Plaid Nation: New Business Without the Dead Weight

A lot of shops try really hard to attract new business by being the cool guys, which most often backfires in very uncool ways. Others suit-up their fastest fast talker and send him cold-calling the world, wandering down dead-ends. Then there are our friends at Plaid (those dudes from CT who run Brand Flakes For Breakfast who took over our site as The Danbury Egotist a few months ago, yeah them).

In 2007, they came up with the idea to road-trip across a portion of the country during a few weeks in the summer – meeting great brands, agency leaders and innovative business thinkers along the way. The results and whereabouts were reported back via the Plaid Nation tour site. And so began one of the most interesting and enviable annual new business efforts we’ve ever seen. No salesmen. No RFP’s. No wasted energy. And a grand ol’ time doing something everyone loves – landing new business.

2009 marks the third year of the tour, which now sees Ford, Sprint, The Q Hotel, Subway and Sony as sponsors. Not half bad, Plaid. For more on what they’ve deemed their ‘attraction engine,’ go read Darryl Ohrt’s piece on AdAge’s Small Agency Diary.

Plaid Nation Milwaukee from Plaid Nation on Vimeo.