If you're a parent, there's a good chance you've found yourself in this dilemma: Your little one is begging from the back seat for the latest Bratz doll, but you really need to pick up some penne pasta and marinara sauce for dinner. You only have time for one stop.

Oh, what is a parent to do?

Well, Toys "R" Us thinks they've got a solution for you.

In a move to make shopping more convenient, they are unveiling "R" Market in about half of their US retail locations. Within the "R" Market, you can find cereal, canned goods, beverages, paper towels — anything you might need to pick up in a pinch that could otherwise keep you from visiting Toys "R" Us.

Interesting, hmm? While Toys "R" Us isn't the first retail store to expand their selection past their core products (virtually all Target and Walmart stores now offer a vast selection of foods), it is perhaps one of the most... interesting pairings.

There's no clear segue here, so I'll just put it like this: If you own a regional chain of automotive tire and lube service locations, and you're thinking of adding some integrated bowling alleys and family dental practices, Meyer & Wallis would love to help. At least let us buy your media.

Oh, Convenience, you're an alluring muse. What will you make us think of next?

Design by Committee:

Stories are flooding the internet of consumers who look right past this container in their search for their beloved Tropicana Orange Juice, consistently mistaking it for a generic store brand. Why? Because it looks like a generic store brand. I'm sure the Arnell Group (the group also responsible for Pepsi's new logo) has plenty of research to suggest that this packaging had broad appeal in focus groups. Vanilla has broad appeal, too. Because it's vanilla.

Whose idea was this? One guy? An entire design team? What do you think they had in mind — current Tropicana consumers and the product they'd come to know and love, or expressing their own ideas about branding via their clients? (Remember the new Pepsi logo?)















Design by Strategy:


This is one of several packaging designs we did for one of our clients, Palermo's pizza. They're a family owned business based right here in Milwaukee, and they make some of the finest frozen pizza money can buy. (And I'm not just saying that. It's good.)

Their pizza is good because it's based on generations-old family recipes from Italy.
What other regional frozen pizza company can make that claim? Probably not a one. So we wanted their packaging to reflect their unique offer — frozen pizza that tastes like authentic pizzeria pizza because it actually is. So the packaging is imbued with subtle, rustic Italian imagery. Nothing groundbreaking, really. Just stubbornly on target. We wanted the package to really suggest the taste of the product and the ethos of the company that makes it.

And what happened in both of these examples? Well, sales of Palermo's Frozen Pizza have pretty much been steadily up since. More than any other regional frozen pizza maker. They've launched in new markets and introduced new pizzas. (There's even reason to suspect other manufacturers have tried to copy their packaging layout and color scheme.) As for Tropicana, they've pulled the new packaging in favor of the old, familiar carton we'd all recognize. That was an expensive experiment!

Here at Meyer & Wallis, we don't just do retail advertising (although you should hear the radio spots we've done for Palermo's). We're also a graphic design company. We're media buyers. And we're good at all this stuff. We won't run an experiment on your brand. Instead, we'll leverage our 40+ years of experience to achieve exactly what you need us to. That's how we roll.

Is your business ready for the emerging generation of mobile phones and the generation of consumers that use them? Most new smart phones are GPS equipped, and enabled to use a host of new things never before possible. They are "location aware." Like a regional affiliate of a national network, they can mix in some local marketing with the national messages, wherever "local" happens to be. They can also make it much easier to find information about your business when near you. That is, if your digital ducks are in a row.

John Jantsch has this advice on his "Ductape Marketing" blog:

1) Make certain that your business profile is correct and complete in Google Maps, Yahoo!Local and LocalLive. (Claim your listing in Google or risk having it hijacked) - many devices will use this map data to help people locate and view satellite photos of your place of business.

2) Start exploring ways to make your websites, blogs and email marketing efforts mobile friendly. I use a service called MoFuse to create a mobile friendly version of my blog. (This topic warrants and entire post and I’m working on it.)

More and more consumers are bypassing traditional media, researching restaurants, mechanics, and retailers online. On their phone. Or, they're simply checking their GPS-enabled phone for the one that happens to be closest by.

Once you complete the profiles talked about above, your customers do the rest. Each of those sites provides a place for users to rate you. So if Johnny an Suzie are driving down the road and search for a local burger joint on Johnny's iPhone, when yours comes up, it'll come up with reviews from actual customers. Assuming they had a good experience, that's some of the best free marketing you can get! So don't miss out on this easy opportunity to get your name in front of potential customers.

Right now at Meyer & Wallis, we're working on a couple very exciting projects utilizing this very technology. If GPS-enabled phones know where you are, they can be programmed to do way more than give you driving directions. And if you have the desire to truly stand out among your competition, the world of mobile marketing is still very much a frontier where innovation will get you noticed. But it won't stay that way for long.

(We'd love to help.)