Al McWilliams: Graduated Versions of Everything

I have known of Quack Media for sometime now. I remember when the band Tally Hall signed with you and what that did for the company. Do you attribute your success to Tally Hall? Listening to your interview online was exciting for me because I remember when the company was small and it was struggling to get by. My friend used to work for Quack and I’m not sure if he’s still writing for your company or not. It’s great to hear all that you have in store. I hope that this economical situation that Michigan is in does not interfere with your up and coming projects. Thank you for being presenting your ideas on Michiganinnovators.com it has really helped in my journey of deciding if I would like to be an entrepreneur. I’m still working on my business degree at Eastern Michigan, and I hope to be successful like you someday. If you would like to respond to any of my questions my name is Kelly Daniels and my email is kdaniel3@emich.edu.

I just want to say I love the found Magazines. I always find something to laugh about. Al McWilliams is the head of Quack Media, a Michigan-based company that has been around since 2006. They started out making as Quack Films making educational videos for high-school kids, and branched out from there into all aspects of the media. Being a small business, they have had to employ creative ways to get their products noticed in the competitive media markets. The magazine they sell is called Found magazine, and they use more of a book sales model for the sales of the magazine. Instead of using advertising to generate sales for the magazine, they changed the format and look of the publication so that retailers would have to treat it like a book and therefore it would stay on the shelves past the 60-day cut-off for magazines. They also keep the cover price at $5 always to promote repeat buyers. In the case of Quack Media, word of mouth advertising is one of the most important elements to establish a customer base. They also rely on the long life spans of magazines as opposed to other printed Media, and also the multiple readership element that suggests many magazine readers pass along the magazine as stated in the text book. This would act as word of mouth advertising to the target market they desire. They have incorporated the music market into their offerings by singing the band Tally Hall to their label. Quack Media has also created a relationship with Time Warner as they are working on a T.V. show for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. They are using multi-channel marketing to become more exposed to their target markets in all formats. McWilliams has the idea that all the media are getting “smashed-up”, which means that a certain type of print, film, or music will attract that same target market customer to a movie, magazine, music, or TV show since they are so closely advertised now.