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.

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.

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.

My wife is obsessed with Pinkisthenewblog.com. My brother, on the other hand, would rather visit PerezHilton.com. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, these are celebrity gossip websites. They're a big hit with consumers as well as advertisers. And, for the most part, they're a stable and established bunch.

But recently, a new player has emerged. Unlike the aforementioned blogs, this one is run not by an enterprising individual, but by MSN. But, despite its corporate backing, wonderwall.com's look and feel is decidedly cool.


As its name suggests, Wonderwall.com gives you with all the celebrity gossip you can stomach, presented in a mosaic of pictures that expand to reveal an abstract or the full story as you roll over and click then, respectively. The whole site scrolls horizontally, setting its functionality apart from virtually every other celebrity gossip site in a standard vertical blog.

While I have almost no interest whatsoever in celebrity gossip, I found myself poking around wonderwall.com much longer than I planned on. The layout allows you to see many more stories at once than in a vertically scrolling blog, and allows you to read little snippets about each story without clicking to commit to reading the whole thing.

Here at Meyer & Wallis, and especially on this blog, we regularly argue that content drives the internet. Content brings customers to your website. New content will bring them back.

But it also helps to have a slick interface.

Only a few months old, wonderwall.com now ranks 4th in traffic among celebrity gossip sites, and the length of time that visitors spend at wonderwall.com puts other gossip sites to shame.

So it seems that wonderwall.com's winning combination is great, regularly updated content, and a quick, appealing, informative interface. That's harder than you might think, and as an internet ad agency, it's fun to see it done well.

If you're struggling to find the right balance of style and substance to bring new and returning customers to your website, we can help. Click to the right to shoot us an email, or give us a call today.

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!