The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico is reviving a campaign that first launched in 1954. They are using the same agency, the same basic layout, even the same photographer.

The original Ogilvy & Mather print ads caused a buzz because they featured a beautiful, artsy photo accompanies by copious amounts of text. (One of the original ads ran almost 1,000 words!)

But the new campaign is not intended to work on nostalgia. As it was 50 years ago, Puerto Rico is a diverse land with many attractions, and a verbose, visually rich campaign seemed to fit the bill. A new media-rich website mirrors the ads' appearance.

The campaign has just launched in New York. Not sure when it'll make its way to Milwaukee or Indianapolis.


Top: one of the original ads. Bottom: one of the new ones.

If this kind of thing is going to become a trend, boy, are we in luck. With over 40 years' experience, Meyer & Wallis literally has hundreds of great campaigns we could resurrect! Now we've just got to convince all our clients that that fits their retail marketing strategy.

Just kidding. The campaign for Puerto Rico looks pretty nice, though.

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.

Ok. I am NOT easily offended. Or at least I don' think I am. Anyway, this recent Microsoft ad has been pulled in response to an inundation of complaints. And I have to say, with it's repeated depiction of vomiting and not-subtle-at-all suggestions of pornographic fetishes, I think it's safe to say that this spot crosses the line from provocative to poor taste.

Don't believe me?




So what's Microsoft's strategy, anyway? Do they have one consistent message they're trying to get across? What's the message of this spot in particular? "Use our browser to keep secrets from your spouse"? Incidentally, there are a handful of other browsers that already have this "private browsing" feature, so Microsoft isn't even making a unique claim here. Honestly, what were they thinking??

My best guess is that Microsoft sees Apple — its main competition — as elitist and expensive, and thinks that if they market to the less sophisticated Joe Normals of the world, they're getting to some customers that Apple hasn't gotten to yet. But you have to wonder if Microsoft considered all the people they might offend with this spot. What about them? Won't their negative impression of Microsoft somehow hurt the company?

Why do I feel like I'm thinking about this harder than Microsoft did?

A funny/clever/witty/edgy ad gets people's attention. But the point of good advertising is not just to engage consumers, but to engage them and then deliver a message. The idea for the set-up in this Microsoft spot took precedent over carefully considering what they had to say. The only point they sell about their browser is a weak one, so the payoff of the spot is weak. And instead of remembering it at the end of the spot, most people, it seems, just remember being offended.

Offensiveness. Nah... that's not a sound retail marketing strategy.

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.

Now that our nation's Independence Day is out of the way, your thoughts have probably turned to upcoming events throughout the rest of the year. Like the rest of summer, for example. If you're real Type-A, maybe you're already planning your Labor Day celebration. Maybe.

Then again, Sears and Kmart would like you to know that now's the perfect time to get ready for Christmas.

That's right.

Yesterday, 372 Sears stores put out a limited selection of Christmas gear. Also, Sears.com and Kmart.com launched dedicated Christmas areas on their websites.

No need to check your calendar — Christmas still falls on the 25th of December this year. It's just that sales are slow right now, and retailers all over are losing money. Sears and Kmart know that holiday shopping is a relative sure thing, so they've decided to start letting people make holiday purchases now. They've also reintroduced the layaway program: start slowly paying for your Christmas stuff today, and take it home by December. Sears and Kmart supplement their summer sales, and you get that herd of festive sheep you've always wanted. Everybody wins!

Considering the flack retailers (and radio stations) seem to get each year with the competition to be the "first" to market with Christmas stuff, this is a bold move, indeed. I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures, but is this really the best way to increase revenue in a down economy? Aren't Sears and Kmart essentially stealing from their future revenues? It seems to me that the soundest retail marketing strategy would be to make the most of every retail season, not borrowing from future ones. That's robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Maybe what they really need is to call one of the most experienced retail advertising agencies around. And clearly, I'm not talking about Young and Rubicam.

Read more about this story here.

A few weeks ago, I wrote on this blog about the growing number of "older" users on Facebook. All of a sudden, the fastest growing demographic on the site that used to be exclusively for college students had become adults in their 40s and above. Facebook has clearly been tweaking their feature set and user interface to be — how do I say this? — more approachable to the computer skill level of, say, my mother. Facebook probably thought this was great news; they've been trying to figure out how to make more money through advertising, and adding a new demographic certainly can't hurt.

Right?

