The Greatest Agency: May 2007

Here's where you get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how we do what we do at
The Greatest Agency in all the land.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Plaid tour gets closer to reality

The Plaid summer branding tour that we've been brainstorming on is coming closer to reality. Giuli's been putting together budgets, and so far, there are no surprises. It's looking pretty reasonable.

A good friend has a friend who sells tour sponsorships, and thinks it's not out of the question to get a tour sponsor. That would help offset some costs, and maybe give us a little more budget to work with. I'm very close to giving the whole project the green light. I'd say I'm about 90% there. Just some additional budgeting and logistics to finally confirm that it's a go.

We're brainstorming on tour names. And putting together possible cities, clients, and prospects that we want to visit. I'm meeting with PR later this week, to begin building our publicity strategy for the tour.

Meanwhile, additional tour ideas are flying fast and furious. If this happens, this is going to be a blast. We're getting more stoked by the minute, and ready to paint the nation Plaid!

Labels: plaid summertour, selfpromotion

posted by darryl ohrt @ 9:36 PM 1 comments

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Moleskine brand sketchbooks not cool

We've been working on a couple of really cool projects to launch House of Plaid, our soon to be limited edition design goods site.

Today, we suffered a minor setback, and discovered something icky about Moleskine brand sketchbooks. We had commissioned custom linoleum block Plaid artwork, to be printed on Moleskine sketchbooks. There would only be 50 pieces of this wonderful object ever made.

As our artist put together the order with her Moleskine distributor to complete our project, she was informed that Moleskine "does not allow for the resale of customized merchandise unless approved by the manufacturer. Once approved they have their own company that you must use that does commercial printing (but not letterpress/fine art printing)".

Sucks. For us, yes - but the bigger picture is that Moleskine, possibly the coolest brand of notebooks that I've used religiously up until today - doesn't understand current art culture. They should consider a project of this sort the ultimate fandom - and celebrate its existence. Like the artists who customize MacBooks. Or the countless other "mashups" that have become the norm in popular culture. We (or the artist we commissioned) were not attempting to present this product in any other way that might compromise their brand. Bad, bad, bad brand move on Moleskine's part.

So, now we're on the hunt for similar sketchbooks. Preferably a direct competitor to Moleskine. Our linoleum blocks are ready for printing. Know any good manufacturers who have a clue?

Labels: houseofplaid

posted by darryl ohrt @ 11:05 PM 17 comments

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Plaid wins gold pen at ad club awards!!

What a night. We probably would have been perfectly happy with just a plate of chicken cordon bleu - but the ad club decided to give us FIVE ad club awards tonight. And that's not all...we also won the show's GOLD PEN Award for Santa Hunters, our holiday greeting card. We're totally stoked. You can see the crew juggling trophies on our Flickr page.

Here's what we came home with:

GOLD PEN: Santa Hunters self promotion
Gold award: Spherion Meeting Bingo
Gold award: Santa Hunters direct mail
Gold award: Santa Hunters website
Silver award: Mohawk Mountain outdoor
Bronze award: Flambeau River Papers swatch book

Lots of love and kisses to all who helped us bring home wood: Paul Reilly, Brent Meyer, Chris Dornfeld, Chip Simons and of course Eliza Sweet. (A gold pen!)

Oh yeah - I guess we couldn't have done any of this without the most wonderful clients....lovin' you too!

(And - special nod to my son, who won an Ad Club scholarship. Nice job, Devon. Good night for all.)

Labels: plaid, plaidteam, selfpromotion

posted by darryl ohrt @ 11:31 PM 3 comments

Meet brian, our new intern.

Brian started his internship at Plaid this week. It's Wednesday, and he hasn't left in tears once yet. We think that's a good sign. Brian's in his junior year as a Graphic Design major. We'll be working hard to unteach his schoolin'.

So far, he's assembled some Ikea furniture, setup his workstation, and built comps for a project that David's been working on. Lots of comping. Oh yeah, and he got to sit in on a couple of meetings. Yipee.

