Promo Products Tips - Define Your Brand

Here's the 2nd of my ongoing series of promotional product buying tips - which hopefully will make the buying process a little bit easier.  These should apply to any size business but can be particularly helpful if you either don't have a lot of experience buying promo items or if marketing is just part of your overall job responsibilities.  

One of the most important things to keep in mind when planning a project involving promotional items is knowing your own brand.  Understanding your brand - that set of values, symbols or ideas that identifies and differentiates your product / organization -  gives you the perfect starting point from which to launch any promotional project.

A promotional item that you hand out should be considered an extension of your brand and thus should reflect what that brand stands for.  If your company sells a luxury product, handing out say, a plastic pen probably, probably  isn’t going to work.  Whereas if you provide a great value product, focusing on something inexpensive, yet well made, might be a good way to go.

Facebook is certainly considered a hip, trend-setting company. You expect cool swag from them, not some generic stuff that everyone else hands out.  As an example I recently attended an event that they put on and among the items in the ‘swag bags’ that they handed out were EOS lip balm and a brand new phone charger.

  

Some companies, in fact many small businesses, may encounter difficulty defining their brand mainly because they haven’t given it a whole lot of thought given the challenges of operating a business on a day to day basis..  If that’s the case for your company, try writing down exactly what you consider your brand to be.

Every marketing piece an organization hands out should reflect its brand. Knowing exactly ‘who you are’ - i.e. understanding that brand - is often a great way to begin the task of coming up with great promotional items for any project.

Promotional Products Work Week 2016

A few years back the Promotional Products Association International decided to dedicate one week each year towards raising awareness of the effectiveness of promo products as an advertising medium.

It was a very wise move given some of the push back that the industry was getting from some  politicians and a few other loud voiced naysayers who saw promo products as nothing more than an expense - and in their minds, a needless one - that was helping drain public sector budgets of funds that could be better used elsewhere..

This came on the heels of a move by the pharmaceutical industry (equally as short sighted) aimed at curtailing the use of promo items for the exact opposite reason - that they were too effective when it came to influencing physicians on which medications to prescribe for their patients.  

Promotional Products Work Week - which runs from May 23 to 27 this year - is a nice response.  Consider that certain more mainstream forms of advertising have been in more or less steady decline ever since the rise of the internet, yet promotional product spending continues to increase annually.  It’s now a 21 billion dollar industry and is showing no signs of slowing down!

Why? Promotional products engage. They’re tangible (as opposed to abstract like a commercial). They stay in front of their intended audience. They create recall.  They create goodwill.  People want them (and get excited about receiving them) They commemorate and create memories. They reinforce what your brand is all about. And maybe the most overlooked feature - they compliment the other forms of marketing by increasing their effectiveness.  

And as we move forward, with the continued downward spiral of TV, radio and newspaper and the rise of mobile and social media, promotional products are poised for even more growth for the reasons that I just mentioned.

Promotional products work.  They’ve always worked.  And they will continue to work for a long, long time to come!

Promotional Products & the High (Marketing) Rent District

I like to think of promotional products as keys that open the door to valuable real estate property. Now it wouldn’t surprise me if your initial reaction to that statement is “whoa….what’s he smoking today?”  But hear me out….

Promotional products are all about gaining people’s attention - specifically the intended audience for a marketing message.  What’s unique about promo items is that the recipient places the item somewhere - be it the desk, in the kitchen, in the car, on a wall etc.

 

Now think of those areas in terms of real estate.   In the places a promo item’s recipient spends his or her time, your brand or marketing message is gaining access to that ‘property’.  And that’s one benefit that makes promotional items unique. No other advertising medium can place your message into those hard to reach - but extremely valuable - places quite as effectively as promotional products.

Say you’re a freight forwarding company.  What’s it worth to have your brand on the desk of shipping managers every single work day?  Items that could accomplish that task include a desk blotter, note cube, note holder or letter opener among many others.

If you own a restaurant that does Take Out and can gain access to a customer’s refrigerator door, guess where they’ll be looking when they’re hungry?

 

Think about where you’d like to have your marketing message seen by the people you’re seeking to reach.  You’ve just taken a step beyond the so called ‘trinkets and trash’ mindset and you start to realize just how useful a carefully chosen promotional item can be!

5 'Other' Ways You Can Imprint a T-Shirt

T-Shirts are a big part of my business and the main reason for that is they are such an effective promotional tool.  After all, a T-Shirt is literally like a blank billboard. You can fill it however you choose, and your message will be seen by anyone who comes in contact with the shirt.  If the shirt is imprinted a clever or memorable message, it will be noticed.

However it's also easy to stay in what I call the 'One Color on a White Shirt' mindset. I'd say the vast majority of orders that any printer prints on a given day will be of the one ink color variety.  And that makes sense, as one color imprints work perfectly fine. Your target audience still gets the message and the per shirt cost gets kept down, so everyone wins.

But there are other imprint techniques available that can transform a simple T-Shirt into art, and if your budget allows, you may want to at least consider one of the following techniques for an upcoming order:

Four Color Process

This print method literally uses 4 Process Inks (as opposed to spot color inks) -- Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black to achieve a multi-colored design. The transparent inks are applied directly on the shirt in a dot format that uses half-tones and the blending of colors to achieve a look with many colors, shading and fine details.  High Resolution Screens are needed due to the nature of the inks and expect some significant art prep. But whether it's a design like the one shown above, or one with a photo, 4 (or full) color process is the technique to use.

