Monday is when I indulge my coffee habit. Having strived to cut down on my dependance on an early morning jolt of caffeine, I find that I now take even more pleasure when I do decide to have a cup. Not only does this mean I can splurge on pricier roasts, it’s also made me appreciate my coffee mug even more. High on my list of favorites is the Fred & Friends Wake Up Mug
This unique mug uses heat sensitive inks that take the initial droopy eyed look into a bright eyed one when you add your hot drink (tea drinkers rejoice!). This is a great giveaway for conference that may have an early start time or sporting the logo of your coffee shop. Caffeine and laughter are always a great way to start a Monday!
I am a huge fan of gifts with purchase and have talked myself into many a makeup shopping spree because I loved the free tote and samples I’d get along with my purchase. Now you can take advantage of our own free gift with purchase if you’re looking to buy stylus pens!
Stylus pens have steadily risen in the ranks of popular pens, with it’s knockout combination that enables you to go from paper to touchscreen just by flipping which side you’re are using. The Premium Stylus Pen is no exception and boasts metal-tone features and a soft rubber grip that will make it easy for your recipients to take notes during meetings or class without hurting their fingers. And for a short while longer, starting with a 1,000 minimum order you’ll receive a gift with your awesome new stylus pens. Depending on the size of your order, you could receive Keurig Elite B40 Coffeemaker, or a MacBook air or any gift of your choice. Check out all your choices here! Sometimes having to order new promotional products can feel like a chore but we all know that chores are often easier if there’s incentive at the end. Make sure to check out the Premium Stylus Pen and gift options!
March brings on an avalanche of celebrations for me: my birthday, my significant other’s birthday, and St. Patrick’s day as well as many outdoor festivals celebrating the returning spring and more than one reminiscent pub crawl.The one thing I’m not looking forward to lugging along to all these festivities? My purse. My ever-growing purse collection and I have reached a sort of museum-currator relationship: I fawn, obsess and spend only to find out it looks much better sitting on my shelf than as a functioning piece of my wardrobe. They are either comically small or so big that, as I comedian whose name I can’t quite remember once quipped, I could probably fit the Stanley Cup in there. Well no more! For the days and nights that I just want to travel light, the iWallet has got my back!
The iWallet is a adhesive silicone wallet that sticks to the back of any phone and can hold up to 3 credit cards, a drivers license, or business cards. It’s great for a night on the town where you don’t want to risk losing a purse or wallet. As a gift or giveaway, it guarantees usage because what’s the one thing we’re all apt to carry everywhere we go? Our phones. Now you gents, and your clients, won’t have to promise your chiropractors that you’ll stop putting your wallet in your back pockets (terrible for your spine I hear!) and I, along with the growing population of ladies who are using weekender bags as everyday bags, can stop complaining that our purses are hurting us more than our high heels.
I am the type of shopper that has to research and analyze each and every detail of any major purchase. I scour Amazon and read the highest rated reviews and then compare them to the lowest reviews. I search Google endlessly for any blog that might have reviewed the item. When I bought my most recent television, I agonized over the reviews on Best Buys website comparing models in an endless stream of reviews. This trend has carried over into other parts of everyday life, I am constantly checking out Yelp reviews of restaurants I want to try out or a business I haven’t seen before.
So, if you are anything like me, check out our Testimonials section. We have received glowing reviews from all types of industries and even some familiar names. Read through a few to get a sense of what working with us will be like! And if we do help you out in new and awesome ways, maybe consider leaving a review of your own or letting us know how your chosen product worked out for you!
Have you ever heard of the term “newsjacking?”. Before I started here at Pinnacle I was aware of the concept of newsjacking, even if I didn’t have the term for it. If you’ve never heard of this pop-culture second style of marketing, let’s pause while I send you over the ever -helpful folks over at Hubspot who have written a definitive essay-length post about it here. For those who subscribe to the tl;dr style of reading (meaning: too long; didn’t read) newsjacking is exactly what it sounds: hijacking the news.
