Half the battle in our campaign to convert the world to meaningful marketing is for advertising agencies to get the religion and lead their clients to this promised land. As a first step, we agencies need to market our own services with meaning. For Bridge Worldwide, we practice what we preach by using this site to build and educate the marketplace of this concept - in a way we’re giving away our secret sauce for businesses (including our competitors) to use without payment.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how the agency Red Direct has created a new sustainability site and business model to live and breathe this critical issue. Another great example comes from an agency called Plaid in Danbury, CT. I learned about Plaid from Giuli Lewis, a former Plaider who came to Bridge Worldwide when her husband was relocated (full disclosure: This post is a blatant thank-you for their recommendation of Giuli). In spring 2007, this branding agency decided to change its own brand, renaming itself from Visual Intelligence Agency (which sounds like a new secret DARPA project) to Plaid. After many brainstorms around how to get their new name out there, the team decided to drive around the country in a Plaid van.

Thus was born the first Plaid Nation tour. I got some really neat stories from Giuli:

We wanted to showcase our knowledge of social media, how it could be used, how it could really benefit a brand and help connect with customers/consumers/the public.

We spent three weeks visiting current clients (e.g., Sony, Ironhorse bikes), other agencies we admired (Martin, Digitas), and brands we thought were cool (Segway, Hanes, Alltel). Some knew we were coming and others we totally dropped in on.”

In other words, Plaid toured the country to promote themselves, but by creating meaningful moments and conversations with those they met along the way. It was a pretty big effort for a small agency, especially with no traditional benchmarks or success measures.

But it paid off in many ways. The biggest was the tour’s stop at Segway. The team decided one morning to head to Segway’s office “mainly because we hoped they’d let us ride a Segway.” They didn’t get to ride one, but “a nice guy from the marketing department” came down and spent time with the team. A week later he called and asked Plaid to build a social app for current Segway owners, and months later social.segway.com was born (itself great meaningful marketing and a future blog post).

Overall, the tour resulted in new business, clients, and partners who enjoyed the experience and knowledge, and lots of fun for the entire agency. Success is further proven by the fact that Plaid is in the middle of its next annual tour. You can check it out here and enjoy experiencing the event while seeing some really cool social applications in action. Kudos to Plaid for taking this risk and offering agencies a model for meaningful marketing.

Now, next year you guys need to come to Cincinnati….

(also check out Advergirl’s take)

One of the most exciting experiences since going public with our Marketing with Meaning approach is that we are able to build some great connections and feedback from a broad range of like-minded people. One example is Ruth Ann Barrett at direct marketing agency Red Direct. Red Direct is focused on serving clients in the high-tech industry, and they are seeing a shift toward consumer and client interest in sustainability.

Typically, advertising agencies serve in a strategic consulting and creative development role for clients. We sometimes have the chance to help our clients promote the cause of sustainability, by advertising products that are more environmentally responsible and/or by creating meaningful marketing that itself drives sustainability messages and results. One of our recent projects, for example, is a campaign for PuR water filters in which we are challenging people to reuse water bottles.

Ruth Ann Barrett and Red Direct are carving a new path, however. Instead of waiting for clients to come calling for sustainability ideas, the agency is diving in with its own initiative. They recently launched EarthSayers.tv, a Web prototype of a media channel dedicated to sustainability. The site includes a ton of video content, and, like a real business, advertising.

Red Direct is following a similar path to other advertising agencies in creating a new business venture that has nothing to do with traditional client service. A recent Ad Age article included examples such as the agency Mother selling candles and Anomaly selling shaving cream.

Building awareness around sustainability takes the idea to a much higher level - and it’s a great example of an advertising agency marketing with meaning.

I am a huge fan of online education. I believe the combination of a rising cost of college, increased need by workers to retrain themselves to adapt to global competition, and the low-cost/scale efficiency of the Internet will dramatically boost this business model. A leader in online education that I’ve had my eye on for a while is the University of Phoenix. This school has revenues of $2.7 billion, has a very strong 23% operating margin, and grew enrollment by 11% last year.

Naturally, I was excited to see Adrants post about U of P’s latest online advertising campaign. Banner ads like the one above say: “19 years old. Works part time. Blogs daily. Goes to school online. If she can do it, so can you.” Adrants’ Angela Natividad praised the campaign’s apparent targeting of bloggers. She loves the insight that bloggers like her work their butts off to create content each day.

I can see where you could argue that this ad has everything going for it. Daily bloggers are a target audience that is active online and motivated by self-improvement (check). The ad media buy is online, where these people spend much of their time (check). And the ad uses a good insight and simple idea to communicate the benefit (check). The perfect ad, right? Wrong.

The University of Phoenix has missed an incredible opportunity to bring meaningful marketing to this focused target. The online education category is a perfect target for Marketing with Meaning. After all, education itself is a pretty meaningful service. And a niche focus on bloggers could really help the school come up with very specific ideas that are relevant and helpful to this group. Here are just a couple of ideas off the top of my head, all of which offer a much deeper personal experience than a static banner ad with cute copy:

• Let people “audit” one session of any of the classes taught at the University of Phoenix.
• Set up a discussion board where prospective students can ask questions of current students and alumni.
• Share a listing of University of Phoenix student blogs so that we could see how they manage their time and how they enjoy the experience.
• Create a special online class that addresses barriers that people may have and/or gives them a taste of how great the University of Phoenix can be, for example, classes on “How to Fit Online Education Into Your Schedule.”
• Grab attention in the blogosphere and buddy up with bloggers by offering a course that helps them perfect their craft - say, “Journalism for Bloggers.”

I find it interesting to read that the University of Phoenix is in the middle of a search for a new advertising agency. If this is the kind of work they are getting, I can see why. The school is spending more than $200 million per year in media, with the bulk of it going to online efforts. That’s ample resources for doing something dramatically meaningful. Heck, U of P might even find that more meaningful marketing allows it to reduce the cost of new student acquisition.

So it’s blatant plug time: If anyone at the University of Phoenix is reading this, give us a call and we’d love to hop on a plane and share more thoughts! Alternatively, if you’ve got some meaningful marketing to share I would love to feature it here.