Promotional Pens

New technology often presents new advertising opportunities. This was illustrated especially well by a trial that saw Bluetooth being used as an advertising medium by a branch of the fast food retailer Burger King located in Luton airport. A billboard that was enabled with Bluetooth contacted 20,000 people for the month it was installed and just over 2,000 of those contacted opted to download the vouchers and promotional information sent to their phones.

Unfortunately, the information about the trial does not indicate how many out of that 2,000 actually redeemed their vouchers, so it doesn’t really give a huge insight into how effective the campaign was; all it really tells us is that a percentage of people are willing to pay attention to a Bluetooth advertisement. Burger King was keen to highlight the fact that a customer in one of their Manchester stores attempted to redeem his Bluetooth voucher there. Although the voucher was not valid in that store it shows that offer stuck in that customer’s mind, just as a printed voucher would.

However, it seems that the ad was only really effective for a very small percentage of people and that perhaps it was not as effective as a more traditional campaign that would have made use of printed vouchers or promotional gifts such as promotional pens or printed t-shirts. Nevertheless, the trial does show that perhaps in the future there might be more scope for this type of advertising, but for the mean time it shouldn’t be the cornerstone of a company’s promotional campaign. Most people will remember promotional gifts, but Bluetooth vouchers may only really appeal to the more tech savvy consumer.

Promotional Clothing

You don’t need to tell me about the importance of branding, but it is amazing how there are certain types and methods of branding we are now so used to seeing that removing them would make something appear seriously amiss. A perfect example of this is the practise of having official shirt sponsors for professional football teams. Many people choose to sponsor a player or certain element of his kit as a way of further supporting their favourite team, the details of which can be found in every match day program, but for the last 25 years or so there has also been an official corporate shirt sponsor, who pays a certain amount of money each season for the advertising space on the chest of each player.

Despite many sponsors changing every 3 or 4 years, these sponsors logos become every bit as much of the shirt design as the club’s own logo, and many fans long carry an affinity for brands that have sponsored their club during successful periods. Our sub-conscious acceptance of this kind of promotional clothing is made obvious by how “empty” football shirts from before this period looked, and how strange some team kits have looked in the rare event that sponsorship is not fully agreed before the start of the season.

Of course, football kits make the best kind of promotional gifts to fans of the club or sport, although you will need a fair few million to sponsor a Premier League side. The practise is just as popular at amateur league level though, with many workplaces either sponsoring their own teams or teams of their employees for sometimes little more than the cost of the printed t-shirts themselves. This more local form of shirt sponsorship is fantastic value marketing for local businesses, and can be seen as a philanthropic act as well.

Printed T-Shirts

Last week saw the official request to dissolve parliament and so begin the long process of electing a new (or re-electing an old) government. Since then, local MPs and MPs in waiting have been hitting the streets of their constituencies with real menace, posting flyers, shaking hands and kissing babies. But what happens if someone doesn’t have a baby to kiss, how do you get through to them? Fortunately for all budding politicians, the realm of promotional gifts offers a plethora of different routes with which to connect and convince your electorate.

Elections are about ideas, and nothing cements and idea like a catchy slogan. Get your slogans plastered over a bunch of printed t-shirts and suddenly you have an easy way of your supporters to broadcast your ideas wherever they go. Promotional pens are also an inexpensive item to hand out while canvassing.

Slogan wise, this year seems to be the year of “Change” and “Fairness”, piggybacking on the success of our betters in the world of political-spin; the USA. Barack Obama’s campaign was a master class of marketing imagery which helped drive the slogans home even harder, with the now legendary and much satirised “brown-scale” pictures of Obama’s face becoming one of the great political images of the modern era. However, with one prominent member of the opposition already heavily lampooned over a doctored picture of himself, any ideas over that kind of iconography will probably be quietly dropped for the rest of the campaign.

Printed T-Shirts

Now many businesses attend trade shows, fairs and exhibitions on a regular basis. As you walk round one of these exhibitions you will notice that many of the businesses exhibiting will be giving away some sort of promotional gift, anywhere from a printed carrier bag for their brochures through to promotional pens, key rings, coasters and mugs. So if you are thinking of attending or exhibiting at a trade show or exhibition this year, promotional gifts, corporate gifts and business gifts will be a way to help get your business noticed and remembered.

