Made in Canada

There are many factors that play into purchasing decisions.

Here are some off the top of my head: availability, style, colour, recommendations, mood, sizing, quality, price, past experience, where it’s made, what it’s made with, and working conditions.

I’m sure you could easily tack on another dozen if you brainstormed for a minute or two.

Think about going through that list right now and ordering the factors from most important to least important to your purchase.

Now, imagine you did the exact same ordering exercise two years ago.

And, that you’ll do it again two years from now.

Chances are the list would be ordered differently each time. You’d be in different financial circumstances, surrounded by a different environment, have varying external demands on your time and your money.

Really, who hasn’t grabbed something out of a closet or drawer and muttered to themselves “What was I thinking?”

Like much of the world, we’ve been following the coverage of the garment factory collapse in Bangladesh. We’ve watched the rescue efforts,the coverage, and the subsequent response from the public.  A lot of purchasing decisions went into creating those circumstances and people are questioning those decisions right now – from corporate as well as individual levels.

Some people are calling for boycotts some are saying that boycotts aren’t the answer.

Still other people are saying that the solution lies in purchasing North American made clothing.  (And, while we’re proponents of buying North American made clothing such as American Apparel or Redwood Classics the truth of the matter is that we don’t have the production capacity in North America to handle the volume required if people switched en mass.)

All of this leaves purchasers with their heads spinning.  Understandably so.

So, what do you do?

You strike a balance.

A balance between price and labour conditions.

A balance between quality and availability.

A balance between the factors, and this is key, that are important to you.

So, think about it.

Take some time to figure out what’s important to you today and start there.

If you want to have a conversation about it, let us know on Facebook. We’d love to chat.

Don’t worry, it happens to everyone at one point or another.

You don’t need to be ashamed.

Your swag just got a little boring. Really, it happens.

Fortunately, we know ways to fix it.
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Word on the street is that the Mayans have us slated for worldly destruction come next Friday.

In an effort to keep our wits about us, and to prevent massive hoarding of bread and eggs by employees, we decided to focus the troops on their promotional product predictions for 2013, should Bruce Willis save the world (again).

Top Product Trend: Tech

With experts like Forrester predicting 375 million tablets being sold worldwide in 2016, it’s no surprise that we expect tech accessories to be a dominant trend in 2013. Even though I’m an android die-hard, overall, we look to requests for Apple-friendly accessories to drive the majority of requests.

source: Forrester

Keep an eye to our Must-Haves for a curated collection of promotional items for start-ups or the tech minded.

Time to Market

The retail to promo life cycle will shorten in 2013. Look for products introduced at retail to make it into brand-able options in ever shortening cycles.

Likewise, look to promo to introduce more products that filter to retail. Tech gloves are a great example of this type of flip-flop. We first introduced the smart-phone friendly gloves in 2010 and they didn’t hit retail until 2011.

In response to changing economics, design trends, and technology, promotional products companies are innovating in new ways that benefit end-users.

Quality over Quantity

Budgets are coming back, but marketers will remember the lessons they learned navigating the ups-and-downs that started in 2008.

We expect businesses to favor higher quality items with longer life over the tired throw-aways that have historically given promo a bad name.

As big players prove the power of swag by creating promo shopping experiences on site, other brands will follow suit with in-office swag “stores” or pop-up shops. In doing so, they will grow more protective over the statements their products make and will choose swag that reinforces their brand consciousness.

As Flux invades companies large and small, and the power of story continues to embed itself in our lives, 2013 will continue to bring change to the marketing landscape.

As long as the Mayans were wrong, that is.

RIGHTSLEEVE is a promotional products agency helping companies establish emotional connections to their brands through tangible, logoed merchandise. Please say hi on Twitter or Facebook.

When I worked in the cable TV industry, there was one really big lesson I learned: Everyone hates the cable company.

I’ve been in the promo industry for five years now, still a newbie by some measures, but I’ve also learned a valuable lesson about this industry. This recent post by Hubspot on the good, bad and ugly of swag got me thinking about whether there is such a thing as bad promo when you consider all of the different audiences. While we agree with many of their points, we also know that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.

