incidentally, Meyer&Wallis is chalk-full of progressive healthcare marketing ideas. Perhaps we should talk?

This probably goes without saying, but a lot has changed in the advertising world in the last decade or so, and most of these changes have been brought about by technology.

When I was a kid, I used to come into this office (my dad has worked here for a while) to play with the art markers. At that young age, seeing a sea of dozens of different, vibrant colors in each of the art director's offices was almost mind numbing. I'd find a free desk and challenge myself to use as many colors as I could in one drawing.

I can also remember hearing the gentle whir and not-so-gentle clackity-clack of IBM Selectric typewriters. But they were mostly for the accountants and secretaries; the writers scribbled out their ideas longhand.

Today at Meyer&Wallis, we still have a set of art markers. I've seen them used twice in my tenure here. And our last Selectric died about two years ago. It sits in the copy room with a note taped to it that half-seriously suggests we should have it gilded or stuffed, lest we forget where we've come from.

Like virtually every other industry, advertising has been transformed by technology. Tasks formerly done by hand are now more quickly and elegantly tackled with a computer. Where we used to send out a physical monthly newsletter, we now have our website, and this blog. And some assignments — like banner ads or web pages — can only be done with the aid of a computer.

But there's something about Meyer & Wallis' long history that sets us apart from newer shops. Read any book on advertising (such as Luke Sullivan's excellent Hey Whipple, Squeeze This), and you'll see that while there's an art to writing creative ads that can be learned at school (or in a book), there's a science to writing creative ads that work that only comes with experience. And when it comes to experience, Meyer & Wallis has more than we know what to do with. Literally. Every time we've moved offices, we've had to throw out part of our archive of past work. Because after more than 40 years of doing this, we just don't have room to keep copies of all the great work we've done. Having been around for more than 40 years (and having several current employees who've been with us for decades — a couple at least 35 years) gives us a foundation of experience no digital startup can touch.

And while so much has changed, a lot has stayed the same. Namely, people are still people, and the things that grab our attention, make us think and challenge us to try something different are all the same. This is where Meyer & Wallis shines. Now only have we developed proprietary research methods for pinpointing what consumers currently think/need to think about your brand, but even our "gut instincts" have gotten uncannily accurate after a few decades.

So it's been a long time since we've used those art markers for any production work. It's also been a long time since we've engineered a campaign for a client that wasn't a complete success. That's what experience can do for an agency that even the freshest, fanciest digital technology can't. That's not to say we don't do digital. Our recent interactive campaign for a display of Roman art from the Lourve at the Indianapolis Museum of Art helped draw the largest crowds in their 125-year history.

That's the standard of excellence we set for ourselves, no matter the media, no matter the client.

Incedentally, Meyer & Wallis is now kind of a best-of-both-worlds kind of place. With our vast experience with traditional media, even our media buying strategy is light years ahead of anyone else (probably because we have relationships with all the local television and radio stations that date back to, well, when they became stations). We can get more bang for your media buck than anyone else. Period. And our UK style account planning puts proprietary market research and insight behind your brand strategy in a way your current Account Executive might not even understand. But we also happen to have one of the most progressive, strategically grounded interactive departments around. There are things we're implementing digitally in the coming months that we think we might be the first to do, so I can't even tell you about them. Yet.

It's not a perfect marriage of old and new here, though. Creative Director Tom Dixon still prefers to scribble his ideas on a pad of paper. And his iMac? Usually playing a steady stream of Johnny Cash in the background.

It may not be a perfect marriage, but at least it's a civil union.

Meyer&Wallis is a Milwaukee ad agency. It's also an Indianapolis ad agency. Since 1990, we've operated two offices, allowing us to serve clients from a wider area.

But with one office in Milwaukee and another in Indianapolis, how do you suppose Meyer & Wallis continues to move forward as one company, sharing talents, ideas and responsibilities?

Technology, you might say. And it's true. I have a video conference at least once a week with one of my coworkers in Indianapolis. He and I can easily work on the same project because we have access to the same file servers in each office via a dedicated, high-speed connection. We also have an agency wide conference call every Monday morning to talk about open jobs, work coming down the pipeline, and the latest Colts-Packers match-up. Well, that was just this Monday. But did you see that game?!?

So while we're separated geographically by 275 miles of Midwest earth, we're able to work quite closely as one team dedicated to your brand.

But this doesn't set us apart from anyone. Any agency with multiple offices that can't videoconference and share files between them these days probably has bigger things to worry about (like whether there's a fresh ribbon in the secretary's typewriter or if the president's dictaphone has recently been oiled).

No, what I think sets Meyer & Wallis apart is that, even with all this technology at our disposal, there's usually at least one of us — if not three or four — driving between Milwaukee and Indianapolis each week. Why? To make a delivery? No. FedEx does that. Super-important meetings? Not really — we have important meetings all the time over the phone. I think we just really like connecting with each other. Advertising is about making connections: between your company's goals and your brand's development, between your brand and consumers, and, most recently, amongst consumers via interactive media, where many of them connect about your brand via social networking and blogging. Connecting is what makes an ad a compelling message, and our passion for helping you connect with your customers is matched only by our collaborative desire to connect with each other.