Now before you start comparing newsjacking to the bus scenes from Speed, it isn’t as life-or-death as it sounds. In fact, if you happen to follow any brands on Twitter or Facebook you will have seen it at work with last night’s Oscars. It’s the practice of capitalizing (aka, jumping on the bandwagon) on a popular, cultural moment. It can be anything from a newstory or Jennifer Lawrence’s rather charming face plant from last night. Brand ambassadors will take to the internet linking their product, service, etc. in relation to this story. For example, a shoe company could have taken to twitter to tweet a Jennifer offering her their shoe insoles offering stability and comfort after her fall last night, and by not only tweeting it to her account but adding an Oscar related hashtag it’s easily viewed by millions. Just take a look at the general Oscar’s hashtag on Twitter: you’ll notice companies have used it even more so than regular users! My person favorite newsjackers have to be the people behind Oreo’s social media presence. For my SuperBowl post, I made a brief mention about how quickly the got their “you can still dunk the dark” image up on the web minutes after the lights had gone out at the stadium. It was the perfect example of what newsjacking should be: relevant and witty.
I could also give you dozens of examples of what newsjacking shouldn’t be, but you’ve probably heard about these massive fails before: like the Onion taking their trademark parody and snark too far last night with a tasteless remark about one of the youngest nominated atendees of the night and then their subsequent apologizing this morning (read more here). Maybe you can recall the all apologizing Kenneth Cole is still doing about their own remark about the Arab Spring? These are the cautionary tales and are all companies that can take a lesson from Oreo. Newsjacking should put you in the news as well, unless the world of marketing is praising your flawless execution of a news jack.
Newsjacks are easily translatable into promotional products. Say a celebrity has been sighted littering by throwing away a single use plastic bottle, wouldn’t it be a great time to send you customers (if you happen to know they are into celebrity news that is) a reusable water bottle with a little note and send out a well placed tweet, or remind people to vote with a Facebook post and a custom pen? Opportunities are limitless and the best think about newsjacking is that if at first you don’t suceed: there will always be new news tomorrow to try again.
The image I added at the top of this post is just a little newsjacking flowchart I messily made as I was thinking how to structure this post (as you can tell, I’m more than a little fond of the Paul Frank monkey and colored pens), you could take the same style and approach for the next big pop culture event and just jot down moments that you can quickly transition over to you social media. Have you ever tried out a newsjack? How did it go, let me know the comments!
At the beginning of 2013, I splurged a little and bought a year long pass to the Atlanta High Museum of Art. So far it’s been worth every penny! I’ve enjoyed their take on the emergence of modern art and on Valentine’s Day they opened their latest temporary exhibit: Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics, and Painting.
While I might not be the biggest fan of Frida Kahlo’s work, it’s always nice to spend a weekend afternoon wandering around the different sections of the museum. Of course, one of the highlights of my museum wandering involves picking up a small something at the souvenir shop as I wonder what Pinnacle supplied products I would add if I was running the shop. Museum gift shops usually run the spectrum of kid-centric products to expensive exclusives from visiting artists, truly presenting the age old saying “something for everyone”
I think this is a great practice to bring over in how we look at promotional products. Like many museum patrons, they won’t look at your products for themselves, and instead think of whatever might amuse their children like theKidz Bandage Dispenser™ With Character Bandages. Highbrow it is not, but show it to any kid and there is a good chance they will happily snatch it up and use up all the bandages without actually needing them (true story).
You’ll have you middle of the road browsers, like the museum attendees who have saved up to catch a specific exhibit on it’s opening day, who aren’t kids but don’t have the money to splurge on your costlier items (think of the native hipster). They’ll look for items that funny but useful and always spend a few extra dollars if it’s a brand name they recognize like Fred Flare. So the Fred & Friends iStrike, Mixed Messages Mug, or iPlunge all carry the same winning combo of brand recognition and function that you middle of the line customers would love.