Well, looky here:



Look at the growth broken down by "Current Enrollment," at the bottom of the chart. Turns out, kids of all ages dislike having their parents and grandparents commenting on photos of an evening spent bar hopping, or reading their "wall," or, God forbid, friending their friends. In it's effort to be all inclusive, Facebook might have alienated the demographic on which it built its business. And if the kids leave, will the parents stick around?

We've often worked with retail clients who are convinced the only way to grow their business is to please everybody they can possibly reach. But that's just not possible. If you try to be everything to everybody, you're going to wind up spread too thin and you risk losing any kind of discernable identity. Our favorite retail marketing strategy is to identify a client's key strengths, and directly target the consumers who'd be most interested in those strengths. Why direct your retail advertising toward consumers who, based on their needs and preferences, really wouldn't chose your store over the one they already prefer?

In their bid to appeal to everyone, Facebook may see a new startup do to them what they did to MySpace not long ago. Sometimes, it's best not to please everybody, as long as you can be okay with that.

Chart found via Read Write Web.

There's been a fresh wave of line extensions amid this recession (Kentucky GRILLED chicken, anyone?), but that still doesn't mean it's a good idea. While reason would seem to dictate that if your category's business is shrinking, you should expand your wares, sound retail marketing insight dictates otherwise, as this excellent article over at Ries' Pieces articulates. Check it out.

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.

When it comes time for us to dream up a retail marketing strategy for your brand, our precise and painstaking brainstorming techniques have not been made well-known. And that's intentional. Sure, everyone knows we like to "think inside the circle." But what does that mean???

Well, the secret's out.

When it comes to retail advertising, sometimes reaction time can make all the difference.

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.

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.

Just saw this on another blog, and it turned me all reflective on the work we do here at Meyer&Wallis.

So often, when trying to differentiate yourself in the marketplace, the impulse is to talk about your brand, your method, your product. After all, you truly believe it's superior!

But consumers don't want to hear how much you know about what you're selling them; they want to hear how well you know them. Which is a great argument for the existence of ad agencies in the first place. It's your job to know your product, and it's our job to know your customer. We're the ones who take all the effort and passion you've put into your product(s) and try to communicate that to the heart of your customers. There are plenty of ad agencies who can make compelling claims about your product. There are far fewer who can confidently, accurately talk directly to your potential customer. This is what we've been specializing in for 40 years.

Retail marketing is all about insight about the consumer. With proprietary research methods that have been perfected over decades, we're confident at Meyer & Wallis that we have the edge when it comes to knowing who you're talking to as an advertiser.

One of my recent posts was about our work on behalf of Meijer. They were facing a huge full-on attack by Wal*Mart in most of their markets, and bracing for tremendous losses. We told them that we had some ideas, but first, we needed to talk to some of the consumers who chose to shop and chose not to shop their stores. After several quick focus groups, our strategy changed in light of what we found. Based on the numbers, the only way Meijer could survive was if they spoke directly to those who had already rejected them. And how do you talk to a consumer who has already decided she doesn't like you? You talk about her. And it worked.

Or work for Meijer was a huge success. They have expanded their business and continue to thrive, even though they were once bracing themselves for extinction.

This is why we consider Meyer & Wallis to be a turnaround specialist. When time is of the essence and options seem slim, there's no one with a more proven ability to identify your key strengths, communicate them to consumers in a way that feels focused on them, and generate immediate, mesurable results.

According to Crain's Chicago Business, Wal*Mart is poised to take advantage of the current economy and to muscle out even more of its competition in the Chicago market. Over the past year, Wal*Mart has almost doubled it's share of Chicago's $12 billion market, to the detriment of local competitors Dominick's and Jewel-Osco. With stronger capital and distribution chains at its disposal, Walmart is up to the challenge.

What's worse, in previous years, both Dominick's and Jewel-Osco have lost market share to upscale retailers like Whole Foods. Now, with the economy taking a turn in the other direction, they will be feeling competition from the bottom as well as the top.

What are Dominick's and Jewel-Osco to do? Well, Meyer&Wallis happens to be a retail marketing specialist. And in the not-too-distant past, we actually took on Wal*Mart in a similar situation, and won. What? When? How??

A few years ago, we had the Meijer superstores as a client. After years of impressive growth and rising market share, Meijer caught the attention of Wal*Mart, who then opened stores directly adjacent to many Meijer locations, many in the suburban Chicago area. Meijer expected to lose considerable market share to the more established Wal*Mart. In fact, they felt their very existence was in jeopardy.

