MINNEAPOLIS, November 13, 2012 –

Borrow Baby Couture feeds the baby fashion phenomenon with high-end clothing available for rental or purchase. As baby fashion becomes a lifestyle, Borrow Baby Couture offers more and more designer clothing aimed for growing baby girls between the ages of 9 months and 4 years old.

The M Group’s work for Borrow Baby Couture features a new e-commerce website offering an eye-catching design and extensive SEO package to successfully achieve more traffic to the website and an increase in sales. Check out the Borrow Baby Couture website to see what The M Group does best.

Check out the segment:

About The M Group
The M Group is a full service creative and digital agency based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The firm specializes in building iconic brands through services in strategy, design, web, social engagement and mobile. The agency works across industries including: consumer products, financial services, food and beverage, healthcare, manufacturing, professional services, retail, and others. For more information about The M Group, visit www.theMgroupcreative.com, read the blog: blog.theMgroupcreative.com, or follow on Twitter @The_M_Group.

MINNEAPOLIS, November 1, 2012 –

The Deubener Award recognizes businesses in the Saint Paul Area for excellence in risk, innovation, diversity, and growth. As a 2011 Deubener Award recipient, The M Group will select finalists in the following categories: Emerging Business, Family-Owned Business, Nonprofit, For-Profit Service Business, and Women/Minority-Owned Business. Other awards given out at the Chamber’s award gala include Emerging Volunteer of the Year and Volunteer of the year.

For a list of the 2012 finalists, visit the Chamber’s website.

About the Deubener Award

In honor of Walter & Lydia Deubener, the Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce annually presents Deubenuer Awards to five organizations that exemplify growth, excellence, risk, diversity and innovation. The Deubeners were the proprietors of a grocery store in downtown Saint Paul and invented the first shopping bag with handles, which increased the store’s business overnight. The couple eventually sold their store and established manufacturing facilities in Saint Paul, with sales in 1919 totaling one million bags.

About The M Group

The M Group is a full service creative and digital agency based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The firm specializes in building iconic brands through services in strategy, design, web, social engagement and mobile. The agency works across industries including: consumer products, financial services, food and beverage, healthcare, manufacturing, professional services, retail, and others. For more information about The M Group, visit www.theMgroupcreative.com, read the blog: blog.theMgroupcreative.com, or follow on Twitter @The_M_Group.

MINNEAPOLIS, October 23, 2012 –

Prezi is a cloud-based presentation software that uses a zoomable canvas allowing a presenter to communicate ideas in an interactive and informative format. Prezi’s creative advantage is flow and focus, resulting in visually captivating presentations.

Presenter Whitney Stewart will give attendees the basic tools needed to create a unique and memorable presentation. Here’s a preview from The M Group:

Register for the SPACC event to attend.

Event information:

Chamber U: The Next Generation of Business Presentations, Prezi
Thursday, November 8, 3 p.m.-4 p.m.
Saint Mary’s University, Oakdale Center
7200 Hudson Blvd N, Suite 200
Oakdale, MN 55128:

About The M Group
The M Group is a full service creative and digital agency based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The firm specializes in building iconic brands through services in strategy, design, web, social engagement and mobile. The agency works across industries including: consumer products, financial services, food and beverage, healthcare, manufacturing, professional services, retail, and others. For more information about The M Group, visit www.theMgroupcreative.com, read the blog: blog.theMgroupcreative.com, or follow on Twitter @The_M_Group.

MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 12, 2012 –

“We’re excited to welcome Bonnie and Mike to our team,” said Whitney Stewart, of The M Group. “Our agency continues to expand, and our ability to attract top talent at every level is an important part of future success on behalf of our clients.”

Mike Coon, Assistant Client Partner

With a background in marketing and business development, Mike Coon is working primarily with the strategy team for account support. Adept at advanced research, Mike brings added support for The M Group’s growing client needs. Mike is a native of Mound, Minnesota.

Bonnie Cofer, Designer

Bonnie Cofer has joined the creative team, focusing on digital and interactive design. Her background includes creative editor of a newspaper as well as designing for an economics organization and others.

About The M Group
The M Group is a full service creative and digital agency based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The firm specializes in building iconic brands through services in strategy, design, web, social engagement and mobile. The agency works across industries including: consumer products, financial services, food and beverage, healthcare, manufacturing, professional services, retail, and others. For more information about The M Group, visit www.theMgroupcreative.com, read the blog: blog.theMgroupcreative.com, or follow on Twitter @The_M_Group.

Through PrayerWorks!, users post requests and tell their stories. When someone prays for that specific request, they add a star to the post and an email notification is immediately sent to the requester.

In the Twin Cities alone, more than 50,000 prayers are offered through PrayerWorks! every month. PrayerWorks! has also taken on a life beyond the KTIS audience. Many affiliate and non-affiliate radio stations around the country have incorporated the application into their websites for their listeners to use.

