promotional products

Feb

2010

Super Bowl 2010: Saints Beat Colts. Promotional Products Beat Commercials.

My Daddy is about to be really impressed because this is the second blog posting of mine whose topic stems from his favorite game of football (See previous post from last year: Football, Promotional Products, and the Stories They Tell). And even if I may never fully enjoy watching a game on television at least I can appreciate its contribution to the world of marketing – and my job. But I digress…

So last night the New Orleans Saints beat the Indianapolis Colts to become the 44th Super Bowl champions. But enough about the actual game (maybe Daddy won’t be so impressed after all). Though more than 90 million viewers watch the game annually, recent reports say that half of these viewers may be tuning in to watch the ads during the commercial breaks rather than the Bowl itself. In fact, a survey of more than 25,000 households by the Nielsen Company – a major marketing and media information company that produces the Nielsen ratings, the main source of audience measurement information in the television industry worldwide – showed that 51% of those surveyed said they enjoy the commercials aired throughout the game, more than the game.

The Super Bowl has become known almost as much for its high-profile advertisements as for the sport competition. The high number of viewers promised has led to high price tags – this year, the cost for 30-seconds of air time averages to $3.01 million – and the high price tag has led to ads that are generally innovative, humorous, and in some way highly memorable as the purchasers try to get the most out of the expensive cost for that brief air time.

Here is a secret for all the companies out there that cannot quite afford the $3+ million dollar price tag for a Super Bowl commercial: the average cost per impression (CPI) for promotional products, that is the cost of an item based on the number of times it is used per month and the average number of people with whom the user comes in contact, is cheaper than the cost per impression of a 30-second Super Bowl ad. $3.01 million divided by 90 million viewers equals $0.033. The CPI for a promotional product – $0.004 (as determined by the Advertising Specialties Impressions Study published in November 2008).

I am in no way, however, trying to discourage companies from paying the extreme price tags for Super Bowl ads if they can afford it, because they certainly do provide my entertainment throughout the game.

You can check out more commericals at http://superbowlads.fanhouse.com/2010

Feb

2010

What’s your promotional products story?

True story.

Wednesday night my parents came over to our new house to cook dinner for my husband and me. I know. Super sweet, huh?!

So we enjoy a delicious meal of home cooked Mexican fare. Beans, flour tortillas, spicy cheese dip. Yum. My Dad’s a pretty amazing cook :) .

So we shoot the breeze, discuss all that’s transpired over the last, oh, two days since we’ve seen each other. Then I begin my homeowner’s duty of cleaning up the mess in the kitchen.

So picture this. And trust me – time is now moving in slow motion.

I’m standing between the fridge and sink. My Dad shouts “heads up” and pitches a zippered bag full of diced onions across the kitchen to me so that I can stick them in the fridge. So I, with quite unparalleled talents, reach one hand up and seamlessly catch the small baggy in one hand.

Then it all goes terribly wrong.

The plastic baggy does not live up to its tried and tested zippered-action power. The bag opens and tiny bits of diced onion fly freely across the kitchen floor. (I actually don’t think I could EVER get that kind of floor coverage again!)

Being that these are onion pieces strewn about. I had to swing into action to get the smelly mess cleaned up quickly! So in two bounds I was in the laundry room and retrieved my broom. I swiftly gathered the onion bits into a large (I really don’t know how all of those onions fit into such a small bag to begin with!) pungent pile in the middle of the kitchen.

(Now at this time, I bet you’re wondering to your self: “Self. What in the world does this crazy girl’s story about flying onions have to do with promotional products – or at the very least – marketing?” Well trust me. You are about to have all of your perfectly legitimate questions answered.)

After perfecting the pile – which even required some minor sweeping of the carpet in the living room adjacent to the kitchen as well (those suckers can fly!) I went back to the laundry room. Put up my broom. And grabbed my…

wait for it…

promotional dustpan and broom.

Yes friends: my promotional dustpan and broom. It’s a small blue pan with a brush, complete with bright orange bristles and pink and orange flowers. The lovely promotional product was given to me by my husband’s grandfather (I think it was a little too on the girly side for him!) after a non-profit organization sent it to him.

And the moral of my story? Well it’s twofold:

1. Promotional products are everywhere. Even in your laundry room.
2. Never. I repeat. NEVER toss a zippered bag of onions. You don’t want to clean that up!

Feb

2010

Helvetica cookie cutters = awesome promotional products.

Helvetica is a brand of die-hard fans — fans so raving they actually create their own promotional products. Some of you are all like wait-hold up-what’s a Helvetica? right now.
Helvetica is not just a typeface — what the elite call fonts — it is the typeface. To most of us, a typeface is the invisible structure around a message. To designers, the typeface is the message.

