For the past eight years I have hosted a barbecue cooking competition at my home for all of our employees. There are a lot of components of the competition including the development of a logo and T-Shirt design each year, how the teams are structured and even the categories which are unique each year. All in all the annual investment is approximately $3,000 including category and grand prize awards, production of T-shirts, food, a keg of beer and everyone’s favorite; the margarita machine.

So, why do we host this annual event and what is the true value to the agency and our employees? We are in a creative business that is very competitive and requires a great deal of teamwork. Everything about this event supports our core values as a company while allowing everyone to let their hair down a little.

CREATIVITY: This is not your run of the mill BBQ competition that you might see on Food Network. People use every creative cell in their body to win, place or show. Not everyone is a culinary genius so they use online resources to come up with something unique. Others really do have the talent and expertise to create unique and crowd pleasing dishes that people would pay good money to experience. At yesterday’s event the judges commented that if local restaurants served this level of cuisine they would never have to write a negative review. Who would think that these amateur chefs would create items like baby back ribs that were dry rubbed then finished off by tossing them in a buffalo sauce or scallop and bacon lollipops, tofu sliders and brussel sprouts with bacon and  cranberries. And how many people do you know that would stay up half the night infusing vodka with fresh bacon. These are all perfect examples of creativity and passion, the same talents we need to succeed in the marketing world.

COMPETITION: I often get negative feedback from some members of the agency that nine out of ten of our recreational events involve some sort of competition. Guess what? This is our life. If we want to succeed and keep moving the needle we must be prepared to compete at the highest level. That doesn’t mean we can’t have fun. Competition is fun if you put your heart and soul into it. For this year’s Q, I was told that some people didn’t like to present their dishes to the judges so we had the judges visit each station, which was fine but I feel like we compromised to a certain degree. It was kind of like doing a new business presentation and asking the prospect to come to us or e-mailing concepts instead of presenting them in person. We also take the competition to a new level by inviting some of the most respected food industry professionals in the area to judge. Lorraine Eaton and Judy Crowling from Virginian Pilot, Patrick Evans-Hylton from HR Monthly, Debi Gray from Johnson & Wales, Sam and Cindy McGann, Jennie Capps from CBWC, Yiannis and John Milleson. Every year the judges are blown away by the quality of the event and promise to steal or “borrow” a few nuggets to share with the world.

TEAMWORK: If you are going to take home any money from the Q, you better work as a team. We do not reveal the teams or the categories until late afternoon the day before the event. Each team is comprised of people from teams that they don’t necessarily work with every day. They have less than 24 hours to develop a menu, determine responsibilities and action plans and to execute the dishes in a four hour period the day of the event. Some people prefer to work in a vacuum but over my 30 years in this business they never reach the top unless they know how to play in the sandbox. This is typically the result at the Q as well.

So, call it what you will – an excuse not to work, a blatant waste of company money, a good excuse to imbibe in the middle of the afternoon. I call it an exercise in life that will help us be a better agency.

We will post many of the recipes and photos from this year’s event on Monday.

JT

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Somehow Crispin & Porter is able to convince conservative brands to take a leap of faith and break the mold in the category. This time with a brilliant campaign for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. Not only is it a great multi-media campaign but they have integrated the website with the new approach – as they should but often ignored by traditional brands. Maybe, just maybe, the success they are having with most of their clients will help open the eyes and minds of other marketing directors to kill the milk toast and get real. JT

By STUART ELLIOTT
Published: May 26, 2010

KRAFT FOODS wants grown-ups to get the blues in the night, and in the afternoon and at snack time, too.

The “blues” in this instance are the familiar blue boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Dinner, a product that Kraft has long sold to adults as a meal to make for children. In a new campaign — the first work on the brand from a new creative agency — Kraft tells adults that its macaroni and cheese has, to quote ads for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, the taste adults have grown to love.

To underline that message, the macaroni campaign carries the playful theme, “You know you love it,” and continues in that vein with lines like “The most fun you can have with your stove on,” “Outgrow outgrowing it,” “Imported from your childhood” and “Parents need warm cheesy hugs.”

The campaign will sell the entire Kraft Macaroni and Cheese line, which in addition to the classic blue boxes includes varieties like Deluxe, Easy Mac and Homestyle. The campaign began on Wednesday with a commercial during the ninth-season finale of “American Idol.”

There will also be other television commercials; print ads; billboards; ads online; a Web site, youknowyouloveit.com; a presence in social media like Facebook and Twitter; and even “noodle art” — replicas of macaroni noodles, 20 feet long and 9 feet high — placed in and around landmarks like Fisherman’s Wharf and Wrigley Field.

Kraft executives say they intend to spend more than $50 million this year to promote the macaroni products, an increase of more than 30 percent from last year.