Or to quote one of my colleagues from the industry:

There is no bad swag, only badly chosen – Heidi Thorne, @heidithorne

Rather than looking at the items themselves, we try to look at how giveaways will resonate with recipients. We think it’s great that the attendees of HubSpot’s conferences are all digitally connected, but my first-gen Motorola Xoom (<—-street cred implied there) is wi-fi only, so when I went to Cloudforce earlier this year and all of the wi-fi was password protected I was totally bummed. But then I could take notes with the kickin’ RIGHTSLEEVE branded red flair pen stashed in my bag…and yes, it was next to my Moleskin (<—–hipster implied there).

Oh, and we think the folks at ScribbleLIVE have our backs: They love their combo highlighter pens so much, they Instagrammed them:

It’s not a matter of good or bad. It’s about choosing swag smartly. -Patricia Keays

In doing an informal key chain survey around the office, I discovered a couple of things.

1. A lot of people have branded key chains.
2. People are passionate about their branded key chains (as they are about a lot of swag).

Katie Anderson, loves her Camp Kandalore key chain. She hasn’t worked at the camp in over 7 years, but she still carries it around with her and smiles from ear to ear when telling me about getting it. But, let’s set her feelings aside for a minute and crunch some numbers. If Katie has used her keys twice a day (once when leaving home and once when coming home) every day for the last 7 years, that adds up to over 2500 times that Katie has looked at her Kandalore key chain.

At less than one cent, that’s the type of cost per impression that marketers dream about!

Would a Camp Kandalore Key chain have the same effect on me? Nope. But, I’ve had the Roxy keychain below for close to ten years. I got it on a trip to Hawaii for my brother’s wedding so the sentimental value of that keychain is through the roof for me. I actually dove to the bottom of a dumpster and fished that key chain out of a puddle of trashed-filled water one time.

Pictured above starting at 12:00: Rob Montebelli, from the RIGHTSLEEVE spin-off company commonsku, carried his soccer key chain with him when he moved from Italy. Julia Corcoran loves the Heineken key chain she got in Amsterdam.  I went dumpster-diving to save my Roxy key chain, and Katie Anderson still carries her Camp Kandalore keychain long after leaving camp.

Bottom line: Keychains resonate with recipients when chosen well and distributed appropriately.

Rule #1 for trade show promo: make sure the product matches the needs of the audience. -Mark Graham in 7 Ways Social Media can Transform Your Next Swag Campaign

Bottomer line: All swag resonates when chosen well and distributed properly.

HubSpot and I could argue back and forth all day on what specific pieces of swag we like the best, and that’s okay…we do that exact thing in the RIGHTSLEEVE office too. What HubSpot thinks is cool swag isn’t going to be what the next company thinks is cool…the commenters on HubSpot’s original post prove that point. That’s why we emphasize the importance of matching your swag to your audience.

So, next time you’re planning for a tradeshow or a giveaway or an award or any other piece of branded merchandise you’re giving out, think about your recipients first and the items second.

It’s taken me a couple of days but I’ve almost recovered from our annual client party. All day this year, I kept comparing our event to a wedding. You spend months arranging details like food, guest lists, venue etc. and the day of the event comes and goes in such a whirlwind of activity that you look back on it and wonder if parts of it were a dream.

With a name like SWAG2.0, our use of product marketing should be top notch. Our goal this year was to infuse our entire event with promotional products and do it in such a way that we highlighted some of the many ways you can use swag well.

Say Hello
They say there’s no second chance to make a first impression and that’s why we like to hand out a nice gift as soon as guests arrive to our party. This year, we chose the chromo journal because they’re a quality piece of stationary and the chrome trim makes them a real eye-catcher.

Chromo Journals

In the early days of SWAG2.0 we went back and forth on the use of name tags; after all we know our clients! But, then we realized that our clients don’t necessarily know each other and name tags make introductions a lot easier. We still like to to keep the name tag thing kinda casual so we encourage guests to write their own and add a spark of creativity if they like.

Name Tags

Engage
One of my favorite things about product marketing is that you can use a normal product in a unique way and give it an entirely different life. Anyone remember when we used a post-it wall as our sign-in book? Well, this year, we took a unique product and made it even more special.

Animal Poppers

Our animal poppers have been a big hit as employee gifts as most people appreciate their ability to relieve stress and cause a few laughs. We decided to give our poppers even more of a personality by making them the focal point in a game we called “Popper Pong”. In addition to showing how our products can be given new life with a different application, Popper Pong was a great talking point, an ice breaker, and a way for our clients to engage with each other.

