Meyer Dunlap

Recognizing the helpful, creative, and sometimes absurd world of promotional products.

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Evantage Giving Dallas Co's the Advantage

Have you heard of Evantage, Inc.?  If you haven't, you will soon.  

Evantage provides specialized sales and marketing campaigns to companies looking for help retaining and acquiring new customers.  They do this by providing their clients with a professionally trained sales team to reach their target market, face to face.  

They are outsourced by companies in the following industries (not exclusively): Telecommunications, Entertainment, Fiber Optics, and Internet.

Since they opened up their doors for business in 2006 they have helped gain their Fortune 500 clients over 50,000 new customers!  According to their website, they are able to do this because they treat their client's prospective customers as if they are their very own prospective customers.  

The company was founded by Chris Auwarter and 5 others.  You can check them out on Facebook here, and Twitter here.  

Great work Evantage!  Excited to see how you grow in 2012!

All the best,

Meyer Dunlap 

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Today we want to highlight another one of our friends and customers, Think Ahead Group.  

Think Ahead Group is a non-profit organization based here in Dallas that operates in conjunction with the Center for BrainHealth-UTD.  Their mission is to teach people to think about the current and future health of their brains.

The leadership of Think Ahead Group has successfully pulled together a large group of Young Professionals in Dallas to throw events and different fundraisers to raise money for supporting research at the Center for BrainHealth.  The research focuses exclusively on discovering and implementing new ways to understand, protect, and heal the human brain.

This month Think Ahead Group highlighted one of their founding and social committee members, Courtney Squibb.  She has a remarkable story and is using her experience with Traumatic Brain Injury to raise awareness.  So cool!  Read about Courtney here: Member Spotlight: December, Courtney Squibb

To learn more about Think Ahead Group, see their website here: http://thinkaheadgroup.org/

They are always in need of volunteers and help - what a great cause!

Merry Christmas!

Meyer Dunlap

[gary]

How many brands can you follow?

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Gary has a great point.  Very interesting to see how this pans out.....

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MOOYAH Burgers Raises $5,600 in Support of Cancer!

In our latest edition of our "Highlight Series", we are super excited to brag on our friends at MOOYAH Burgers & Fries for their efforts in breast cancer awareness.

During October, National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, MOOYAH pledged to donate $1 for every "Like" on it's Facebook page to Dallas Cowboys linebacker Bradie James' Foundation 56.

MOOYAH and Foundation 56 are hosting a FREE event for fans on Wednesday, December 14 at 7 p.m. at the MOOYAH Richardson location in celebration of the $5,600 raised for the Dallas-based nonprofit.  

To learn more about the event, check out this link: http://www.facebook.com/events/263524093706368/

We are so proud of you MOOYAH!  Awesome work!

From your friends at Meyer Dunlap,

MD Team

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NorthPark Newbie Makes HUGE Splash!

Our next friend and customer being exhibited in our 'Highlight Series' is Nike-Dallas NorthPark!

Being one of the most recent additions to the iconic NorthPark Center in Dallas, the Nike store has been wildly successful.  The sheer size of the store makes any passer-by impressed and most likely causes a double-take.  It is impressive, to say the least.

Inside, the staff is eagerly awaiting to help the next athletic-minded individual or gift-giver.  Every Nike employee is of a different caliber - highly trained and helpful in explaining all the details and intricacies of the top-tier gear that is meticulously placed throughout the inviting store.

If you haven't paid them a visit yet, you should - it's a must.  Spend a short amount of time there, and you'll understand why it's made such a huge splash at Dallas' shopping mecca.

If you want to follow the latest news or events of the store, follow them on Twitter - here's the link: https://twitter.com/NikeDallasNP

Great work Nike-Dallas NorthPark!  We are proud of you!

Meyer Dunlap

[jaymug]

Lightsaber Candle Holder

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This is an awesome Star Wars gift to give out to customers!

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It seems we've started a 'Highlight Series'!!  Our next customer and friend we want to highlight is Swingle Collins & Associates.

The reason for this highlight is that Swingle Collins has won three prestigious awards in 2011 and we are proud of them!  

The three awards we wanted to highlight (though they have accumulated many more) are:

Chubb Commercial Cornerstone Agency (won from 2009-2011)

Chubb Personal Cornerstone Agency (won from 2003-2011)

Best Practices Agency Status (awarded from the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America, or IIABA)

To learn more about what these awards mean and how much they distinguish Swingle Collins in the market, follow this link to their Awards Page: http://www.swinglecollins.com/about-us/awards

Great work Swingle Collins & Associates!  Way to make Dallas proud - keep working hard!