Most of the spending last year was devoted to ads that peddled the product to recession-weary consumers as a good value. For example, the headline of a magazine ad declared: “Small price. Big cheese-eating grin.”

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Kraft is changing pitches as the economy seems to be improving. But consumers are still dining more at home than they did two or three years ago, offering an opportunity for giant purveyors of consumer packaged goods to reintroduce shoppers to pantry staples.

Kraft joins mainstay marketers like Campbell, ConAgra, General Mills, Heinz, Hershey, Hormel, Kellogg and Smucker in increasing ad spending, bringing out new products and restaging old favorites.

Macaroni and cheese joins a lengthening list of Kraft products to benefit from new campaigns, among them Bull’s-Eye barbecue sauce, Chips Ahoy, Oscar Mayer, Miracle Whip and Philadelphia cream cheese.

“There’s no big project corporate-wide that says we must reinvent all these businesses,” said Chris Miles, director of advertising for the grocery business at Kraft in Northfield, Ill., but he says there is a goal of “raising the bar on creativity, taking more risks, be more arresting and engaging, maybe test a little bit less.”

“We’re realizing a lot of our brands have the right to play in a more emotional space than the rational territory we’ve mined in the past,” Mr. Miles said. In other words, fewer descriptions of how macaroni and cheese costs “about a dollar a box,” as one recent ad says, and more efforts to sell it as a fun food for adults who could use some fun in their lives.

“We’re excited about finding avenues of growth to tap into the full potential of the brand,” said Alberto Huerta, senior marketing director for the meals business at Kraft.

“Kids love us, but adults love us, too,” he added, “and there’s a lot of business to be had there.”

In the first commercial, a son suggests that his father had “put me in time out” during dinner so the father could “scarf down” macaroni from the child’s plate.

“Have you had enough?” the son, speaking like a grown-up, asks his father accusingly.

In another spot, a daughter gripes as her mother eats off her plate as if the child were not noticing the theft. “The crime wave continues,” the daughter says in an adult voice.

The creative agency for the campaign is the Boulder, Colo., office of Crispin Porter & Bogusky, the MDC Partners agency known for rule-breaking work for marketers like Burger King and Microsoft. Crispin Porter won the macaroni assignment in March from the longtime creative incumbent, DraftFCB in Chicago, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.

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The assignment from Kraft was “to make the brand more of a family food,” said Rob Reilly, partner and chief creative officer at Crispin Porter, reflecting that although “it’s a favorite of kids, it’s not kid food.”

But “the amazing job Kraft did marketing it to kids” meant that “adults felt they couldn’t eat it without feeling they were eating kid food,” Mr. Reilly said. So the campaign will borrow a page from the Frosted Flakes playbook and use humor to “unleash a little bit of permission,” he added, and let adults “say they love it.”

“Sometimes, you’ve just got to enable it,” Mr. Reilly said, “and advertising is a great enabler.”

The other agencies on the campaign are the Chicago office of Landor Associates, part of the Young & Rubicam Brands division of WPP, for new packaging; the Chicago offices of two Publicis Groupe agencies, Digitas and Mediavest, for digital and media planning and buying; and Hunter Public Relations in New York.

A version of this article appeared in print on May 27, 2010, on page B3 of the New York edition.
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There’s nothing worse than a RSS feed that for one reason or the other never gets updated. Sometimes for weeks on end, the same topic appears. This has happened to me with a local television station, a luxury resort and now with Food Network who has featured Tilapia with Green Beans as the recipe of the day now for over a month. Get recent or get lost.

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Derrick Borte, who we have had the pleasure of working with, has just released his first feature film The Joneses. He produced and directed the movie with major stars – David Duchovny, Demi Moore, Lauren Hutton – and a script he wrote himself. Derrick has worked with us at Meridian Group for clients including Hall Automotive, Cox Communications and Chartway Federal Credit Union. We are proud of Derrick’s accomplishment – this is BIG TIME!

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THE GOOD

Email is fast: Not only does it get to your prospect immediately, production time is limited. We produce most within a 24 hour period.

Email is great for testing an offer: There is no better trackable medium out there and if you are a company doing transactions online you can track your ROI day-by-day and hour-by-hour.

Downloadable components are easily accessible: Online videos, interactive games, interactive brochures. But don’t get lazy and do simple PDFs.

THE BAD:

Email environment is bursting at the seams: Thanks to all the spam, sorting through all the BS to get something of value is a pain.

Keep it short: Write the novel on weekends from your cottage but keep marketing messages short and to the point.

Don’t do it yourself: And don’t let Jimmy or Jane in accounting develop what you believe is a graphically pleasing email and for God’s sake don’t use a smiley face or I will personally hunt you down and give you a wedgie.