Know that with Meyer & Wallis as your advertising agency, you have at your disposal a group of people who love making connections. If we'll regularly drive 275 miles just to stay in sync with each other, imagine the lengths we'll go to for your brand. (Or call and ask. We'd gladly share some success stories.)

If I didn't see that coworker from Indy that I work closely with in person at least once every other week, it wouldn't be normal. And if I don't, I can only assume the perpetual construction in Chicago must be especially bad, or the Colts got spanked by the Packers again. Did you see that game?!?

Starting next month, Samsung is going to begin shipping its mobile phones with an application called ScanLife preinstalled. This is a product made by a company called Scanbuy, and allows a user with a simple digital camera — like those in mobile phones — to read a special barcode. Similar technologies have been explored in Japan and other parts of Asia for about a year. I think even Google has been trying to push its own version of something like this. Now, it looks like the tech is finally getting large-scale support stateside.

There was a curious article in the New York Times this week. The journalist was writing out of honest confusion. He had heard that AOL was adding some new features to its home page, and wanted to ask his readers if any of them cared. Even a little bit.

See, this world we call “interactive media” is a funny place where empires rise and fall with the predictability of the seasons. There was a time when America Online was called the “goliath among Internet service providers.” Admitting you weren’t on AOL was like admitting you didn’t have indoor plumbing. AOL’s base of almost 30 million dial-up users made their service synonymous with “the Internet” for the better part of the 1990s.

But even though AOL was a kind of perfect solution to the WEB 1.0 world, it fell flat on its face as newer alternatives were brought to market. All of a sudden, internet users didn’t want online hand holding. They wanted freedom, options, media, and speed. Oh, how they wanted speed. Now, in this world of broadband access and wireless hotspots, the AOL many of us depended on for internet access is basically obsolete. Obsolete?!? How did this happen?

What AOL was among the last to appreciate is that, unlike print or broadcast, interactive media has yet to develop any sense of heritage. Small innovations aside, a book is still a book and a 30-minute sitcom is still a 30-minute sitcom. But we love interactive media for what it can do today that it couldn’t do yesterday, and we have little patience for it when it doesn’t evolve fast enough.

Anyway, the author of the article in question did get a handful of replies from people who still use AOL. Predictably, they were mostly baby boomers who only use the internet to check their email and use their cell phones “for phone calls and nothing more.” Like AOL, this kind of internet user probably won’t exist in a generation. And, for that matter, neither will the internet as we know and love it today.

With all that said, I should probably mention that Meyer & Wallis’ interactive team spends a lot of time each day playing with and discussing the emerging interactive technologies you won’t even know about until next year. Our commitment to our clients is to understand this stuff better than anyone, and to understand it in the greater context of a comprehensive creative marketing strategy across all possible media. You owe it to your customers to stay current on the means available to you to interact with consumers. Like never before, they expect this of you, and see it as a measure of your company’s relevance to them. If you last looked at your company's website before FaceBook and YouTube existed (only a couple years ago), chances are it's collecting some virtual dust. Don’t believe me? Don't know what FaceBook is? Hey – you aren’t reading this on AOL, are you?

Read the NY Times article here.

    The podcast turns 4 this month, and over the last few years, we’ve seen a sharp increase in the number of people who download Podcasts. Podcasting is a relatively new technology in the world of digital media, allowing anyone from individuals in their mother’s basement to big movie studios to post an audio or video file to the internet in such a way that it is automatically downloaded by those who “subscribe” to that podcast. Now perhaps that lengthly explanation wasn't necessary, but, like I said, this is relatively new technology. Only four years ago this month, the word “podcast” had yet to be uttered. Today, about 19% of internet users have downloaded a podcast to enjoy it later, and they have literally thousands to choose from. While 19% may not seem very impressive, it's likely to keep going up and up as the medium gains momentum. What does this mean for your business?

    Whether you're a hospital looking to rise above the sea of healthcare marketing going on around you, or a retailer wondering how to make use of interactive media in your retail marketing, or the guardian of an aging brand wondering how to reach out to a younger generation with your brand strategy, podcasting might be for you.

    It just so happens I'm listening to a podcast right now. There's a show on NPR I'm never around a radio to hear live, but that I can download as a podcast. Not only has this allowed me to enjoy this programming I'd otherwise miss, but it has led me to audition some other NPR programming as well, exposing me to their sponsoring companies, even to consider making a donation!

    Think of the other great ways to engage potential customers with this medium. You could feature company news or new products in a weekly or monthly podcast. Talk about exciting new hires or technologies at your hospital. Does your product really shine when it's in use? Produce a video podcast showing your ingredient being cooked with, your product being tested for durability, your product being used in innovative ways, or how it compares to the competition. A podcast is also a great way to create a "culture" around your brand. For example, you might be a beverage manufacturer, which has nothing to do with music, but you know your customer base tends to like a certain kind of music. Produce a weekly podcast featuring up-and-coming artists you think your customers should know about. They'd soon come to see your brand as "in touch" with who they are, helping you stay top-of-mind for sure.

    These are just a few ideas off the top of my head. But at Meyer & Wallis, that's NEVER how we actually do advertising. Our creative marketing strategies are grounded in what we believe to be the best research and planning in the industry. And with new media like podcasting, it's still possible to do something no marketer has done before. Imagine what a "first" like that could do for a brand. We do. All the time.