Just as social media nerds have woven Twitter stockings and sewn Facebook pillows, font nerds have been busy designing promotional products for their beloved typeface. I present designer Beverly Hsu’s Helvetica cookie cutters:

You can check out her full post with more photos here.

Helvetica is a brand that people want to be identified with. If I like Helvetica, that means I am a certain kind of person: creative, savvy, in the know about design. My best friend knows that I want to be known as that kind of person, which is why she bought me this necklace:

helvetica typography acrylic necklace (red)

Available in etsy shop- Plastique

I’m curious; is there something inherent about Helvetica that gets people so excited? Or can this enthusiasm be crafted, with the right efforts behind marketing and advertising, or with an attractive company culture? What ingredients could you pour into your brand that would make people want to wear it around their necks? Is it even possible?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Feb

2010

Chance Encounters Due to Fate? Or to Promotional Business Card Magnets?

During a trip to New York City this weekend, I learned that Jaime could not be more right about the value of the traditional promotional business card magnet. I was in the Big Apple visiting my college roommate, Amanda, and on my first night in town we ran into a group of girls that we were friends with in school but with whom we had since lost touch completely. Now, Manhattan holds the title of the largest city in the United States (based on population) and if I had to guess, I’d say the city is home to the most bars and restaurants too. With such an assortment of options, what are the odds of randomly encountering old friends at a restaurant? The chances are a lot smaller than one would think, when taking the company’s effective use of promotional products into account.

Consider this scenario: Amanda was excited for my visit and, since our love of food has always been something over which we bond, she was looking for a fun, new restaurant to try. She narrowed down the various locales (she picked the slightly edgy Meatpacking District), but still seemed overwhelmed by the number of choices. After reading restaurant reviews online and coming up empty-handed, she needed a break and walked into the kitchen for a refreshing glass of water. And it was there, on the freezer, that she discovered the answer. Amanda’s roommate had enjoyed the fine fare of a French restaurant in Meatpacking District the previous month and had subsequently brought home the restaurant’s promotional business card magnet. As a personal recommendation from another foodie speaks highly about a restaurant, we decided to try to the French café.

The cuisine was delightful and so was the atmosphere, especially because we spotted our former friends as soon we walked into the quaint little restaurant. After the hugging and giggling subsided, I asked them how they picked the place. Their reply: “a business card magnet, of course!”

Jan

2010

Whether Shopping for Furniture or Promotional Products, IdeaKits™ make Life Easier

Like my co-worker Kim, who successfully became a homeowner last Friday, I recently moved and am in the midst of furnishing my new house. The process has been a roller-coaster of emotions, ranging from the excitement over decorating a house for the first time to the overwhelming panic about the vast range of paint colors and furniture options. Will that rug match the duvet cover in my room? Are Linen White and Eggshell truly different paint colors?

To answer all of my first-time decorator questions, I turned to the best source I had available: the Internet. Like many consumers, I find shopping online an easy way to compare price points, colors, and product styles. What I didn’t know was that many home furnishing sites also offer “idea and inspiration” sections, filled with pages upon pages of ideas for how to complete a room. Some of these sites even allow users to select their style – whether it be classic, contemporary, fashionable or even technology oriented – and receive suggestions about furniture and accessories that match their decorating needs.

Similar to Pinnacle’s IdeaKit™ that suggests new and unique promotional products to fit customers’ marketing plans, these online showrooms inspire users to utilize and combine products in ways they might not have thought of otherwise. Whether or not customers are new to the world of furnishing, these suggestions provide innovative insight while also saving users time and money by allowing them to evaluate options before leaving the house.

After hours of playing around on these sites, mixing and matching colors and fashions to create my ideal room, I was so excited about my new furniture that I simply could not wait any longer to order it. Unfortunately many home furnishing companies do not offer rush delivery at no extra cost, so after my usual Saturday dodge ball game (yes, you read that right… there are dodge ball leagues for adults!) I went to the store to make my purchases. Picking out my items ahead of time made the shopping experience relatively painless and afterwards I came home, relaxed and put my feet up on my nice new ottoman!

Jan

2010

Costumed Sign Wavers Versus Promotional Products

On my way to work each morning I drive by one intersection that always has someone dressed as a reindeer, dancing, waving, and holding a sign that reads “Caribou Coffee.” I have never stopped at that Caribou Coffee on my way to work, nor do I plan to, as I make coffee at home in the morning and have my first cup of the day on the road, and then my second (or third…) using the coffee maker at the office. However the cheerful, dancing deer often leaves me with a feeling of pleasantry as I continue on my morning commute.

