When’s the last time you clicked on a banner ad? Or felt anything but annoyed by one?

After years of increasingly aggressive banners – flashing, expanding, even sneaking onscreen – we’ve started to train ourselves, when not actively despising them, to ignore them. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be worth the investment.

So why bother with banners? Because what’s wrong with them isn’t their format; it’s how the content is used. You’ve seen all the gimmicks – rollovers, pop-ups, video, mini-games – but none of that stuff can turn bad content good. However, if you use the space wisely and create a message backed by sound strategy and design, a banner can be just as useful as any other marketing tool.

Take our client International Dehydrated Foods (IDF). They sought our help promoting their new high-protein chicken concentrate, and many of the channels we were to use features the sorts of banner ads you’d expect: glamour shots of well-plated meals, extreme close-ups of succulent fruits and veggies, and happy stock photo people enjoying food together on an immaculate lawn, beach, or clearing in a crop-field. Rather than add to the forgettable-banner morass, MarketPlace suggested a different approach. We came up with a bold strategy: directly challenge the dominance of whey, the market leader in protein, with a direct message and a design made memorable by its high aesthetic. The one-two punch of strategy and creative put IDF a step above the other banner ads on the site and helped garner the attention – and spark the questions – they wanted their customers asking.

Want to learn more about how strategy and creative can make any marketing tool more effective for your business? Give us a shout!

2013 has me very excited. Not even three weeks in, and we’re sprinting! We’re establishing great new relationships, working on inspiring projects, looking to add several positions to extend our internal capability, and making a ton of headway on the full release of our new brand identity. In no way do I want to stifle that momentum . . . but I’m going to take a brief moment to reflect on the 2012 holiday before time eludes us. (more…)

One of the best lunches I had in recent months was with Carmen Popescu, Senior Project Coordinator of Pharmaceutical Applications at Roquette America. Our conversation ranged from linguistics to Ceaușescu to tabbouleh to the state of higher education in America to hair care products. Carmen is energetic, witty, and warm, the kind of person you want to spend time with. She’s very down to earth, but she’s also the kind of person who sees the science in, under, around, and behind everything. In other words, she’s like me and just about everyone I know, except that she’s a genius in pharmaceutical formulation and applications. She’s the epitome of a Science Person.

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I didn’t have the type of mother who said things like, “Well, you’re a sight to behold,” but if I did, she would have said that to me just about every day during my middle school years. I regret many of the outfits I wore in the mid- to late-eighties, but not because I dressed like everyone else and everyone from the mid- to late-eighties looks goofy to me now. I regret them because they were truly terrible choices, regardless of context. I’m talking spandex bike shorts, suspenders, and fish tie terrible. Walking billboard for idiocy terrible. Assistant Librarian laughing at me terrible. (more…)

We love challenges, whether they’re related to marketing strategy, advertising, brand building, or eating X number of Y in Z minutes. So we especially love it when we partner with a client who enjoys challenges as much as we do. Solazyme Roquette Nutritionals, a new client, is doing amazing things in the food, beverage, and ingredients world. For instance, they harnessed microalgae for use as a whole food ingredient, and their product Almagine™ literally has the potential to revolutionize the future of nutritional food development. Being relatively new to the industry, they approached us to help build awareness of their company and spread the word about them and their amazing microalgae-based product platform in advance of their appearance at various trade shows. (more…)

So, yeah, baby Dwayne is pretty darn cute. We love seeing him this way: happy, secure, and with a great opportunity to beat the systemic forces of homelessness among women and children in St. Louis. We love that Gateway180 entrusts us with the weighty work of helping to ensure that people know about, and respond generously to, the homelessness problem in St. Louis. (more…)

How do you brand a body of people? How do you market a symbol? How do you design a great user experience for a constantly changing demographic group? Those are but a few of the many, many worldview-heavy challenges we faced as we created a website for Memorial Presbyterian Church (PCA) in St. Louis. (more…)

We recently began working with Martin Bauer Inc, an integrated division of the Martin Bauer Group, a German-based supplier of herbal and fruit infusions, teas, and tea extracts. Their customers include companies from the tea, beverage, and pharmaceutical industries, and we’re working with them to help them break into the US market. (more…)

It has long been a tradition of MarketPlace to partner with organizations that give back to the community. One of our favorites is Gateway 180. (more…)

There are few things I’d rather do than photograph dogs. It’s the perfect mix of so many of the things I enjoy; not only do I get to spend time with dogs, I get to spend time behind the camera, and I get to see the dogs’ owners’ faces when I show them the results. (more…)