Martin/Williams

I was not very familiar with the agency Martin/Williams before I sat down to write this blog post, because we had not really discussed them in class. All I basically knew was that Martin/Williams was an agency, headquartered in Minneapolis, MN, within the Omnicom Group, which consists of various agencies. I went to the Martin/Williams website and stumbled upon a page dedicated to explaining their philosophy as an agency to viewers of the site. I was inspired by what I read, so I thought I would include it here.

Philosophy: "The pull to fall back on what worked before is incredibly strong. For a long time, brands told consumers what to think. Brands were big. Consumers were small. But that's changed. Consumers engage with brands on their terms now. This new world order can break open lucrative new pathways for brands savvy enough, and willing, to take them. To take advantage of this, our entire agency is structured around ideas, literally down to the floor plan. This causes communication that is insightful, lightning-fast, open and pointed. And that creates an environment where never-before-seen ideas, that fit a never-before-seen landscape can emerge."

I found this advertisement and thought that it did a good job of following the philosophy of the company. First of all, most users of yellowpages either look up restaurants or people that they know. I have not heard of anyone just looking up random people. However, this spot was both funny and effectcive because of two main reasons.

1.) Everyone has pictures that have random people in it (NOT to the extent that this guy was going to), and when they see the photo they most likely will just crop the random person out of the frame. However, this does add an extra step in readying a photo for display.

2.) Yellowpages is not about looking up random people. The typical user will not be doing this. So this spot promoted the product in a way that wasn't about what the product is about (atleast generally), which made it interesting and added humor.

Overall, I thought this spot was pretty effective. Yellowpages is not a very exciting product, so it really takes creative talent to be able to get consumers excited about it.