Now in its third year (and kicking off in 6 days), the creatives at Plaid are heading out on the road again to no doubt evade several branches of state law enforcement as they make their way through the Midwestern United States.

Leap-frogging between Waffle Houses and 2-Star Motels, the gang will be stopping off in several cities between Detroit and New Orleans to meet creative folks all over the Midwest. I did blog about their tour last year while my company (which has been renamed to “JoesWork” on this blog) was on an 11-city tour of our own. The longest three weeks of my life, as I now affectionately refer to it as, helped us (corporate-level people) spend some much-needed getting-to-know-you time with the folks who made each of our bases special.

Take the same idea, apply it externally, and you’ve got Plaid Nation 2009. JoesWork used our road trip to cross-market our company internally; to teach our locations about what our other locations have to offer our shared customer base. The Plaid Nation tour accomplishes their cross-marketing by simultaneously marketing their agency and the others they visit. Sharing ideas and their spotlight, Plaid just keeps getting this right; create goodwill by visiting other agencies in your industry; showcase what today’s social media tools can do; learn new things and meet new people; market your own agency (and strengthen your brand); and have a little fun while your at it.

So to all of you creatives out there, do yourself a favor and follow Plaid Nation next week- you just might learn something! Check out their dashboard site, which is home to all of the tools you’ll need to follow their Ford-sponsored Flex trough the tour: feeds of blogs covering the event, twitter feeds from the Plaid gang, daily schedules, update videos, and live cam feeds from the Flex.

Now just to clear this up, RJ from “the Greatest Agency in all the land” was nice enough to send me a bunch of swag- but I would’ve blogged about this anyway. I believe in 100% transparency here at joerib.com, and I’m a nice guy.