Posted by Chris Higgins on Thu, Jun 10, 2010 @ 08:19 AM
Sunday morning; things are quiet, people are moving slowly, sleeping in, taking a break from the just finished week of work while gearing up for the next. Many businesses are closed and almost every marketing department is off for the day, but printing continues to work 24/7 promoting your brand and embedding it into the sub conscience of consumers and buyers everywhere.
Recently I came across a unique and novel way to win the race for eyeballs on Sunday morning; package the Sunday paper in a full color custom printed package that promotes your brand and products. These days with the race for eyeballs raging everyday, getting there first is almost as important as getting there at all. When the first thing someone sees on Sunday morning is your logo and your brand you've won.
Not only do you win the race but like other forms of promotional merchandise or promotional advertising you control the audience and you can even measure the results. Like a desk pad calendar or a personalized USB you decide who receives your promotional message and you can include a direct response mechanism to measure your results.
The printed package that landed on my doorstep was a full color advertisement for mayonnaise of all things. The bag holding the paper was a full color advertisement and it included two extra compartments one for an actual product sample and the other for a bar coded discount coupon that you can bet can measure the effectiveness of the promotion down to the zip code if not the actual address.
Printing is everywhere, it can be loud and bold, or soft and discreet, but most of all it provides a way to completely control your advertising and brand promotion. Unlike TV and Radio with printing you control the audience, you decide who receives your promotion and with printing theres no limit to the way you deliver the message.
Printing is everywhere, it's one of the most versatile ways to promote your brand. Have you seen any unique and unexpected ways printing is used to grab your attention and convey a message, if so let us know we want to check it out and let everyone else know.
Posted by Jack Valentine on Wed, Jun 09, 2010 @ 08:59 PM
The printing revolution went edible years ago; We're all familiar with how our local supermarket bakeries can reproduce photographs on thin layers of sugar paper for cake decoration. But printing on pizza is a brand new phenomenon.
Who'd want a company logo slapped in the epicenter of their large extra-cheese, basil, tomato and garlic pie? Well, the NBA is betting that team-branded pizzas will be in huge demand at their concession stands, with fans eagerly coughing up an extra five bucks for a souvenir that will be inside their small instestines within minutes.
You know what advertising medium works far better than gimmicky pizza branding -- and also lasts a lot longer?
Customized desk pad calendars -- especially when they are tailored to your customers' specific industry and contain relevant job-related dates they won't want to forget.
Desk pad calendars, given away free to your most valuable clients, never get outdated. Well, they naturally do, at the end of the year (or 15 months, depending on what you choose). But when that last month is about to torn off, your customers hopefully will be expecting a replacement from you.
Featuring your logo and contact information, desk pad calendars allow you to be part of your next repeat customer's work environment 24/7. It's not annoying and aggressive advertising, like telemarketing. Desk pad calendars are patient: they say "Hey, I'm here whenever you need me."
Personally, I love to use a desk pad calendar. I'm a doodler and a scribbler and am always frantically searching for scrap paper to jot down a phone number. And at the end of the month -- WALLA! -- clean slate.
Check out some of these desk pad calendar designs for ideas on how to silently put them to work for you. There's no pressure to be sexy (these calendars by another printer are really over the top). You just need to come across as helpful.
And the best thing about desk pad calendars? Unlike printed pizza, these calendars won't burn the roof of your mouth! No calories, either.
Posted by Chris Higgins on Mon, May 24, 2010 @ 08:12 AM
In keeping with the theme of putting your brand in front of as many people as possible and keeping it there as long as possible the functional, attractive desk pad calendar is one of the best values around. How else can you keep your brand and contact information in front of your target audience 365 days a year?
Any desk pad calendar is useful but to be truly effective it should also be attractive and eye catching. Give them something nice to look at and they'll look at it over and over again, cementing your brand into their subconscious. Color and photographs are a great way to make your desk pad calendar stand out and earn a key spot front and center on your target audience's desk.