The application PrayerWorks! allows people to post prayers and notify others when they pray for them. Communication is completely anonymous and notification that a poster’s request has been remembered in prayer is instant. Since the app launched, there have been nearly 3,000 downloads.

We’re happy to have been a part of such a meaningful effort to bring greater connectivity to this network of people supporting each other through prayer. Congratulations, KTIS!

Encapsulating one year for the Chamber’s 1,200 members is no small feat. The Chamber has a rich history as old as the State itself, but the last year alone saw its own set of remarkable achievements—from the explosion of the Chamber’s social network, to its bevy of business events, to its public policy work and charity efforts. We decided the best way to visit the events of the year was through story.

As the oldest and largest local chamber, we thought it was fitting to create a presentation that communicated progress through movement. In our own presentations at the Chamber, we’ve moved beyond the traditional business PowerPoint presentations. The Chamber asked us to do likewise for the Annual Meeting and create a presentation that would leave passé PowerPoint slides far behind and surprise our audience through a presentation of discovery. For this we chose the cloud-based presentation program, Prezi.

We decided the best way to tell the story of 2011 was in context of 144 years of Chamber history. Prezi offers the capability to emphasize relationships between concepts with its zoomable canvas. We storyboarded the outline the Chamber staff created and then began laying out the content. Set against a cityscape backdrop (and a MetroTransit light-rail train!), the Prezi tells a story of the Chamber that has become more digital, certainly, but is also ever more involved in building business and reaching out in the community.

The M Group is proud to be a member of the Chamber. After learning in-depth the achievements of the past year, we are even more grateful to be part of such a vibrant business community.

To watch the Prezi, click the Play button below. Then scroll over More and select Autoplay.

Saint Paul Chamber of Commerce Year In Review 2011, Prepared for the 144th Annual Meeting (Feb. 22, 2012) on Prezi

Project management is the fundamental knowledge of what needs to happen when, in order to move tasks and activities forward within a project. Like a chess player setting up for checkmate, project management requires completing many intermediate moves to win the game with a final stroke.

Very few people naturally possess the blend of high-level and tactical thinking needed to manage a marketing project. However, when you’ve been in the biz for an extended period of time, you start to pick up the flow. Still yet, it’s important that all team members involved on a client’s business are accountable and empowered to execute against the global schedule. Like being equipped with their own GPS systems, the people involved on a project can identify congestion points and navigate milestones and key dates–and this makes for a better, more-efficient product. The M Group has established turnkey systems and processes that enable each member of the team to think like a project manager while focusing on their specific task; that, in turn, makes for quicker turnaround.

As a part of our systematic approach, project kick-off sessions, client reviews, milestones and checkpoints all serve to create a better product, faster and within budget. For example, as a part of our services, every strategic marketing plan is turned into an actionable tasklist. All projects have a statement of work prepared at project initiation that helps give the client insight into what is being done in order to meet their timeframe and budget. From the beginning, the guesswork is taken out by the master schedule of work, and the client can see the entire trajectory of deliverables and necessary approvals throughout the course of the engagement.

As the extension of a corporate marketing director, the mark of a great agency is the ability to make the director’s job as easy as possible, by presenting not only smart work, but also a product that meets strategic goals and is executed within time and budget. At The M Group, we report on our clients’ success with dashboards, status documents and progress reports; all are tools our clients use in their own internal reporting.

Marketing, creative development and technical execution involve many people, moving pieces, timelines and budgets. Beyond the great creative, seamless user interfaces and attention-grabbing copy, the agency your business works with should have solid project management systems in place to manage all your marketing needs.

Contact us to see how The M Group could streamline your marketing efforts.

It’s no secret great marketing agencies in Minneapolis and other major markets abound. The key is, determining your business needs and finding the right partner for the challenge. Here are several suggestions when choosing the right agency for your brand.

1. Decide if Now is the Time for an Agency. What are your marketing objectives? Do you need to re-evaluate your overall marketing strategy? Do you need a website built? Does your logo need refreshing? Are you planning to launch a campaign? Before looking at the options, evaluate your brand’s specific needs.
2. Research Agency Capabilities. What agencies do your colleagues or business contacts recommend? Research the lineup to find several that best fit your needs. Are you in need of a design-focused agency or one that has digital capabilities? The best agencies know how to market across industries and niche markets. Probably the most important aspect of an agency is their approach to strategy. Discover how they approach client engagements. A tactical approach to marketing can hurt the business goals, if not tied to the overall strategy.
3. Send Out a Request for Proposal (RFP). Find out more about the agencies you’re considering. An RFP provides the opportunity for both parties to evaluate a mutually beneficial relationship. Express a clear and concise vision of your goals, and how you will measure the success of the work. Great agencies are accountable for ROI.
4. Meet the Team in Person. Your agency team is an extension of your marketing team, so just like hiring new employees, get a sense for how easy they are to work with and if there is a chemistry amongst the teams.