Everybody appreciates a free gift that will actually be useful to them so why not look at taking along some promotional gifts to the exhibition. Some of the many options available to promote you business are USB memory sticks, desktop items, lanyards, pens, mugs and many other items too numerous to list here all of which can be branded with your company logo and even your business contact details.

Another advantage of free promotional gifts is that every time someone uses it they will be reminded of your business so the next time the product or service your business offers is needed the chances of them contact you is greatly enhanced. Whilst attending the exhibition or trade show, why not also have your staff members that are attending the event in promotional printed t-shirts printed with you company logos, or even embroidered fleeces, sweatshirts or baseball caps?

Printed T-Shirts

Today it is all too easy to get hold of information about a person. There are vast databases with people’s personal details stored on them that are shared amongst various companies and advertisers. It’s very tempting for the advertiser to make the most of this information and target their particular demographic through telemarketing and email. However, it has been reported by consumer watchdogs that many people find this sort of advertising highly intrusive, particularly when it becomes apparent that their personal details they’ve unwittingly submitted have been used to target them. It also seems that companies in the mobile telecommunications industries are the most guilty of using this tactic!

If you’re using this type of advertising then you must realise that you could easily be upsetting your potential customers with this perceived invasion of privacy. Rather than embracing this rather intrusive modern technology why not go for some more traditional forms of advertising that consumers feel comfortable with. In this age of untrustworthiness you can prove your company’s worth to potential customers by handing out some free promotional gifts.

Distributing free, no obligation promotional gifts or business gifts is a great way to boost your company’s public image. Everybody appreciates a free gift, and it’s a great way to advertise too. Why not have some printed t-shirts made for your business? There are so many promotional gifts available that you can have branded with your logo or colours. So, why not knock the intrusive online spamming or telemarketing on the head, it’s doing nothing your corporate image! Try spending some of that advertising budget on promotional gifts instead and see the reaction you’ll get.

Promotional Gifts

One of the beauties of using promotional gifts to advertise your business is their potential for subtly, which makes them suitable for advertising practically every kind of business. Take the example of a funeral parlour. Obviously, advertising for such a service must be discrete and a taking out an advertisement on a side of a bus would not be appropriate at all. By the same token neither would advertising on radio or television.

However, promotional gifts would be entirely suitable. For example, a plain simple, black pen could easily and tastefully be printed with the name and contact for a funeral director. These promotional pens could then be handed out to clients and would serve as an excellent, but subtle form of advertisement that wouldn’t cause offence to anyone.

This is one of the great advantages of using promotional gifts to advertise, they’re subtle! But this doesn’t mean they should be used in situations where there isn’t a necessity to be subtle. Even if you wanted to advertise something as brash as a theme park, then promotional gifts such as printed t-shirts or promotional pens could be used in conjunction with other forms of advertising too. It is this subtlety that makes promotional gifts such as effective form of advertising. A person who picked up a promotional pen from your business may put it away in a draw for months, but when they come to use it again they will be reminded of your services, possibly prompting them to make use of them again.

Eco FriendlyPromotional Gifts

Consumer fads come and go, but one noble cause which continues to grow is the concept of Fairtrade shopping. Fairtrade is an organisation that gives their logo to products and brands who are able to offer certain guarantees on the sourcing of ingredients and labour, and the environmental impact of their manufacturing processes. These guarantees normally revolve around things you would hope western companies would be committed to anyway, such as not using slave labour or the exploitation of children, but they also involve the somewhat controversial fixing of commodity prices to ensure small producers are not priced out of the market by larger competitors.

Currently, Fairtrade sales are up 12% on 2008, with Sainsbury’s the UK’s number one retailer of Fairtrade certified products, a market worth around £800m a year. This enduring trend of ethical shopping has admittedly come on the back of the longest run of economic prosperity in the post-war period, but it does point to a more considerate consumer conscience that you could do well to tap in to with your choice of promotional gifts.