He's also working on concepts for a probono project of ours, where he'll likely end up with a really nice portfolio piece, on completion.

Labels: plaid plaidteam

posted by darryl ohrt @ 9:00 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

plaid sketchbook rocks

We received the test printing of the Plaid Sketchbook. It's awesome. We approved the rest of the books for printing. We'll have 50 books - each signed and numbered by the artist - and then we'll officially retire this particular color scheme, so each book will be a true limited edition.

Paul is working on building out our House of Plaid site, where you'll be able to purchase these, and other cool limited edition design goods.

They'll probably sell for around $30, but we're still figuring that out. We'll look to essentially cover costs. This isn't a money making venture for us, but instead a creative exploration where we get to design fun objects. All while supporting independent artists and craftspeople.

Available soon!

Labels: houseofplaid, plaid

posted by darryl ohrt @ 9:39 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Rob joins Plaid.

We just hired Rob as our newest Designer at Plaid. Rob lives in Arizona. He's convinced his wife that New England will be so much nicer than having sunny warm days everyday, like they do now. How boring. Better to be surrounded by grey clouds, on and off rain, 30 degree temperature drops and of course, snow and ice.

We're totally stoked to have Rob join our team. He comes to Plaid with an impressive resume and portfolio. He's worked with JJ Sedelmaier, and most recently, Blufish Design Studios in Tempe. He's a super design talent, and we're lucky to have him join us.

Most interestingly...WE HAVEN'T EVEN MET HIM YET. As a true testimonial to the Plaid way of doing business - and to today's wonderlicious internet tools that are available, we feel like we already know him.

How'd we get to know Rob? All of our interviews were conducted using iChat cameras. We shared Flickr photo sets of each other. And of course some email. We've only spoken on the phone once - AFTER he accepted the position - and won't meet him in person until he arrives after Memorial Day. Isn't the internet awesome??

Labels: plaid

posted by darryl ohrt @ 7:32 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

The hottest messenger bag

Our first prototype for one of the products to be featured on House of Plaid was just completed. For newbs, House of Plaid is a side project of ours, where we'll create limited edition design goods, for sale. The sole purpose is to allow us to explore, and design stuff we might not get to design, on an average day. We're working on the site as we speak.

One of the first items we'll feature is a Plaid messenger bag. These will be signed and numbered, and will likely only have a run of 50 pieces. VERY EXCLUSIVE!!

You can see the prototype for the bag, above. We're thinking of adding a black nylon stripe on one side, with a (very small) Plaid logo. Like this. We're also going to have the pockets built in black nylon too, so that they can weather more abuse. What do you think?

Labels: houseofplaid

posted by darryl ohrt @ 8:19 PM 2 comments

Friday, May 11, 2007

Plaid summer tour?

We've been talking a LOT about the concept of a Plaid Summer Tour, as a part of our self-promotional campaign.

The more we talk about it, the more we're falling in love with the concept. Currently, we're looking at two potential options:

+ Buy and remodel a bitchin' custom van as a Plaid van. Tour the hottest brands in the nation and spread Plaid love and cheer.

+ Rent a rock star tour bus and wrap it in Plaid. While likely more expensive, this would allow actual Plaid employees to travel along on the tour (while working on the road of course) and see the Plaid nation. Could be a real adventure. Leigh found the Paul Frank bus above, as inspiration.

Giuli's pricing each of them out, and then we'll likely need to scale down to reality. Know anyone who rents buses? Or any cool drivers?

Labels: plaid, selfpromotion

posted by darryl ohrt @ 8:43 PM 1 comments

End of a wild week of Plaid

What an awesome week. We launched a new company! And a new way of doing business.

We're still in the midst of the many logistics related to our re-branding. You have no idea how many places your logo appears, until it's time to change it. Everyday, something new comes up.

Next week should be pretty fun as well. We're planning our self promotional campaign (more on that in a few), and setting up House of Plaid.

House of Plaid will be a cool side project for us, where we'll sell limited edition design goods. Basically, stuff that we wouldn't mind owning ourselves. The first two products will be a custom sketchbook, and a messenger bag. We should see prototypes for both objects next week. Can't wait.