Playing Popper Pong

The idea of Popper Pong was to have fun, so we made sure that everyone got a prize for playing. Manufacturing a one-inch button on the spot if you scored was also a way to introduce an offline, viral component to the event. Seeing players proudly displaying their red, blue, or yellow pins was a great way to let word-of-mouth do our jobs and direct new players back to the game.

Interact
Swag2.0 is all about interaction and engagement.

We already had our ice-breaker with Popper Pong, but we wanted something else to drive interaction with our products and also put to good use our love of social media.

QR Coded Stress Toy

QR codes are a great way to link offline products with online activities so we decided to run a QR code contest. When guests scanned the QR codes on their free stress toy they were taken to one of two videos which indicated if they won or lost. Winners were then directed to the RIGHTSLEEVE booth to pick up either a Sigg waterbottle or a slap-watch as their prize.

RIGHTSLEEVE Branded Sigg Bottles & Slap Watches

I must admit that sending folks to our RIGHTSLEEVE booth to pick up their prize wasn’t on accident. We sent guests there to

• get the full tour of our event
• interact with some of our great staff
• showcase work we’ve done with other great companies

Leave ‘em with More
Okay, so the phrase is “leave them wanting more,” but in this case we wanted to send our clients on their way with a great swag bag of useful, eye-catching items. As guests departed the event, we handed them their final dose of product. We stuffed our sling and ella coolers with a variety of gear

1. a branded cookie to provide sustenance on the trip home
2. a torino tumbler to use for favorite summer beverages
3. a custom-shaped RIGHTSLEEVE keychain to remind everyone of their favorite swag event of the year!

SWAG Bags with our Torino Tumbler peeking out

We put on SWAG2.0 every year because we love our clients and want to show them a great time. Using swag to entertain and delight is just the icing on our proverbial wedding cake. If you came to the event we all hope you had a blast and that you learned a new thing or two about creative ways to use promotional products.

To see more pictures from the event, check out our Facebook album.

For some great ideas on product marketing you don’t have to wait until next year, give us a call (1.877.975.3383) or subscribe to the SWAG2.0 blog.

We leave you with one cookie to rule them all.

Cookie photo courtesy Carolyn Van.

Knowing the scope of your campaign makes a big difference when deciding on your product marketing. Things like gender marketing go beyond pinks and blues nowadays. For example, motorcycle shows are a typically male crowd, but 10% of Harley Davidson buyers are women. Knowing that, Harley Davidson can ensure women are accounted for as a small percentage of their product mix.

It can be content marketing, an editorial calendar, or promotional items, but coming up with fleshed out campaigns is universally one of the most procrastinated tasks in a day. Read around the web and you’ll get lots of advice on where to come up with ideas.  Scanning magazines, looking at your competitors, and researching keywords are all places to generate ideas, but I prefer the 5Ws tack to generating promo ideas. This fundamental tool of journalism is a great trick for tailoring your promo campaign.

Product Campaign Cheatsheet

• Who is it for?
• What is happening?
• When is it taking place?
• Where does it take place?
• Why are you giving something away?
• How will you give it away?
• How much are you going to spend?

It’s super-easy to call your promotional marketing partner and give them vague generalities of what you’re looking for but you’ll probably spend the next several weeks trading emails and phone calls back and forth on ideas that don’t really hit the mark. Instead, spend one minute each fleshing out  the questions above and in under ten minutes, you’ll have your promo campaign setting off on sure footing.

Since opening our doors in 2000, we’ve had the good fortune of working with thousands of clients who have engaged us to plan their promotional campaigns. We’ve also witnessed the odd promotional train wreck. After 12 years in business, we sat down and analyzed the tens of thousands of orders we have produced and identified three common mistakes that marketers  make when organizing their promotional marketing.

Problem #1/You’re Hitting the Snooze Button

You’ve spent months creating and planning a project then a week before it goes live someone asks what your giveaway is. You call “your promo guy” and tell him you need something that your customers will love and keep forever.

Oh, and you need it in three days. And, your budget is gone.

What do you get? Something small, rushed, and cheap. And it falls flat.

The Fix

Don’t let your promo be an afterthought. Sure, we’re great at coming up with stuff on the fly and getting it to you when you’re crunched for time, but that’s not how the best campaigns are run. You plan your ad spend ahead of time. You plan your events ahead of time. Why wait until the last minute to plan your promo? Bring us in early to get better ideas, a wider variety of products, and maybe even a better price.

