Plan B™
The Agency Alternative
WELCOME TO PLAN B
WHERE TRADITION AND TECHNOLOGY
FIND BALANCE.
An embarrassingly high percentage of the marketing communications that our industry creates and disseminates — harass, annoy or interrupt the very same people we're working so hard to try and impress. Broadcast television commercials get TiVo’d. ‘Junk’ mail gets trashed without having been opened. Email blasts fill our spam boxes before being auto-deleted. Guerrilla marketers force themselves into our recreational lives. We’re chasing customers so aggressively that we risk alienating them completely. Today’s fragile marketplace makes it imperative that we revise this operating methodology. At Plan B we believe that forward thinking marketers must learn that future marketing success will come, not by aggressively pushing our messages at customers, but by pulling them in. We’ve reached a stage where it’s no longer about ‘share of voice’ – reaching the most people – but about how to attract people that believe in a brand and believe in what it does, even if attracting those customers calls for less marketing. The next-generation formula for marketing success requires a highly nuanced sensitivity to delivering a more ‘balanced’ combination of tradition and technology to build brands that project a more attractive mix of messaging, media placement and active listening. To do this, we think you need more than genius creatives (check) a smart, responsive account team (double check) and insightful, imaginative planners (check mate.) You need a bone-deep cultural focus on getting it right that permeates everything an agency does. AN IMBALANCED INDUSTRY In a knee-jerk reaction to this brave new world, full-service advertising agencies have split into two disparate camps. We now have the ‘Traditional Agency’ with a technology/relationship marketing ‘wing’ – and the ‘Interactive Agency’ with a technology focus, and few samples of print media advertising. The traditional agencies long for the days when the shotgun approach of bombarding the widest possible swath of consumers with the same message meant a gravy train ride of juicy broadcast media commissions. Subsequently, those traditional advertising agencies treat technology-based marketing, relationship management and social media as separate (and often suspect) silos that compete with their traditional core offerings. At these legacy agencies, separate groups under separate management compete for budgets, clients, strategic control, database control, creative control and ultimately, respect. This is probably not the most efficient operating structure if your goal is the seamless, cross-media integration of your brand platform, delivered with an intimacy that respects the differences among even your best customers. Conversely, ‘Interactive Agencies’ discount traditional brand management science, and see diligent opportunity analysis and even traditional media tactics as anathema to their often myopic exuberance for ‘whatever’s next’. Ironically, their blindly exuberant advance of technology now offers many ways for consumers to avoid them—skipping/fast-forwarding through commercials, intelligent spam blockers and online sign-up for federal no-call lists. THE CALL FOR BALANCE The future of marketing is now. Your brand may suffer while the two camps described above struggle with the imbalance inherent in the operating structures that is responsible for their myopic approaches to marketing. That’s why there’s a need for a Plan B; a marketing partnership option without the imbalance that the aforementioned compromises continue to produce and promote. A marketing partnership grounded by the belief that truly successful innovation in marketing communications should be measured in belief-worthiness – not buzz-worthiness. At Plan B we’ve got traditional branding science in our DNA. We’ve kept the best and thrown away the rest. But unlike the legacy agencies – our management team came of age during the digital media revolution. We saw potential in some technologies, hype in others. We were early adopters of many innovations that served our purposes, and proudly skeptical of many fads that flamed out. We’ve always felt that hounding customers just because you can – leads to avoidance instead of engagement. This 20-year immersion in convergence is the foundation of our belief that no matter where you place your message, when your brand respects customers the way you would like to be respected, you create within that man, woman or child, a clear and lasting definition of how your company views it’s relationships. Brands that market with this balance in mind, successfully marry the head and heart, the emotional with the rational, to create true brand differentiation in a world of aggressively-pushed, sameness. The magnetism inherent in this approach attracts customers who will rave about you and remain loyal to your brand. The formula for this type of balance has always seemed obvious to us: A media neutral operating structure with centralized strategic and creative management across all tactical channels – allowing us to objectively employ exactly the right channel balance to convey the right message to the right audience at the right time. It is our mission to understand more intimately what motivates customers to align themselves with a certain brand, and to develop the more intimately balanced creative marketing solutions to attract and keep them. If you’re attracted by this idea, maybe it’s time to consider your own Plan B. Capabilites package request
Marketing Firms: Chicago, San Francisco
Welcome to Plan B Advertising, the agency alternative!
When it comes to marketing firms, Chicago is known as the home of some of the best in the industry. But even in this competitive market, Plan B stands out among the leaders.
While many traditional agencies consider interactive marketing little more than window dressing, and many digital agencies scoff at the time-proven principles of traditional advertising, Plan B embraces the best of both, seeking to find an ideal mix of technological innovation and traditional advertising savvy that makes an effective and motivational connection with your customers.
Our truly media-neutral, open-minded approach-and our willingness to explore and capitalize upon emerging technologies-make Plan B stand out from today's crowded field of the "me too" marketing agency. Chicago is our home, but we also maintain an office in San Francisco, giving us a direct pipeline into the heart of interactive technology-Silicon Valley.
That unique perspective gives us a decided advantage over other marketing companies in Chicago. It also distinguishes us from other San Francisco advertising agencies, who are often too focused on interactive services, and divorced from the longstanding advertising tradition found in the historic epicenter of traditional marketing firms: Chicago.
We apply the same progressive, solutions-oriented thinking to the work we develop for all audiences, whether consumer or B2B. Direct marketing, database management marketing, marketing for Web 2.0, and social web marketing all fall within our purvue, as do website design and web marketing strategy.
In short, we deliver more comprehensive, integrated capabilities than most of the other marketing firms Chicago has to offer, coupled with an unbundled "on demand" service model that allows our clients to choose exactly the services they need, without sacrificing strategic acumen or creative savvy.