Great email lists are hard to get: If you must purchase a list make sure it’s a valid one that is relevant to your prospect. You are better off taking the time to grow your database from your website and blog.

Follow best practices: I’m not going to list them for you but if you don’t you will be blackballed by the inventor of the internet, Al Gore. Google them, they are easy to find.

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So, how many unwanted email solicitations do you get every day? I’m not talking about the larger, stronger and longer type that your spam filter picks up. I’m taking about the online gourmet shop, restaurant, hotel, airline or business newsletter you opted into when you thought getting an email was as much fun as finding your name in the new telephone book (why do they still print these?). I estimate I get 50-75 per day plus the 20-30 that get caught by my filter. I admit that I signed up to the majority of these at one time, but being pummeled day after day by hideously designed emails that offer nothing to me as a customer is getting very old fast. I guess I could spend an entire weekend opting out of most of these but I really don’t mind receiving communication from companies I have done business with in the past, I just want a little respect and more importantly good taste.

Now, when was the last time you received a personalized letter from the US Postal Service from a company updating you on new offerings, or this season’s specials or just to invite you to do business again? Probably one per month at the most? Long before email became the norm and faxes became annoying, direct mail was going down the wrong path. I can here it in the sales department “Let’s send a postcard!” No envelope, no tabs to seal, no sweat. And guess what – no results. Have Jimmy’s the computer wiz down in shipping could design something that screamed desperation on a Friday night before bed then take that baby down to Kinko’s and you had a powerful direct mail program.  Not!

Any form of marketing communication requires some level of marketing expertise and just because you are a good salesperson does not mean you have marketing expertise.

I think there is a true opportunity right now to take advantage of a good traditional direct mail strategy right now – if you do it well. I’m not saying don’t use email as a marketing tool, but do it professionally and respect to the person receiving it.

Tomorrow, I’ll provide a few tips on doing both direct mail and email more effectively.

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CreativeMost are addicted to the daily jolt of a 5 hr Energy, Redbull, Dew, or pharmaceutical of choice to get them revved for the work day. Creatives on the other hand exist/survive on their own secret stash. (No, not alcohol.)

You could easily be one of those people pacing in front of the office coffee maker or in line at the local *$s (that’s starbucks for you out-of-touch-virgin texters.) or you could walk up to a creative and ask what they’re working on. If you don’t get an instant spark from the ipod, macintosh, iphone, crackberry or even static electricity, you’re either asking the wrong creative, or interrupting a heated ping-pong/brainstorm session. (Yes, we can play pp and work at the same time.)

Creatives are the gems that create, imagine, discover, inspire, achieve, unveil, reason, and collectively drive the enthusiasm of the group. Sometimes while doing other activities. (Just ask our significant others.) And since everybody’s talking about moral these days…Nothing can cheer up a mad client, down co-worker or screaming boss like great creative.

Instead of going out and buying what you think will get your heart racing again. Embrace the mash-up skills, creativity, and craziness that comes from your local creative department.

Posted by: Shane Webb, Creative Director, Meridian Group

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image1For decades, the flip-calendar giveaway ruled the arena of corporate sponsored swag, decorating our walls with glossy murals of power-tools, sportscars and bikini-wearing supermodels.

Yet somewhere along the way, the allure of 30 blank boxes and an NFL cheerleader turned into nature shots and terrible stock photography. What’s the deal? Where’s the effort? Heck, where’s the usefulness?
Every free calendar I get now is full of meaningless trivia and obscure holidays. The whole point is that I have a place to jot down my wife’s birthday.

I’ve received two calendars so far this year and neither of them are worth hanging. I honestly can’t stand to look at them.

One is from a local real estate agent and it is full of “seasonal landscapes”, none of which are local. Why not take photos of the 12 oldest houses in the area or the 12 best places to get a beer? Or at the very least seasonal landscapes of the town we live in.

The second is an obnoxious calendar from a local printer full of generic corporate photography and 15 shades of blue. There’s even a photo of a guy in a suit with a briefcase pointing out into the horizon. Wow. And this is coming from a printer. Nothing about inks, papers or the craft of printing. No personality, just a generic giveaway with the company logo “playing it safe”.

Aside from the Chic-Fil-A calendar (which you have to buy), the 12 month flipper is a dying breed, and that’s a shame. Because what other marketing tool offers you someone’s full attention, in the comfort of their home or office, every day of the year?