That is until I reach another intersection probably about a mile down the road (maybe 2? I am terrible with estimating distances). It is at this intersection that I am confronted with two (sometimes even three) people dressed in the most terrifying costumes resembling the Statue of Liberty(see scary mask below) that one could ever imagine holding signs that say “Income Tax” in bold letters with a telephone number below. They rotate their body position to direct their signs toward different directions of oncoming traffic, but cheerful they are not. No dancing, and I have only witnessed a wave once maybe twice. I suppose it may be fitting as income tax is not generally considered to be a “cheerful” subject matter, and certainly is less of a joyous matter than say, coffee at 8:45 am. And the costume, though frightening, is also fitting, as they are advertising for Liberty Tax Service whose logo includes a portion of the Statue of Liberty’s head (though the signs do not even denote the company’s name – I figured it out through a little online research).

Some further research led me to find that there are more than 2,500 Liberty Tax offices in the United States where more than 10,000 people are seasonally employed to wave at passing cars. This must be a reactionary effort created by the current administration’s job stimulus plan, was my first thought. My second – does this form of advertising really work? According to Paul Mason, professor and chair of the Department of Economics & Geography at the University of North Florida, it can:

“At first I thought that it was stupid, like people standing on the street waving for their political candidate,” he said.

So like any good skeptic, Mason began investigating to see if the sign holders made any difference in helping a business grow and thrive.

“I have asked business owners, restaurant people, etc., about how effective the sign holders are,” he said. “I discovered that particularly for stores that don’t have strong street presence or are just opening, it seems effective at letting people know that the place is there. It helps people try new stores by announcing their presence.”

By Joseph Baneth Allen

Publication: Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville)

I have not done any of the cost analysis (nor could I find any done by anyone else online) but I just cannot imagine that this form of advertising to the local community could be more cost-effective than say, doing a promotional products mailing to residents of the area. If you do choose to employ “Costumed Sign Wavers” however, please make them cheerful, and do not have them wear scary masks. Thanks.

Jan

2010

How do you cultivate a community for promotional products?

I’m not fooling myself. I know it’s still January and this week of sunshine and 60-degree weather is just another cruel joke. But I still long for spring, and it feels so close.

I used to love winter and everything about it: the cold and the clothes — all wool coats and stockings. I loved staying indoors and wrapping a blanket around my feet as my dad built a wood fire. I even loved that Counting Crows song about December, God help me.

But now that I live on my own, and I pay my own gas bill and can’t start a fire to save my life, now that I have to take my own wool coat to get dry cleaned and can never seem to find any long sleeved shirts in my closet — now that “dreary” and “sullen” are words that apply to my actual life, rather than a fantasy one that I would dream about as a teenager, winter doesn’t seem so hot. In fact, I can’t wait to get shed of it.

I’ve begun to reminisce frequently about the springs I spent in college under the Atlanta sun. In these daydreams I always forget about the long, dark nights I spent, head in hands, hunched over my Greek lexicon, eyes blurring before the page. I forget what it was like to feel terror in the face of an impending deadline, to trudge miserably through campus to the library, to dine constantly on cold cafeteria food and burnt coffee. Instead, I remember the hours between classes spent lounging on the grass — book bag as pillow and hoodie as picnic blanket — draping my hand over my eyes and drifting to sleep under the warm gaze of the sun. Never mind that there were pages of dry lit criticism and long explanations of neural processing sticking out of my bag and begging to be read. In that moment they were forgotten, and they are forgotten now; as I look back it seems those tedious articles and assignments never existed except as benign accessories decorating my blissful enjoyment of a Georgia spring.

To me, however, college in the spring was more than a paradise; it was a community. In the spring, student clubs would delight to set up tables around the quad or pedestrian circle, passing out hotdogs and t-shirts in exchange for nothing more than your email address. Never mind that the year was nearly over and anyone recruited for a club would lose interest by July, spring seemed to endow student-led organizations with a peculiar generosity. Hardly a day went by that I wasn’t confronted with a free koozie or plastic cup on my stroll to dance class.

Now, in the real world, as a marketer I weep with desire for such a friendly, readily assembled, and accessible audience. A smart, older friend told me when I was in school that “Nobody does community like college campuses.” I didn’t understand what she meant until I graduated, and gone were the hundreds of everyday friends, gone were the hallmates nosing into my apartment, gone was the free pizza and music playing on my daily commute. Gone were the free shuttles, the endless wealth of resources, the free literary mags and science papers vying for my attention at the newsstands. My friend was right: Nobody does community like college campuses.

This virtual world makes marketing with promotional products more complicated; customers are often not within an arm’s reach. So I’m asking you: How do we cultivate community — for the ease of distributing promotional products to a relevant audience, but also for the exchange of ideas and neighborly friendship, for the chance to repeat my afternoon reveries under the sun and to share common experiences — in this so-called real world? The crux of marketing, as I’m beginning to see, is to engage with a community. But what does that community look like in post-college life?