All the best for 2012,

Meyer Dunlap

[jaymug]

ACTIONS speak louder than words.

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So true - @garyvee style!

[crowdtilt-blog]

T: this

I: is

L: legit

T: technology

Some girls recently ran a pretty cool campaign that we thought was worth sharing. A group of them were trying to get a house rented for Mardi Gras, and most of us know that is not a cheap or an easy thing to do. So what did they do? They turned to the...

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Our friends at Crowdtilt doing amazing things with their platform!  Click the link below to go to the blog and check out the sweet story!!

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WIN: Creative Contest Pulls in Thousands for Charity

Every so often, one of our clients do something that is so awesome we just have to share it and brag.

Irving, TX based Michaels, an arts and crafts retail chain, is holding a contest during this holiday season that benefits several different charities.  It's name is "Michaels Make It! for Good Contest" and the goal is to raise $25,000!

The contest asks the general public and Michaels fans to submit photos of their homemade gifts, and when they do Michaels will donate $1 to charity for every submission.  Then, they ask people to vote daily on their favorite entry, which garners another $1 donation from Michaels for every vote!  At the end of the contest, one lucky winner will win a craft room makeover - nice!

The Charity partners they are working with are: Crafting for a Cure, Starlight, Boys and Girls Clubs, and Hole in the Wall Camps.

Check out the Michaels Facebook page at this link and hit the "Michaels Make It! for Good" tab on the right side: http://facebook.com/michaels

Way to go Michaels!  Proud of you!

Sincerely,

Meyer Dunlap

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What it's like to work with 9 of the Top 100 companies in Dallas!

Earlier this month, The Dallas Morning News released this year's top 100 Places To Work in Dallas.

We wanted to congratulate 9 of them.  The following are companies that we at Meyer Dunlap serve.  And it's our pleasure to do so, because they aren't just some of the best places to work, but also some of the best places to work with!

LARGE COMPANIES: Omni Hotels, Frito Lay, FedEx,

MIDSIZE COMPANIES: The Marketing Arm, The Hockaday School

SMALL COMPANIES: Rogers Healy, Tolleson Wealth Management, UTD Center for Brain Health, Benchmark Bank

Again, congratulations friends!  Keep up the awesome work.  The way you serve Dallas and build up our business community is really great - we are thankful for you all!

Have an amazing Thanksgiving,

Meyer Dunlap

[hipmunk-blog]

First off, thank you so much for all the amazing, thoughtful, and inspiring words you sent us about why you want to be with your family, friends, and loved ones on Thanksgiving. While we wish we could fly all you of you home for the holidays, what we CAN do is fly five of you home—and we’re...

[gary]

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gary:

If you don’t innovate or evolve as a middle man, your day will come, publishers your on the clock. What do you guys think?

[szymon]

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szymon:

street keyboard, Brussels. Photo by Timo Arnall

[gary]

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gary:

The context war

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Is Omnicom's Strategy Solid?

When looking over the last 3-5 years in M&A activity among the Big Four advertising holding companies, one thing is quite apparent; Omnicom has been extremely quiet in comparison to it's competitors WPP, Publicis, and Interpublic.  The question is, why?  

French Publicis has swallowed monstrous digital shops Razorfish, Rosetta, and Digitas.  WPP has been building Possible Worlwide, it's first digital-only shop and Interpublic has been pushing R/GA and Huge around the world.  But Omnicom, number 2?  Basically nothing.

Insight can be derived from John Wren, Omnicom CEO, in his second-quarter-earnings call where he responds to an analyst pressing him about his competitors' acquisitions: "Our belief is that all of our services are digital and will become digital ... and it's my personal belief, two years from now you won't even use that word to make a distinction."

Basically, Omnicom is attempting to bake digital into it's core business model, throughout it's legacy brands, DDB, BBDO, and TBWA.  They believe that instead of buying digital shops and placing them in silos, it's more wise to overhaul the whole company from the inside out.

This begs the question, are they doing the right thing?  Are they building the advertising agency of the future?  Or is digital something that should stay in it's own silo? Time will tell.

Just recently the Dallas-based Richards Group swallowed up it's digital arm, Click Here, in what seems to be a similar line of thought to Omnicom.  Maybe there is something to be said about this strategy...

What are you thoughts?  We would LOVE to hear from you!!

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*FREE* Coffee Mug! (...or just move on?)

Is a Coffee Mug what you would want from a brand looking to grab your attention, love, and trust?

Or is there something else you would rather be given these days (be honest)?