Then there are your high end customers, the ones who make contributions for exhibits to happen. I like to imagine this level, for I am naught but a poor hipster, in my head as people who prefer understand, classic quality.The Waterford® Glendalough Rollerball Pen would be an item that would look great laser engraved with the Museum’s logo and perhaps the patron’s name. It’s design would surely catch the well-trained eye of an upper-level patron.
It’s a great lesson to learn from the museum gift shops: have a little something for everyone and put it right by the exit so people will just have to take a peek before going home.
With superstorm Nemo in the North and the bipolar weather we’ve had here in the South, I am really looking forward to spring and hopefully a quiet and warm spring at that. Until then, I’ve got the Herb Garden Set to keep me company at my window.
There’s nothing like some fresh herbs, especially herbs that I’ve grown, in my meal to cheer me up. This mini herb garden lets me grown my own parsley, chives, and basil from a little kit that has everything that I need. I’ve loved seeing the small sprouts grow, and its provided some nice green scenery when city life gets drab.
This Kit would be great for any company health initiatives, or eco friendly programs. It’s proven to be an easy way to introduce some fresh green into my daily diet.
After last night, I could write in-depth analysis of each commercial that aired (or I could send you guys over to Slate’s amazing coverage over here) or I could instead mention Oreo’s blazing fast response to the mid game electrical blackout (but then again, Buzzfeed got the scoop on the post with about the same speed that it was originally posted at here). Instead of re-praising the best of the best, like the Budweiser commercial that seriously made me tear up a little and then realize I was about to cry over a beer commercial, to the lowest of the low (can GoDaddy just go away now? please?), I’ve chosen one commerical that I thought was hilarious but has been received with mixed reviews and has been easily overshadowed by the Dodge Ram ad, which to me seemed more like an awesome powerpoint than a multi-million production: The Taco Bell “Viva Young” ad.
I’ve mentioned before how I’m a big fan of advertising that goes against the grain, like the Anti-Olympic tote bags I blogged about last year, so I’m fond of this commercial for many reasons. If you take a second to look over this year’s commercials, and most years before it, you’ll see a huge emphasis placed on youth and beauty (see this year’s Calvin Klein commercial, which must have been awkward for all the father-daughter combinations enjoying the game together) and if you do happen to see the older generation they are often imparting wisdom upon the rest of us (such as the Dodge Ram commercial). In the Taco Bell commercial, they aren’t waiting for their grandchildren to show up to share a Coke: they are sneaking out windows and partying it up like any rebellious teenager in every coming of age movie. It’s hilarious without mocking old age and, if anything, it pokes fun at what my fellow millennials and I consider to be a great night out. It’s all soundtracked to a Spanish version of Fun.’s 2012 anthem, “We are Young” which only adds to the level of unexpected, but welcomed, absurdity.
After years of Chihuahua’s selling us tacos, Taco Bell has started to explore what more they could offer instead of almost offensive south of the border jokes. They’ve feature popular music, customer tweets and pictures in their ads in 2012 and have kicked off 2013 with it’s hysterical salute to old age. Taco Bell doesn’t need you to be a farmer, or a horse trainer, or even a guy with washboard abs, they just want you to have fun.
So how does this all tie back to promotional products? The takeaways are this: enjoy yourself. Laughter is a powerful thing, it makes you stick in your consumers minds. How do I know this? Well I just spent an entire blog praising Taco Bell and to be completely honest: I don’t even like their food.
Looking for a promotional product on the fly? If so, have you checked out our RocketShip category? It has you covered for your basics (that are sometimes easy to forget that you need a reorder on, pronto) like pens and tote bags but we also have lots of unique items with a quick turnaround. Here are some of my favorites:
Our Merchandising Managers are back from the PPAI tradeshow out in Vegas, and they’ve returned with lots of new pictures and stories about what to expect this year. For a sneak peek about all the trends they’ll be blogging about in the near future check out the Facebook album they created here.
So it’s with this spirit of “new-ness” that I’ve decided to take a quick break from my usual blogging style of pointing out items new and old on our website and how they could be applied to different promotional campaigns. I’m taking a cue from our ever awesome Pinterest account and one board in specific, the Not a Promotional Product… Yet board.
