Plaid, a marketing and branding company from Danbury, has taken to the road for its third Plaid Nation tour, where spreading the word is done not from a soapbox, but from a Ford Flex.
“Going on the tour is something that we”™ve gotten extremely comfortable with now that we”™re in our third year,” said Darryl Ohrt, founder and brand manager. “I think we finally have a grasp on what we”™re doing. It gets a little bit bigger and better every year.”
The tour is essentially a road trip taken every year by Ohrt and the creatives from his shop in Danbury in which they visit marketers and brands that they find interesting or inspiring.
“More than ever, the tour is much less about us and much more about the people that we”™re meeting,” said Ohrt. “Our audience is marketing, product management, branders and other creative people; so what we”™re trying to do is meet other marketing, brand and creative people from across the country and talk with them about what they”™re doing. We”™re doing it with small companies and startups and large companies who are Fortune 100.”
This year, the tour has garnered sponsorship from Subway, Ford Motors, Sprint, and The Q Hotel.
In past years, the Plaid Tour used limousine vans, though this year the tour has been able to get a pre-production model Ford Flex, which Ford manufactures especially for press reviews and media coverage before the model is released to the public.
“We”™re kicking off from Detroit and headed for New Orleans,” said Ohrt.
The tour started July 20 and will travel the Heartland from Detroit to Milwaukee, Chicago, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Branson, Memphis, Jackson, and end in New Orleans on July 30.
The Flex has been outfitted with three cameras so that followers can watch the crew live in real-time. Plaid crew members will also be blogging, answering emails, recording on camera and using twitter to document the experiences of their journey, all of which can accessed as they happen on plaidnation.com. The Plaid Ford Flex has been wrapped with a vinyl Plaid graphic and contact information urging fellow road inhabitants to take part in their experience.
“What we hope is that people will be able watch, listen and learn from what other people are doing,” said Ohrt. “The tour has definitely changed dramatically since its start. The very first time we went on tour it was much more about Plaid and we were trying to get our name out there. What we”™ve learned is that we”™ve created something that”™s really valuable to the people who are watching and that people love meeting and learning from other marketing people and other brands. What we”™ve really turned the tour into is a celebration of other people.”
Ohrt said the buzz that the tour experience creates for Plaid has become a residual effect of a “spread the love” attitude toward marketing and the business of creativity.
Other companies that the Plaid Nation tour will be stopping at include Ford Motors, Curve Detroit, Bucketworks, Threadless, 826 Chicago, The Boring Store, BlueFuego, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Shock City Studios, Xplane, American Copywriter, Sprint, Dept Zero, FedEx, Red Deluxe, NunoErin and the Make it Right Foundation.