We'll also officially design this blog. It was originally intentionally left 'un-designed' while we established a brand for Plaid.

In the meantime, we're busy as heck turning VIA logos into Plaid logos. On our invoices. On our checks. And envelopes. And front door. And building directory. And so on...

Have a very Plaid, Plaid weekend.

Labels: collateral, houseofplaid, identity, plaid, via

posted by darryl ohrt @ 8:32 PM 0 comments

New website is live!

Last night at around midnight, we launched our agency's new website, and VIA is now officially known as Plaid.

This is a first stage launch, and there's so much more that we'll be adding in the coming months - but for now, this is a wonderful representation of who we are, and what we can do for clients. Special props to David and Paul for loads and loads of last minute content and design adjustments.

Meanwhile, we'll continue blogging about everything happening behind the scenes at our firm, here on the ThinkPlaid blog, at it's new address, http://blog.thinkplaid.com. There's some pretty fun developments coming in the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

Special thanks to all of the ThinkPlaid readers. (YOU!) For what I believe is the first time in history - a design and branding firm's brand has been directly impacted and changed based on real input from others in the industry, and the general public. Gotta love blogging.

Have a Plaid day.

Labels: collateral, plaid, website

posted by darryl ohrt @ 7:47 AM 1 comments

Thursday, May 10, 2007

Adjust your feed!

We're launching our new site tonight, at this url!

This blog will continue, in all it's Plaid glory, at a new address: http://blog.thinkplaid.com.

We'll continue with fun posts about what's going on at Plaid. And there's a load of cool stuff coming up -

+ Plaid Summer Tour
+ House of Plaid
+ Plaidcasts

Here's the deal...if you're reading this from an RSS feed, you may have to re-subscribe, or adjust your feed. Those readers using Feedburner should be fine (in theory) but other RSS feeds might require a re-subscribe.

Again - this blog will continue at it's new address, http://blog.thinkplaid.com. We'll be posting additional news tomorrow, so please check your feed!

In the meantime, please enjoy our new site. Coming to this url in a few moments...

Labels: plaid, website

posted by darryl ohrt @ 8:28 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Having a Plaid day

What a cool day in our office. So many Plaid things came to life today.

Our first batch of business cards arrived.
We received our Plaid promotional buttons.
Our new voice mail system went live. (I'm in love with the voice talent's super cute laugh. You can hear it at 203-730-6300)

And our website is almost ready, too - which is good, as the countdown clock ends in a little more than twelve hours. Programming is mostly complete, and we're making our final tweaks for our first stage launch.

We're becoming more Plaid with every day! And getting more stoked by the minute.

Labels: collateral, identity, plaid

posted by darryl ohrt @ 10:31 PM 2 comments

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Self promotion brainstorms have begun

This is pretty awesome. The first test of our new integrated Plaid team was for ourselves. We've had a few brainstorms on self promotional concepts. With our in-house crew at our studio in Connecticut, AND the extended team - spread across the country. A virtual brainstorm using our favorite web 2.0 tools.

Anyway, there's one concept that we're all universally in love with. We'll call it the Plaid Summer Tour for now. (Although we'll have to work quickly to get this off the ground in time for summer.)

Here's the basics of the concept: A custom Plaid van (oh, soooo cool), touring some of our existing clients, as well as some brands that could use the power of Plaid. We'd be spreading Plaid love and cheer across the Plaid nation.

Waddya think?

Labels: plaid, selfpromotion

posted by darryl ohrt @ 10:38 PM 6 comments

Monday, May 7, 2007

moleskine sketchbooks begin printing

front

back

Just received the proofs from Papa Studios for our custom Moleskin notebooks. The graphics above will be converted into linoleum blocks, and she'll begin printing the covers. There will only be 50 copies of this run, and they'll each be hand printed, numbered and signed by the artist. These are going to look awesome.

posted by darryl ohrt @ 8:27 PM 2 comments

2 days till voice mail system goes live.