Meijer’s first instinct was to lower prices, but under the agency’s counsel, knew this was not a sustainable long-term solution. The agency felt the only way to survive would be to attract customers who had rejected Meijer as a shopping destination. Out of our own coffers, we commissioned research to find out who had rejected Meijer and why.

Armed with research findings, we created television, radio and print ads that spoke to and empathized with female rejectors. We appealed to the belief that they were the “CEOs of their households” and offered them a shopping experience that would save them both money and time – two of their greatest concerns.

Due to Wal*Mart’s significant presence, Meijer did indeed lose 9 share points to Wal*Mart. However, we gained 11 share points by winning over previous rejectors.  Bottom line...Meijer actually gained 2 share points despite Wal*Mart opening stores in 40 of Meijer’s measured markets, and they continue to thrive today.

Incidentally, we've also had Dominick's and Jewel-Osco as clients, helping them survive similar challenges within the supermarket world.

When it comes to retail marketing, especially supermarket marketing, no one has more experience, or has engineered more successes on behalf of their clients, than Meyer & Wallis. That's just the truth.

Is your business in the shadow of the Wal*Mart of your industry? We might have a few ideas for you...

Earlier this month, McDonald's began heavily promoting their new selection of cappuccinos, lattes and mochas. This, after Starbucks' sales are down about 6% for the 4th quarter (after it posted its first quarterly loss in the 3rd) and it has closed 600 stores and laid off 1000 employees in the last year. What has happened to not only make Starbucks fall from it's once insurmountable position as the premier coffee purveyor in America, but to also make McDonald's — home of the Big Mac — a viable alternative for premium coffee?

I think it comes back to something I talked about a week or so ago: line extension. If you expand your brand so much that it no longer represents what once made you unique, you're in trouble, mister.

There was a time when, if you walked into a Starbucks and didn't like coffee, you left thirsty. They were proudly snobbish about their love for coffee, and had no intention of pretending otherwise. Employees were required to taste every variety of coffee in the store so they were ready to describe any of them to a customer. They even had to be able to identify any one of their two dozen roasts by taste alone. Hardcore! (Full disclosure: I actually used to work at Starbucks back in the late 90s. Hence, the "insider info.")

But, as time went on, Starbucks realized there were people coming into their stores with their coffee-loving friends and leaving with just a pastry, or just a Tiazzi (once the only non-coffee beverage on the menu). What harm could it do to provide some coffee alternatives for them?

And so began the downfall of Starbucks. What began as a justifiable expansion into teas and fruity beverages has snowballed to include chocolates, music, small appliances, plush toys, Christmas ornaments, sandwiches and clothing — most of it conspicuously overpriced. With a product lineup like this, how could they honestly keep positioning themselves as the leading authority on coffee? Are they awesome at everything? Plus, if we can fairly assume their $12/pound coffee enjoys a similar markup to their $5/bar chocolate or $10/box biscotti, then they might just be selling the same coffee as everyone else (a skeptical, cost-conscious consumer might suspect).

Not only this, but the decision to expand their offerings has changed the culture of Starbucks. Used to be, if you went to a Starbucks, you expected a coffeeshop. Intelligent-looking people talking politics over mugs of coffee, with a copy of the Wall Street Journal sitting on the table between them. Obscure jazz and indie music playing on the speakers — and you felt really cool if you recognized a song that came on. You got anxious about asking for your order "right." After all, Starbucks knew coffee best, so you'd better order it correctly according to their system, right? Now, Starbucks no longer feels like a coffee shop. They're something on the menu for everyone. You're likely to hear the same song in the store that was just playing in your car as you drove there. They no longer brew three different coffees a day. They no longer brag about how often they throw out their coffee and keep brewing fresh stuff. They don't have to. No one cares. People aren't there for premium, fresh-roasted coffee. They want Frappuccinos.

And so, enter McDonald's. If a hodge-podge Everyman-pleasing joint like Starbucks can still sell a latte for $5 a cup, who can't?

In abandoning their position as being passionate about coffee above all else, in expanding their product line way beyond coffee, Starbucks changed consumers' expectations for what a coffee shop should feel like — even though they were the ones who originally defined it. They stopped selling us a unique experience and started selling us products. And they day they gave up on their unique experience, they gave up their position on the top of the coffee world.

