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)