So much Plaid-action here this week. It's exciting. We've recorded the new voice for our phone system. I think I'm in love, based entirely on her accent.

Right now, it looks as if we're launching the new voice system on Wednesday. Cross your fingers.

Labels: plaid

posted by darryl ohrt @ 4:00 PM 0 comments

redirection for old site

Once we launch, we'll need to redirect all of the ongoing traffic from our old site.

Here's what we'll put in it's place. I figure that we'll keep this live for about six or eight months, dependent on traffic stats, and then eventually just auto redirect the old url to the new one, here. Sounds more confusing than it is.

Labels: collateral, plaid, via, website

posted by darryl ohrt @ 12:06 PM 0 comments

website almost complete. we've gone blog crazy.

Paul's making fab progress on the coding for our new site. When launched, the site will incorporate THREE blogs.

1. We've organized our portfolio in a blog. Works really well. Not at all traditional, but if you think of the typical blogger tools, like tags and posts, they work great for a portfolio.

2. This blog. We intended this to be a temporary project - to share the behind the scenes of a re-branding. The original plan was that the company's site would replace this blog, when launched. But we didn't expect the kind of popularity that we've achieved here - so we'll be integrating this into the site, and keep updates to what's happening at the agency.

3. Brand Flakes For Breakfast. Our company's primary blog is now enjoyed each morning by over 100K super smart readers a month, so we'd be fools not to feature a feed in the new ThinkPlaid site, too.

Labels: collateral, plaid, website

posted by darryl ohrt @ 8:20 AM 3 comments

Thursday, May 3, 2007

BIG news.

We're proud to announce another set of partnerships that will help make Plaid be all it can be.

One of the really cool things we're doing at Plaid is expanding our abilities and talents beyond our current offerings. I've already posted about our first partnership that will become PlaidTV. Today, we're announcing two new partners, that when combined with our crew here, will create Plaid Emerging Media.

The first is Bill Green. You've probably heard his name before, because he writes one of the most read blogs in the advertising land - Make the Logo Bigger. A favorite blog of mine for as long as I can remember. He's also an accomplished Art Director, and boasts some brand experience that we know you'll appreciate - including Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Range Rover, and Jose Cuervo. Mmmm. Jose Cuervo.

Bill will assist in creative strategy, campaign development and brand management. In short, Bill's the guy we'll count on to turn our awesome concepts into full fledge campaigns. Bill will work out of the Plaid "New Jersey office," which means he lives in New Jersey.

Next, is Robert Druyff. Rob's also done time at many an impressive agency, including Mullen, Arnold, Digitas and a few other names you'd recognize. His brand experience includes stuff like AT&T, XM Radio TAG Body Spray, and General Motors. He's an interactive genius.

Rob will play the role of interactive creative lead for emerging media and social media campaigns. This means he'll help dream up things to do online that you've never imagined. Because he's pretty much done everything interactive. Yep, even that. Rob will head the "Boston office," which means he calls bean town home town.

Since no single photo could capture the awesomeness of both Bill and Rob, I've used the image of Magnum PI, to represent them both.

Please welcome Bill and Rob to the wonderful world of Plaid.

Labels: plaid

posted by darryl ohrt @ 8:31 PM 2 comments

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

fax numbers. so over?

We're sending the second batch of business cards out to print for a couple of other people (more on that later) and we've had this ongoing discussion about whether or not it's necessary to have a fax number on your business card anymore.

We have two clients who use the fax machine. And we're working hard to ween them. When was the last time you used a fax? Or had to give someone a fax number? I'm thinking that we should have left this number off the card, and replaced with IM, Twitter, etc. But we caved to tradition, for most of the cards.

Labels: identity, plaid

posted by darryl ohrt @ 9:30 PM 1 comments

buttons ordered

One of the fun 'leave behinds' we've always used for VIA is a set of collector buttons (poorly pictured, above.) Clients love them, so we decided to update them for Plaid. Leigh completed the design, and the order has been placed with the button guy. We should have them by next week. Here's what they look like.

Labels: collateral, plaid

posted by darryl ohrt @ 9:15 PM 0 comments