Recycled Promotional Pens

For example, there are a wide range of eco-friendly promotional pens available, made from recycled plastics. There are also all kinds of promotional clothing items available made from 100% organically grown cotton, and even printed t-shirts made of bamboo that are fully bio-degradable. Even if you didn’t hear the last ten years of rallying calls for more ethical and sustainable business practises you can be sure that some of your customers did, and by utilising these kind of promotional items you will be showing that you are a company that is not only considerate to the planet, but is forward thinking in its approaches. Not a bad impression to make.

Promotional Gifts

Despite all the incredible special effects and witty writers large companies can employ to produce a multi-million pound Super Bowl advertisement, or how many glamorous they can retain to where/use/plug their product in public, marketing your product or service head to head with a competitor generally comes down to volume, meaning getting your brand in as many places, in as many ways as possible.

It can also be surprising in which industries you will find this applies, with even blockbuster Hollywood films, propelled by months of journalistic hype, interviews with cast and crew and fantastically expensive trailers, also purchasing warehouses full of promotional pens, hats and printed t-shirts to give away to fans and competition winners.

Promotional Pens

Hollywood also takes the concept of luxury promotional gifts to a… well, a completely Hollywood level. With little over two weeks to go until the 2010 Academy Awards, marketing and PR departments will already be gadding about preparing the infamous “Oscar baskets”. These are essentially hampers stuffed full of top of the range luxury watches, cosmetics, clothing and even electronic goods that are given to presenters, hosts and nominees in the hope that they will receive some positive publicity from the association. In fact is it not unheard of for top billing celebrities to make more through these marketing kickbacks than their actual appearance fee, most likely because the taxman never gets a sniff of these corporate gifts!

Promotional T-Shirts

In previous blogs we have touched on the ability of cheap promotional gifts to underpin a lucrative fundraising campaign, but the scale of giving witnessed in the wake of the Haiti disaster has been almost unprecedented. One month on from the earthquake which killed over 200,000 people and destroyed the vast majority of the country’s fragile infrastructure, total donations to private organisations helping with the relief effort are standing at nearly $650 million. Much of this has been raised via celebrity telethons or other large scale celebrity endorsed activities, but a significant proportion has been raised through the work of individuals and community groups doing their bit here and there.

Printed T-Shirts

An example of this which proved to be a resounding success following its international media coverage is 7 year old Charlie Simpson, who has raised, to date, over £170,000 from a 5 mile sponsored bike ride around his local park. He was riding on behalf of the Unicef Haiti earthquake children’s appeal, and as pictures of this inspiring effort were circulated around the globe, the Unicef logo was front and centre due to Charlie and co. wearing their promotional clothing. Now not every campaign is going to be as successful as young Charlie’s, but it is easy to secure media coverage for any and all fundraising events on a local level, giving you an opportunity to work towards both making a meaningful contribution to society and increasing your brand exposure at the same time. Low-cost promotional gifts like promotional pens also make fantastic things to “sell” at collection points either on the street or inside cooperating shops.

Go on, hand out some promotional t-shirts and make a difference.

Over the weekend the award season was kicked off in earnest with the 67th annual Golden Globe awards. Host Ricky Gervais managed to offend and entertain in equal measure but it was the night’s award winners who got everyone talking, with many predicted to go on and hoist the equivalent award at the Oscar’s in a few weeks time.

Corporate Gifts

Although the glitz and glamour of Hollywood is a world away from most people’s daily lives, every industry holds its own awards ceremonies to recognise the excellence and achievement of those within it. Whether you see them as a key motivational tool, a complete waste of your valuable time or an excellent excuse to get hammered for free, you can’t doubt their value as a promotional opportunity. Any awards received by your team or company make great slogans for promotional pens and other promotional gifts, even if they are handed out by a completely Mickey Mouse organisation.

Some larger firms elect to hold their own awards ceremonies, taking the opportunity to hand out anything from fancy corporate gifts to printed t-shirts to hard working employees and any clients they can rope in to the occasion. Even if the awards themselves mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, customers always remember the phrase “award winning”, and a bit of a knees up won’t do your employees any harm in dreary January either.