We know it’s tempting to keep hitting snooze, but try getting up early a few times to see how much better your campaign is.

Problem #2/You’re Firing a Shotgun

You know the principle:

Marketing strategy whereby (in contrast to rifle approach) the aim is to cover as wide an area or population as possible.

This tells us that you don’t:

• know your target audience,
• have product ideas that speak to them or
• have the time to figure it out

So you go high quantity & low price and hope that your message sticks because SO many people will get it. It’s like throwing a promo hail mary. To go really wide you’re going to have to go low cost which will limit your chance to get a product that speaks to your ideal customer. You’re left handing out XL men’s shirts to an audience half-filled with women. Even if those women love your brand, those shirts will go straight into the PJ drawer.

The Fix

Understand your target audience by

• looking at the demographics
• engaging them on social media
• finding out what they like

In short, do your homework.

Be picky about who you’re giving your brand away to and focus on your core. Move your event sign-up online and ask registrants to indicate their shirt size during sign-up. Use these numbers to get a feel for your audience then order accordingly.

Problem #3/You’re missing the medium

Your boss gives you an assignment: Remind our employees that our company is a fun place to work.

You call “your promo guy” and he throws your logo on a pen or padfolio and you hand them out at meetings.

Yawn.

The Fix

Promotional marketing isn’t about putting your message on an item, it’s about making the item part of your message.

I’m actually turning into a high school english teacher as I write this, but SHOW your audience, don’t tell them.

Then add your message to it and the medium becomes your message.

	If you wan to be fun, put your brand on poppers
	If you want to capitalize on a current trend go for capsacs
	If you want to appeal to the youth market check out tuber’z

You might not commit these promo mistakes, but you probably know someone who does, so keep these tips handy in the event of a promo intervention.

Did we miss something? Or miss the mark completely? Let us know in the comments!

And, remember, Friends don’t let friends buy bad promo.

I had the pleasure of speaking at the ASI Chicago show last week to a number of advertising specialty professionals. My focus was on marketing best practices and the connections between brand leaders like Google, Zappos & Apple and the promotional products industry. This is a topic near and dear to my heart as I have always believed that business success is largely defined by the emotional connection a company has with their customers. Google, Zappos & Apple have inspired me with their approaches to marketing, branding and customer loyalty.

Many of their best practices have shown up over the years in RIGHTSLEEVE‘s approach to branding and I wanted to share some of these with you here.

My second presentation was on budget friendly marketing tips for people in the promotional products industry. If you have any additional marketing tips you wish to add, please comment below or let me know on Twitter or Google Plus.

We have been the merchandise sponsor of the Mesh conference since it started six years ago. It has been a wonderful partnership that we hope will continue for many years. We wanted to share some perspectives on the approach that was taken this year as it was particularly successful.

We have learned that a conference swag program is a success when you look around after the first day and have a “ditched to kept” swag ratio of 0 to 100. Believe me, I have been to my share of conferences where attendees conveniently “forget” their lackluster swag bag in the washroom, beside their seat, or in the hallway. Unfortunately, it’s the alarmingly high “ditched to kept” ratio at most conferences that give this industry a bad name.

Here’s what we did  to make this year’s program a success (in conjunction with the wonderful event planning firm MCC Planners and the brand aware Mesh founders).

1. Understand the target customer. We picked a bag that we knew attendees would actually use. As the target demographic was the technology community (geeky, picky, discerning swag aficionados) we knew that a bag that could serve as a grocery tote, laptop/tablet holder or even a purse for women would resonate with both genders.

2. It’s all about perceived value. The bag had high perceived value, validated by a retail price of around $50. Attendees of tech conferences are often inundated with cheap swag and many openly mock these gifts on blogs. We wanted to surprise attendees with a product they weren’t expecting.

3. Make it colourful. Most swag is produced in black or navy in an attempt to appeal to the masses. But when you aim for the middle, the results are often average at best. When people see colour, they get excited because it’s so unusual. We printed 50% of the bags in black and 50% in vibrant colours and within hours people were looking to trade their black bags for one of the coloured bags (yes, even the guys).