Posted by: Matt Schneider, Production Manager, Meridian Group

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  1. Grow Your Marketshare: No better time than now to grow your share of the pie. Yes, the pie may be somewhat smaller during an economic downturn but you want to be prepared for growing revenues when things return to some level of normalcy. Weak competitors are opening themselves for attack; consumers are looking for brand value and are more open minded to changing brand preferences. This is also a very good time to develop new media relationships with outlets that are hungry to grow their own share.
  2. Adjust Your Media-Mix: So, we all know consumer habits are changing rapidly but how much are you adjusting your media spend? I’m not going to attempt to quantify all the statistics that are flying around these days, but we all know that newspaper readership is getting hammered, online usage is sky-rocketing  and that broadcast viewership is more fragmented than ever before. I am not recommending that you drop all print and put 80% of your budget online but you should be shifting your budgets somewhat to take advantage of the shifting landscape.
  3. Go Social, But Carefully: Everyone is jumping on the social networking bandwagon so quickly that few have taken the time to look at the entire realm of opportunities and potential land mines. Others are slashing traditional budgets and going totally online. I actually had a client tell me last year they were eliminating everything from their budget in 2010 except interactive and was planning on slashing 80% of their budget. Developing a social marketing plan is not about throwing thirty grand at your secretary’s nephew “who lives online”, it’s about developing a sound strategic plan that is flexible enough to accommodate ever-changing trends.
  4. Beware Of The Blue Box: At our agency, we define a “blue box”, as a young, college educated person that has been out in the real world for less than five or six years. They have earned a certain level of respect from management and claim to know everything on earth about marketing. They wake up one day and all of a sudden they are provided the title of marketing director even though most do not have any formal marketing education. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being put in these people hands without thinking about it. The next thing you know is, this young mad scientist is firing marketing firms, reallocating budgets and putting new spins on brands that have taken decades to build. Whose hands are you going to put the future of your company in?
  5. Shout From The Valley And Whisper From The Mountaintop: Never underestimate the power or the value of a well designed public relations plan. If your company is somewhere down towards the bottom of your category’s totem pole, then shout as loud as you can if you truly have worthy story. If you stand firmly at the top of the totem pole than be humble because everyone is looking for to knock you off, especially the news media. That doesn’t mean you should be quiet by any means, just very calculating in your messaging.
  6. Don’t Look Desperate: Sales might be down to where they were a few years ago and your lenders are getting itchy but by no means should you ever show desperation in your marketing efforts. You can market value without throwing years of brand equity out the window. If you drop give it away today, or evgen appear to be, it will take you years to regain consumer confidence.
  7. Print Is Not Dead. Yet: There are still millions of people who begin each day with the morning newspaper especially within older demographics and more affluent. Most consumer magazines are holding their own because people have a personal relationship with publications that are connected to through a passion for a typical hobby, lifestyle or interest. Use print to your advantage to target consumers who have a strong likelihood to use your product or service and don’t be afraid to use shrinking ad pages as leverage in your negotiations.
  8. Integrate, Integrate, Integrate: There are still way too many silos within corporate marketing departments around the globe. We have seen many fortune 500 companies where the marketing message is so fragmented between traditional, interactive and public relations it would make your head spin. Tell everyone to leave the egos at the door and appoint a brand “czar” that you can hold responsible for all marketing communications…and tell the IT department that the internet is not their domain.
  9. Trust Your Agency Or Find Another One: You hired an agency or integrated marketing firm to look after your best interest, let them do their job. Don’t play budget games and please disclose all short- and long-term company initiatives to the agency early in the game, not after they hear it from another source. If your agency is not doing the job you expect, tell them about it immediately and honestly. You might be surprised at the attention you receive.
  10. Zag: Take a step back and look at your category with fresh eyes. Are all your competitors saying the same thing in a similar manner? If so, the opportunities are there to make a name for yourself and stand out in the eyes of your customers and prospects. If you are not receiving comments about your marketing efforts from your contacts then you are probably just blending in with everyone else. Claim your position and stick with it across all tactics.

Have a prosperous New Year!

Posted by: Joe Takach, CEO, Meridian Group

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picture-39The use of social media continues to grow. In the past year alone, Facebook membership has grown over 700%. Some companies are blocking the site so that employees can not access it during work hours. But are companies just getting defensive? On the other side of the coin, does the use of Facebook & other similar sites actually make employees more productive?

Basically, what it boils down to is that responsible employees will utilize the site appropriately. Employees that are motivated and appropriately challenged, with defined goals and targets will self-regulate the use of Facebook & other sites. They will use the site as a slight diversion from a busy workday. Human beings love to feel connected. We love to keep up with friends and family. Studies show that being able to do so in the midst of our busy day in the office, leaves an employee more satisfied and therefore more productive in the long run.

After all, a lot of our clients are advertising on Facebook nowadays and asking for recommendations, so shouldn’t we be experienced users of the site as well?

Posted by: Diana Medley, Account Coordinator, Consumer Team

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