The example below shows the concept perfectly. This title company in Southern California gets a lot of referrals from real estate agents in their market area. They wanted to create a product to constantly remind those agents of their brand, in order to increase the flow of traffic to their offices. They recognized that a promotional desk pad calendar would provide the most long term exposure because people use calendars every day of the year, but they also wanted to make sure it was appealing to look at and more attractive than other alternatives.
People sitting at a desk often day dream about being somewhere else with a better view. Including photos of beautiful places won't take them there, but it's the next best thing. By incorporating their logo and brand information side by side with cool photos of their local environment they created a desk pad calendar that their target audience wants to look at and the more they look at it the more they remember the brand, that's exactly the point isn't it.
Posted by Jack Valentine on Mon, May 10, 2010 @ 09:59 PM
When you've been in the promotional printing business, you think you've seen it all.
Apparently, we haven't.
At first glance, using fashion models in leather dresses and catsuits to sell one of life's most unglamorous products -- the coffin -- seems like an odd marketing approach. But the Italian premium casket manufacturer, Cofani Funebri, has been promoting its product line with eye catching calendars since 2003.
Their slogan: "Death has never been so sexy."
These unusual fashion calendars are obviously meant for decorative purposes more than business planning. But the world of novelty wall calendars is filled with marketing lessons for any industry.
The goal of any promotional calendar is to put your brand in front of your clients' eyeballs and keep it there ALL the time. You want your brand to seamlessly become part of their office, a subconscious reminder of who to call when they need your product or service.
In order to do that, you obviously can't force product placement upon your customers! They have to WANT to keep your calendar around. The good news is that this does not require you to hire any scantily clad models or ask your employees to squeeze into costumes they may feel uncomfortable with. In all likelihood, you may not want to project that kind of image anyhow.
So, how do you make a promotional desk pad calendar as desirable as possible?
Take a look at a few examples of how various title insurance and real estate companies distribute engaging free desk pad calendars to their loyal customers and prospects. Whether it be the dates for courtroom filing deadlines, closing cost rates or important phone numbers, these calendars provide one-stop shopping for the target audience's informational needs.
A great desk pad calendaris inviting and roomy, with plenty of space for scrawling down appointments, phone numbers and even doodles. For all the BlackBerries, iPads and PDAs out there, many people still prefer to have their "To Do" list spread out in front of them all the time. No battery issues. And if you drop the calendar, it still works!
Right now is the ideal time to order customized desk pad calendars for the fall. Early order discounts are often available and the sooner you have the calendars in hand the sooner they can start promoting your brand .
Drop us a line to brainstorm how you can take full advantage of being in your client's workspace without being the least bit intrusive. Of course, there's not room on most desks for two huge desk pad calendars, so make sure you're there first.
Posted by Jack Valentine on Thu, Apr 08, 2010 @ 05:27 AM
Imagine that your favorite clients, the ones who keep giving you repeat business, gave you permission to put a giant promotional billboard in their offices -- reminding them to call you.
Well, in many cases, you not only have permission, but your advertising will be wholeheartedly welcomed. Amazingly, you only have to pay for the billboard and not the advertising space itself!
Despite the popularity of BlackBerries and computer calendar programs, nothing keeps employees more focused than a desk pad calendar. It's more personal than a computer screen, won't crash if the power or Internet goes down, and gives you a quick visual overview of everything on your plate.
Plus, it's a giant doodle pad, giving employees a place to jot down phone numbers and password reminders (encrypted, of course) they always want to be in front of them.
This Oregon title company went one step further and gave its real estate clients a handy directory of municipal phone numbers and zip codes that are used every day. Give away a useful promotional item to your clients and they honestly won't even see it as intrusive advertising.
Handsome desk pad calendars are mounted on thick, heavy cardboard and reinforced with durable plastic corners to keep everything neat and tidy. You can customize them with 4 color printing for much less than you might think, photographs and vibrant colors will really make your desk pad calendar stand out.
So what do you want your theme to be? This same title company's California office opted to combine American patriotism with a handy chart of their rates. First American's bald eagle logo seems to be a logical fit with the Stars & Stripes.