4. Don’t give away all the swag away at once. When delegates arrived, they were presented with their package (agenda, speaker bios, schedule, the bag) in addition to a printed voucher which entitled  them to a “limited edition” mesh T-shirt. This voucher was redeemable at a separate merchandise table (aka pop up store). People loved this because it gave them something to do and also extended the gift experience.

5. Cater to the women! We printed 7 different colours of shirts in a full size spectrum, ranging from ladies small to men’s xl. People loved the choice of colours, but the consistent comment was that “the shirts actually fit and weren’t cut to fit like a dress” or “wow, I will actually wear this shirt out tonight!” While a tshirt printed with a 1 colour logo is quite inexpensive, they were still a success due to the fact they fit, were stylishly printed and were not constructed from your typical cardboard-like cotton.

6. Merchandise like a retailer. Conference  swag doesn’t need to be squirreled away in tattered Made in China boxes when it can be nicely merchandised out in the open. Retail stores know this tactic as it’s an effective way to entice shoppers to buy. In a promotional setting where the goods are free, it’s just as important to create that sense of excitement by having a nice presentation. After all, you are asking recipients of your merchandise to walk around advertising your brand. This is all the more reason to make the experience exciting. We had access to a fantastic (and sharply dressed) volunteer team that helped merchandise and distribute the product at the merch booth. Little things like this count.

7. Engage the online community. A big part of the success of any merchandise program is gauging people’s reactions online. People increasingly turn to Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, etc to share their views with their friends. As most people like to receive free products, they usually talk about this online. Engaging with the Mesh community online about the swag was an important component of the program (examples here, here and here). One of the most powerful ways to extend a promotional products campaign is to keep it alive online. For some more thoughts on swag and social media, click here.

At the end of the day, we wanted to elevate the product and turn it into an experience. We accomplished this by creating a sense of excitement about receiving a limited edition shirt in a separate merch area as well as giving out a bag with high utility value. This was in contrast to doing swag for the sake of giving something out as people simply expect it (and often ordering it at the last minute because it wasn’t part of the initial marketing strategy).

When people get something they like, they talk about it and share stories with their friends. In the digital age, this is amplified via Twitter and Facebook, especially at a tech conference. When a promotion goes well, this translates into a great product marketing success story which attracts plenty of eyeballs – which is the whole point, isn’t it?

Photo credit (at top) Alexa Clark

Other photos, credit Kaz Ehara

I believe that it’s the little things that count in business.

Unless you are Google or Facebook and have invented a brand new business model, most industries are defined by commoditization, noise, price pressure and utter dullness. This makes it harder to stand out more than ever these days. Offering “great service, prices and quality” no longer cuts it as a point of differentiation in today’s market. This is why the businesses that truly soar ahead of the competition have figured out that customer experience is often their secret weapon.

Let me give you an example.

I just ordered business cards from moo.com, a slick, webby operation that transacts exclusively online. While their site is what you would expect from a progressive, designed oriented startup, what really sets them apart is their packaging.

I ordered 50 cards as part of a promotion with about.me (they offered to print 50 cards of my about.me profile). I have ordered scores of business cards over the years and my decision often comes down to price simply because there are so many choices. Business card printing is even more commodity driven than the Tshirt business, something I know a lot about.

Sure, the cards were well printed, but the magic was in the packaging. This is what hooked me from the moment I opened the box. Up until a few days ago, I didn’t think it was possible to be excited about business cards. Take a look at the packaging below.

Here are some lessons I take away from this experience with moo

1. Invest in good design and copy. These are the tiny details that people remember. Successful companies like Groupon know all about the power of copywriting (see New York Times article).

2. Invest in packaging or hang tags. If you are selling a Tshirt, add a hangtag (well designed) that speaks to the customer. If you are selling business cards, do what moo.com did.

3. Make it emotional. I have not stopped talking about these business cards because I was excited to learn about the moo story. They came across as real people that really cared about my business. I want to do business with people that care about what my order means to them.

4. Have a good product. Above all, your product must be good. If your product quality stinks and your customer service is horrible, it doesn’t matter if you invest in 1-3. People will see through you pretty quickly.

There’s no question that the current business climate is demanding. Competition is particularly cutthroat in mature industries where the barriers to entry are very low. However, this also represents an incredible opportunity for businesses to introduce design-based thinking to connect with and inspire their customers. As is often the case in life, it’s usually the little things we remember.

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ps. This post was inspired in part by my good friend Bobby Lehew’s article on Delight and Surprise.