 

 

Heat Transfers

This is a great alternative to 4 color process screen printing when small quantities of multi color designs are needed.  There are some limitations with this technique, but for many full color designs this is an option worth considering. Basically you're printing a full color digital image onto a piece of vinyl transfer material. That material is then heat transferred onto the shirt via a special press. You pay more per shirt, but you don't have an screen charges. Need a dozen shirts with a complex art design for an event next weekend? Your most cost effective option is a transfer imprint.  

 

Vintage Soft Hand Screen Printing

This technique prints with a washed down appearance and vintage quality, especially when combined with distressed artwork.  To achieve this look a soft based additive is incorporated into the ink mixture and the design is printed without the use of an underlay of white ink.  The National Football League has done a terrific job marketing vintage apparel with versions of team logos that were used in past decades. This is the imprint method they use.  

 

Foil Ink

This is an overlooked, yet terrific technique to really make a logo shine (literally). It involves an adhesive, that looks like a white paste, getting screened onto the shirt. Then a special type of foil is heat transferred onto the white adhesive. Run it through the dryer and you get a look like the one pictured above.  

Reflective Ink

Got an event happening outdoors at night?  Consider reflective ink.  This is an ink that literally contains microscopic glass particles.  Shine a light on it in the dark and your design really pops.

These are just a few of many imprint techniques which can help turn your T-Shirt design into something that people are going to want to wear. There are many more. If you need some help with the creative aspect of this, please contact us.

Charge It!

I'm not sure whether its that the big iPhone update earlier this year did a tune on batteries or just an indication of how much we've come to rely on mobile, but the hottest promotional item around right now the portable charger for mobile devices. The demand for these is so big at
present that the suppliers are struggling to keep them in stock.

If you're a would-be buyer of chargers for branding purposes, the amount of of choices can be confusing. And inevitably, when any promo item gains popularity - the 'we have the cheapest ones' companies will be out on the internet doing what they do.

One important thing to keep in mind however is that appearances can be deceiving. Not all chargers are alike - in fact there are significant differences in performance and quality that are easy to miss unless you read the fine print (i.e. the specs).

Among the key figures to look at:

Milli amp Hour (mAh) 

This is How you assess battery capacity. Think of it as the gas tank in a car. Not only do chargers have different capacities, so do the devices that they charge, The iPhone 5S for example has a 1560 mAh internal battery while the Samsung Galaxy S4's is 2600 mAh. 

With tablets the differences are even greater. The iPad 1's battery is 6600 mAh for example. The iPad 3's meanwhile is 11,560! 

Other Factors-

Input Current- How quickly a charger charges itself.  The lower the number, the longer it takes.

Output Current-  How quickly a charger charges a connected device.  A charger with a 1 Amp output will charge an iPhone at the same rate as the phone's wall charger.  But it won't come close to charging an iPad which requires a 2.1 Amp output.

UL/ETL Certification- Last year there were reports of people being shocked and fires even being caused by some low-end generic chargers.  UL/ETL certification comes from independent laboratories that ensure that the chargers are safe to use. Pay particular attention to this certification when buying from anyone stating 'we have the cheapest chargers'. If it's not there, you're putting your brand needlessly at risk.

Here are 3 solid choices in the 3 main price categories:

Jolt

Slim and easy to carry, this charger also packs a punch -the 2,200 mAh internal battery can fully charge an iPhone and its 1A output means it charges at the same rate as the iPhone's wall charger. Price range: $13.00+

Zoom Mini

Another diminutive charger that really packs a wallop.  It fits in a pocket, but the 2800 mAH battery will fully charge all smart phones and at the same time its 2.1 Amp output speed ensures that it will put a decent (though not full) charge on a tablet.  It charges itself in 2-3 hours and will hold a charge for 900 hours - over a month,of standby time.  Also takes a full color imprint.  Price Range: $38.00+

Zoom Energy

Small and compact but this 8,400 mAh Li-Ion battery device is powerful enough to charge all generations of iPad, Kindle and other Tablet/eReader Devices. It can also charge 2 Smartphones at once because it has two USB outputs.  Plus it's "Zoom" charging technology allows you to charge at an output speed up to 2.1 Amps, so you can quickly keep all of your mobile devices operational. It fully charges in 4.5 hours and will hold its charge for 900 hours. Price Range: $95.00

The Ongoing Challenge to Teach the Value of Promotional Products

The following article first appeared on the blog site Technorati under the title: California Bans State Agencies From Buying Promotional Products.

I wrote it because stories like this one seem to be coming down the pipeline far too often these days. There is a sentiment out there among some that promotional products are about 'trinkets and trash' or 'swag'. With all due respect, my response to that is that those who feel that way really don't have much of a concept of what marketing is really all about.

Anyway....here it is.....

You know the expression 'penny-wise and pound foolish'? That's California Governor Jerry Brown. Governor Brown this week banned state agencies from purchasing promotional products — a move that figures to save the state in the neighborhood of 7 to 8 million dollars over the next 3 years.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a promotional product is a useful everyday item that carries an ad message — be it an imprinted pen, a t-shirt or something a bit more elaborate like a computer flash drive with a logo printed on the casing.

Read more: http://technorati.com/business/advertising/article/california-bans-state-agencies-from-buying/#ixzz1EwjE1npF