I'm willing to bet that you visit Starbucks less than you used to. It's a statistical probability. So where are you getting your coffee instead? Has Starbucks convinced you that you can probably find the same quality at your local supermarket, or have you sought out a more authentic feeling coffee house experience? Either way, blame it on Starbucks.

Now, could Starbucks turn it around? Could they rally and reclaim their former position as the best premium coffee retailer? Perhaps, but they'd need a really good retail marketing team. Someone who can develop their brand while staying true to a very specific brand strategy. Say — that's what we do! In fact, we consider Meyer & Wallis to be somewhat of a turnaround specialist. We love helping struggling brands right a sinking ship. Do you feel like the Starbucks of your industry?

We can help.

This week, the USDA begins requiring retailers to include country of origin information on several products, including fresh and frozen produce, nuts, and fresh meats. We’ve seen cute little stickers on most of our fruits and vegetables for a while that tell us where they hail from. But within the next 6 months, expect to see similar declarations of origin on beef, pork, lamb, etc. I asked our CEO Bob Meyer, who on his own has over 40 years’ experience with retail advertising and retail marketing, for his thoughts on what this means for supermarkets.

“I think it will create a huge advantage for American breeders... probably an almost unfair advantage because the assumption is that the controls here over the raising of livestock are much tighter and more stringent than they are in foreign countries. And I don’t know if that’s true or not, but, that being the assumption, it will give the advantage for American growers. It will put an impetus on foreign growers — which is probably very positive.

You almost have to believe that the reason this got passed is that American breeders wanted it and lobbied for it because it does create kind of an unknown advantage for unknown reasons.

It will put the impetus on subjectively lesser origins. We don’t know that they’re lesser, we just think they are. The impetus on retailers of those products and those suppliers will be to promote their own cleanliness. I think it will create some opportunity, either for Americans to come out and say, “we have better meat here, “ or for foreigners to claim that they do something better.

It’s interesting. meat breeders have been trying to figure out a way to brand meat for a long time. Meat, historically, has been largely unbranded and if there’s any assumptions of quality that come to the meat it’s from the store, not the breeder, because meat is one of the things that the store prepares and presents, and upon which their reputation is built. Breeders, for at least 20 years, have been trying to figure out how to brand meat. Coleman has tried with beef— that’s where our president Chris Mortenson worked. Right here in Wisconsin, Provini has tried with veal. People have been trying to do it with limited success, because the stores don’t want to get caught having to stock three different brands of beef.

It seems to me that what will eventually come from this is an opportunity to brand the meat. I mean, if New Zealand lamb is really better, then now there’s much more of a reason to call attention to the fact that it’s a New Zealand product. But it also creates a huge downside risk. If there is any significant problem or health risk in the food supply of a foreign company, it will kill them in the marketplace here. All it will take is one person saying they got sick from a “New Zealand lamb product,” and it will hurt all New Zealand lamb sales. This will probably have a huge impact on quality control in foreign countries that import these affected goods into the US.”

    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.

    So, remember the iPhone? The gadget that few of us need but almost all of us want? Especially in the just-released 3G version, mobile “extras” like web browsing and email support are better integrated and more robust than on any other device.

    It is into this market that New York upstart Peek thinks they can throw a new winner. Their about-to-be-released mobile device has a nice, bright screen, full QWERTY keyboard, and is easy to set up with virtually any email carrier. And... that’s it. No web. No voicemail. No voice, in fact—it’s not a phone. It's just a wireless email reader.

    Now, I would have guessed that, back in the day, when the light bulb was introduced, natural gas and kerosene lamp suppliers immediately understood that their days were numbered and hoped to find some kind of niche market where their products could survive. But, in fact, the opposite happened. They refined their products and introduced new features, hoping to compete with the newer, superior technology. Of course, it didn’t work. And neither will the Peep.

    Objectively, the Peep is probably a solid little device, that does what it claims better than most consumer mobile phones with limited data capabilities. But the problem is so do BlackBerrys, smartphones and iPhones, only they do more. If there is any market left for a wireless device that only checks email, it can only get smaller. (Those of you who still have a pager may disagree.)

    At Meyer & Wallis, we believe many unsuccessful products are actually decent products that are poorly marketed. Peep needed a brand strategy that introduced them in a way that didn't compete with smartphones, since that's not what they are. A better brand strategy would have been to find a NEW market whose need they could meet. But, with their current retail marketing strategy, this may well be the first and last you hear of Peep.