Customizing your promotional calendar offers a wide range of creative opportunities for layout. Check out how this title company utilized the empty calendar boxes to showcase vibrant photographs.
If you are a real estate agent who specializes in luxury homes, why not fill these boxes with some of the properties you have sold over the past year? If you sell life insurance policies, these spots are perfect for family photos of grandparents and grandchildren, weddings, birthday parties and life cycle events.
Savvy marketers seize every opportunity to put their brand in front of their customers. In addition to reminding clients who their service rep is, Stewart Title also gives them a solid reason to want to keep this calendar on the desk over any other. It has convenient reminders for when the courthouses are closed and monthly deadlines for refinancing.
Customers appreciate when you cater to their specific needs and don't treat them as a generic revenue source. Customizing desk pad calendars by industry makes a lot of marketing sense.
Embracing its Florida location, this agency chose to embrace a cheery disposition. But it also good-naturedly acknowledges the disadvantages of living in the Sunshine State -- especially from an insurance perspective.
The rainy months of April, May and June include reminders to check up on flood insurance coverage and tips on preparing for Hurricane Season!
Right now is actually Calendar Buying Season as many sales staffs like to hand out brand new desk pad calendars in the fall. Often you can find early order discounts for promotional calendars, which offer a phenomenal return on investment considering they provide nonstop -- but subtle and unobtrusive -- advertising for your business.
Put desk pad calendars on customers and clients desk's today and generate business and inquiries all year long.
Posted by Jack Valentine on Mon, Jan 11, 2010 @ 11:42 AM
With the possible exception of Google relying on brochure printing to advertise Google Ads, you don't get more ironic than this...
Twitter addicts are now choosing to permanently immortalize their tweets in an old-fashioned coffee table book. The publisher, TweetBookz.com, will capture your last 200 Twitter messages in the $30 hardcover books -- melodramatically including one Tweet per page as if it were a haiku or poetry book.
Emails, texting and Twitter have pretty much collectively slaughtered the art of the handwritten note. Meanwhile, the media is going bonkers over the Amazon Kindle, the so-called electronic book. Yet, people are seemingly yearning for the simplicity of a letter and the comfortable feel of a real book.
The TweetBookz make the Twitter feeds feel permanent because they are constantly visible, not shuffled away by the next infusion of Twittering babble.
The same principle applies to marketing and advertising your business. A snazzy, handsome printed brochure may sit on someone's desk for months, serving as a reminder to call you.
A branded desk pad calendar never stops subconsciously marketing 24/7/365. A branded presentation folder or document folder -- which serve a practical role of keeping your paperwork organized for the client -- will get stared at far longer than a Web site ad.
And get stared at much much longer than a fleeting Tweet!
Posted by Chris Higgins on Tue, Jan 27, 2009 @ 08:15 PM
Advertising is all about timing, your message needs to be in front of the prospect at the time they need your product, otherwise its very likely to be ignored; that makes it expensive. Advertising over and over, no matter what the medium can get very costly; are there other cheaper ways to keep your message in front of clients and prospects each and every day? Desk pad calendars while often not thought of as traditional advertising can be an inexpensive way for B2B companies to promote their products and services 365 day a year.
think about it; if you sell tires to consumers you need to advertise all the time, everyone with a car will need tires the problem is you never know when. Consumers can read the paper every day for 3 years, see hundreds of advertisements for tires and never pay the slightest bit of attention to them. Then they get a flat or can't pass inspection and suddenly they're looking for tire advertisements, and paying special attention to prices , location, specials, and convenience. They need tires and all of a sudden your message is relevant but only if its there for the consumer to see.
As a B2B supplier how can you keep your message in front of clients and prospects all the time to make sure that when they need what you offer your name and contact information is right there in front of them. A desk pad calendar is the perfect solution.
A custom desk pad calendar, a custom appointment book or any kind of custom calendar is inexpensive, practical, and something that will be used each and everyday. Give clients and prospects a desk pad calendar custom designed with your message and you can be sure it will stay on their desk, right before their eyes for 365 days of the year.