Jan

2010

Get to Know your Customers with Twitter and Promotional Products Marketing

It all started with a straightforward question. “What are you doing?” asked the people at Twitter.com, and millions responded. Twitter officially launched in 2006 and by February 2009 the site’s total number of unique visitors per month had exceeded 7 million, a more than 1382% increase over the previous year according to Nielsen Online and Mashable.com.

Twitter continued to grow in popularity during the summer months- and not just with ordinary Joes. The site also developed as a marketing tool, with more and more companies tweeting contests, rewards programs, free trial offers and even promotional products giveaways.

While the statistics are undeniable, a new question has arisen in the minds of both Twitter users and non-users: Why should we care? On a personal level, Twitter has given us more information than we ever thought necessary to know about our friends, families and neighbors. In fact, this morning I awoke with an e-mail to learn that my sister’s boyfriend’s former college roommate was following me on Twitter. Really?? On the surface this seems absurd; I mean, I’ve met the guy maybe twice, and we haven’t had any contact in years. But when it comes down to it, Twitter is all about creating a network and advancing your resources. After all, he works in the marketing industry as well.

Furthermore, many marketers are learning that analyzing the trends in consumer’s tweets provides valuable information about their clients and better yet, their potential customers. Although it’s true that only a small number of tweets have any sort of pass along value, conversational tweets still contain consumer insight that allows us to personalize campaigns accordingly. As marketers, it’s important for us to understand the wants and needs of our target demographic… and that all stems from understanding their backgrounds and consumer behaviors. Do you see the value in Twitter? Let us know @pinnaclepromos.

Jan

2010

Lending a Helping Hand on National Humanitarian Day

Today is National Humanitarian Day. It couldn’t come at a more appropriate time.

You don’t have to look far to see the outpouring of support for the victims of the tragic earthquake that devastated the small island country of Haiti earlier this week.

While I’m no expert on world affairs, and I could never claim to be the most active in volunteerism, my heart is definitely going out to the people of Haiti this week.

The power and human compassion shown by strangers in countries around the globe, never ceases to amaze me in times of trouble. From the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004, to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the humanitarian efforts surrounding these disasters are always staggering. Governments, cities, charities and individuals – all coming together to lend a helping hand.

Whether it is water, food, blood or the spare change found in the glove box, every donation makes a difference. It isn’t hard to find shirts, mugs, caps: hundreds of printed promotional products available to purchase with proceeds going to the various charities and humanitarian efforts working to piece Haiti back together.

Just three days after the 7.3 magnitude earthquake ripped through Haiti, people are making a difference. Whether by selling bags and tees to raise much needed funds or digging through the rubble in search of survivors, doing what you can – when you can – is what humanitarianism is all about.

I’m not asking you to donate. But take a moment to reflect on the humanitarian efforts taking place today. If you are interested in learning more about ways to give back, Acree posted a great blog this week with some great links and resources.

Thanks for reading and thanks for all you do. You are making a difference!

Jan

2010

We Fight Dirty: A Promotional Products Family Feud

In order to fuel 2010 with creativity and excitement, Pinnacle owners Mitch and Dave have orchestrated an elaborate internal campaign designed to hit the one nerve that gets people talking: competition.

In a decision that will prove ingenious at best and at worst insane, Mitch and Dave split our company in two, slashing the Sales Department, slicing Marketing in half, and dividing the graphic designers and web programmers like so many pieces of a chocolate chip cookie cake at a third grader’s birthday party.

Since it was overheard that “trash talking will get you bonus points” (Mitch), Team Badass and The Untouchables have been doing quite a bit of it when we’re not whispering with paranoia behind closed doors about our ideas for the first sales contest.

As a disclaimer, Team Badass is better in every respect and you should pull for us. I mean them.

Now check out these photos from the beginning stages of the feud, taken by your eternally neutral photographer:

the best team’s poster

My cubicle wall has been tagged by Badass.

So has Katie Barnes’.

The teams have been pranking each other back and forth. Last week Team Badass emerged from a meeting to find their screensavers glowing with a slideshow of Untouchables images. Then Monday the Untouchables discovered that all their away messages had been changed to “I <3 Team Badass!” Emails have been hacked and cubicles invaded. No one is safe.

And the next time you need promotional products — or just want somebody awesome to hang with at a party — email one of our Badass sales teams.

Because everyday they’re hustlin’.

promotional products

Super Bowl 2010: Saints Beat Colts. Promotional Products Beat Commercials.

What’s your promotional products story?

Helvetica cookie cutters = awesome promotional products.

Chance Encounters Due to Fate? Or to Promotional Business Card Magnets?

Whether Shopping for Furniture or Promotional Products, IdeaKits™ make Life Easier

Costumed Sign Wavers Versus Promotional Products

How do you cultivate a community for promotional products?

Get to Know your Customers with Twitter and Promotional Products Marketing

Lending a Helping Hand on National Humanitarian Day

We Fight Dirty: A Promotional Products Family Feud

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