Last week, Marketing Vox published a post called "6 Reasons to Ditch that Social Media Strategic Plan." The reasons it gives are: 

1. We still don't know enough about social media and how people react. 
2. There's no industry roadmap anyway. 
3. A plan might make communications sound forced. 
4. It may not even be necessary. 
5. Not having one is good discipline for companies to empower employees. 
6. It's not always smart to assume you'll know where technology will take you. 

We could not disagree more. Not with all of these points, but certainly with the conclusion to which they add up. True, social is still evolving and will continue to do so approximately...forever. True, there is no roadmap and we can't know today where technology will take us. True, for some inexperienced practitioners, having a rigid plan might make communications sound forced. 

And therein lies the key. These facts don't mean we shouldn't plan. They mean we should plan differently. Rather than a set of stone tablets that we publish, say, once a year, social marketing plans need to be highly fluid, constantly growing and evolving based on feedback, results, emerging opportunities. Having a plan doesn't mean that you can't experiment. 

The absence any sort of social plan - preferably a very concise one that give direction rather than dictatorship - does not, in fact, empower employees. It creates lack of focus and inability to measure success. Instead, by providing employees with some flexible compass headings and a clear sense of how social marketing fits into the overall marketing plan and brand strategy, we ensure that everyone is headed in the same direction. 

After all, as we've said before, if you don't know where you are going, you might end up somewhere else. (And how will even know if you ended up where you want to be if you don't document where you are going and how you plan to get there?)  

There are some exceptions to this. There are some small businesses, like local Milwaukee restaurant AJ Bombers, that have had great success with social media conceived organically with no real "plan", in a formal sense. But most small businesses and certainly larger marketing organizations can absolutely benefit from a strategic social plan. 

So by all means, get started, do, empower and experiment, as the MarketingVox article suggests. But do so with purpose, focus, and strategic integration. 
 

I'm not sure the Musketeers had support through product purchase in mind with their infamous phrase but that's just what a lot of companies are hanging their hats on these days to sell more product and be socially responsible.

One-for-one companies are gaining more and more attention for selling a product and giving away a product. They are not-for-profit companies, with the most notable being Tom's Shoes. The premise is simple, for every new pair of shoes you buy a new pair is given to a child in need, transforming the buyer into a benefactor. 

Blanket America has a similar model, based on the notion of "What if the greatest economy in human history matched what it consumed with what it donated?" The model,  buy a quilt with a specific "patch" attached to it and it's non-profit subsidiary will donate a plain white blanket to someone in need. The owner's goal in to give away 1 million blankets in the winter of 2009.

Differentiating through social integrity is becoming an increasingly common - and often quite successful - brand strategy. Is this another form of cause marketing to sell more product, philanthropy or a genuine attempt to be socially/community/globally responsible? Let us know your thoughts.

PSFK recently released an analysis detailing there thoughts on the Future of Retail. The document outlines, with examples, how an ever increasing world of web enabled mobile device users are helping shape a new "shopping experience" both in and out of the store. We highly recommend checking it out to help map your retail marketing strategy.

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.

One hundred years ago, Americans referred to the year as "nineteen hundred and nine," similar to our present tendency to refer to the present year as "two thousand nine." But in 1910, people started calling the year "nineteen ten," short and sweet. And here we find ourselves at the same crossroads: will next year come to be known as the year "twenty ten?" Or will we break with history and continue to call it "two thousand ten?"

It's questions like this that tickle the history fan in me. But advertisers are interested as well — especially car makers. Their 2010 model-year cars are out, and they've got to refer to them in ads. But how to say the year??

It's little things like this — the myriad ways that advertisers try to anticipate near future trends so that, when they arrive, already-produced advertising is in line with them — that we don't get enough credit for.

There's a fun article about this stuff at the New York Times that's an interesting read.

So, when you ring in the new year in less than two months, what will you call it?

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!

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.

As early as the 17th century, solicitors in Europe would leave behind a little card bearing their contact info. More than four hundred years later, we're still doing the same thing. But with business people being far more connected these days, we tend to get a lot of business cards. I know I have to clean out my wallet every couple months and decide what to do with all the new business cards I've collected.

Well, you don't have to work at an advertising agency to think that this is pretty cool:


This is the Poken Pulse. It's a 2GB USB flash drive, but it's also a wireless contact exchange format. By simply placing two of these little guys together, they automatically exchange a digital business card with the person you've just met. You simply connect it to your computer to view (and sync) your new contacts' information.

The company that makes the Poken Pulse is young, and this is still a pretty new product. But at only €29.99, these things could really take off. And I think my wallet would thank me if they did.

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? 

Advergirl is one savvy marketer. On her blog, she's recently been doing a series called "The Media Crisis." Here's a link to Part One. Be sure to navigate forward to read parts 2, 3 and 4.

These are interesting times to be in advertising. As a Milwaukee Ad agency with 40+ years of history, we can remember the advertising renaissance of the 1960s, and the the effect the internet first had back in the 1990s. Now, we'd like to be around for another 40 years or so, and that will involve navigating another sea change in the way advertising is done. Advergirl is on to something here. Read it, and comment below if you'd like.

In a move designed to attract more real-time viewers, ABC has decided to are no commercials where they would normally first appear during several of its season opening shows this fall. This decision allowed the affected shows to run for about 3 more minutes than usual.

Fox was the first to do this last year during two of its shows, charging up to 40% more for the remaining ad time during the shows because viewers would presumably be more engaged with the fewer commercial breaks.

Obviously ABC is hoping to attract more long-term viewers to its shows, and perhaps to attract viewers from the internet, where there is less ad revenue to go around. (Hulu, for example, only airs one commercial per break.)

But isn't it kind of a slippery slope to entice viewers to watch more advertising down the road by showing them less now? If advertising is to continue, I'm not sure applying one of the most basic online advertising strategies — "show less ads" — is going to solve anyone's revenue problems when it comes to television advertising.

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.

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?

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.

You know, advertising is an interesting thing. There aren't really any laws that determine who can buy ad space in a magazine, on television, on a billboard... anything. It's all fair game, as long as you have the money. Usually, that naturally limits advertisers to companies with a product to sell who might grow their business through an investment in advertising.

But I've often wondered, aside from the odd "Becky — will you marry me?" billboard, has an individual ever run an ad campaign just cause they had something to say and the money to make it happen? Well, the answer is yes.

This message has been brought to you by Mr. Keith Mills, a wealthy British investor, who reminds 
financial institutions everywhere not to piss off wealthy British investors.

So. Bing, Microsoft's answer to Google's search engine, has been out a month. Initial reviews were positive. Would this be the search engine — I'm sorry, "decision engine" — that would finally put a dent in Google?

In a word, no. (click)

While Microsoft's $100 million campaign had some clever spots in it, it just goes to show you that, at the end of the day, you can't sell something that people truly don't want, no matter how good the advertising is.

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.