These can shaped fridges are amazing. We recently did a few for our client Sportsgirl. You can check them out at many of their shops. These are electric powered fridges and they absolutely yell out F.U.N. They stand out and they really attract customers BIG TIME. Better still they add to the ambience of a shop and really makes things better all round! The graphic applied is a gorgeous full colour wrap which goes write around the fridge! Check out more about our range of custom branded mini fridges. They work great as Point of Sale products as well in store promotions or as fridges to contain cold sampling products.

A survey by Torch Media found some interesting buying habits by us consumers. If you are like me and you arm yourself with a trusty pad and pencil with a list of to buy items and you are adamant that you will buy nothing else then you will be surprised to learn that almost 60% of all consumers buy more thane what we plan to.

The stats make for interesting reading. Apparently:
- 64% of shoppers make a list
- 58% of these shoppers make extra purchases not on the list
- Aussies make a huge 1.9 billion visits to shopping centers each year
- 50% of all household income is spent there (I really doubt this stat though. Do none of us have mortgages?)
- 70% of which brand to purchase is made at the shelf

It is predicted that consumers will spend $23 billion this year. Hopefully this will give our ailing retailers a welcome break!

Needing new promotional products? Want to be the first to come up with a BRIGHT & SMART IDEA? How about be a Smartie and recommend using Custom Printed Smarties for your next marketing event. Newly available at Cubic Promote, we offer branding onto the those bright coloured button chocs. Available in bulk buy from 5KGS or order them as individually packaged packs.

Don’t head to your next marketing meeting with generic ideas, be SMART! let them know the new craze is Promotional Chocolate Smarties!

More Custom Printed Smarties will be up on our website soon, stay tuned.

Promotional items are a great gifting tool for your business. Whether it is for corporate gifting to existing customers or as products for potential new customers. Most of the products you would see on our website do not include packaging as we understand that many of the items will be quickly whipped out and handed to customers therefore the need for box’s which will increase bulk, increase cost and increase effort to unpack them mean that other than the most products do not have packaging. With the exception of some items which have a need for a box to keep accessories together or for items which require protection.

However having a gift box does instantly increase the perceived value of a product. This is especially the case for when products like promotional pens or promotional usb keys. It is true that the packaging will be stored after the event. However the initial impression and the anticipation of opening a box does give you and your company logo an emotive marketing cache and makes you much much more memorable. That and the fact that it is simply a nicer way to present a marketing merchandise. So why not consider purchasing a gift box for your next promotional item. It may be a very very small cost but a very worthwhile one!

Promotional thermal mugs are great for keeping drinks hot. Many may not know however they are just as effective in keeping drinks cool too. So they work well as a promotional item for both summer time and winter time. So how exactly does a thermal mug work? How do they keep hot things hot yet still keep cold things cold. Well its all about conductivity ie. transfer of energy heat. You see when hot water is poured into a mug the surface of the mug will be colder than the water. After a short while the temperature of the water will come down and the temperature of the mug will go up and they will both reach an equal temperature point (vice versa for cold drinks and a warmer mug). Once this equal temperature is made your hot beverage will continuosly lose heat as it is transfered through the mug and onto your hand or the outside temperature…… this is for a regular mug.

A thermal mug however is different. It has 2 walls and a space in between. This space is typically filled with either foam, air or vaccum. A vaccum space works best but all of the others work quite well too. Heat does not conduct well through air. This means that in a thermal mug when heat escapes the first wall it stays there and does not venture further which in turn will keep your beverage hot. (or cold)

Over time though all hot beverages will get cold. It just takes a lot longer with a thermal mug because the only escape the heat can make is either through the top or the top edges of the mug where the 2 walls join together.

Promotional thermal mugs make for great promotional items simply because they work. They will keep beverages a lot hotter and colder for longer periods than conventonal cerramic promotional mugs!

T.V is quite engineered today. Especially with reality gameshows the content created for viewers is very structured very organised and nothing you see on t.v is really spontaneous. This is especially the case with product placements. Originally these products were just that. Items that were used within a T.V show such as a can of soup or a cleaning product. However increasingly there are more and more branded promotional items which are displayed on T.V simply because they are a form of advertising. Love it or not they actually contribute to the content of the show. A show like Masterchef is able to afford bigger stunts, bigger celebrities and bigger surprises purely because they can afford to once advertisers jump on board. In turn audiences like myself love it when people like Heston and other great chefs do crazy things on screen.

A survey conducted by The Reality TV Insights on 400 viewers found a staggering 94% of viewers indicated that there buying behaviours were swayed when they saw a product placement on T.V. A huge 60% further said that they went out and purchased something after seeing it. Now Aussie T.V viewers arent silly we can see the placements and carefully crafted logos such as embroidered polo shirts and promotional bags emblazoned with a logo a mile away. However that still doesnt mean we are not susceptible to the message. With many recording devices now being used that can allow users to skip advertising this is definitely the way of the future in T.V advertising I would expect to see more and more placement advertising in the future.

The colour red is a very popular colour among many companies. There are many logos which are either predominantly red or have red motifs through it. In fact if you happen to be looking at a city skyline in any given city such as Sydney, Melbourne or even Hong Kong or New York you would notice many of the building signs are either in Red or White. This is because with LED lighting which powers many of these signs are mainly coloured in either red or white. Until recently Blue & Green signs were not popular as they were much much more expensive to produce.

The colour red works well on a variety of backgrounds such as white or black and is easy to make a simple logo stand out. We at Cubic Promote realise that red is a very popular colour and it is for that reason that many of our promotional items come in red such as:

Red Promotional Pens
Red Promotional Bags
Red Stressballs
Red Branded Yo Yo’s
Red Printed Fribees
Red Corporate Caps
Red Customised Flashdrives

More than any other colour red appeals emotionally to more people. It is a stimulating colour and a strong vibrant red radiates the impression of energy. In a corporate logo sense it conveys a sense of confidence and of youth and enthusiasm. It also conveys a shelter protection feel about it too.

From time to time a lot of our promotional items are branded with not just our clients logos and names but also with a short slogan. Here are some of the best slogans we have seen… some of them we have branded on various products ourselves. For a smart slogan it is not neccessary to have a lot of length. Just a lot of wit and some humour can go a long long way. In other instances a slogan can imply and give an added dimension to the perception of a brand. A great slogan can make something boring cool and can make a product become very memorable for years and years. In some instances savvy companies are able to change their slogan subtly over the years. Coca Cola is a master of doing this. Here are some slogans which you may have probably heard of:

- Nike - Just Do It!
- MasterCard - There Are Some Things Money Cant buy. For anything else there is Mastercard! (this has launched a million funny ad scenarios)
- Obama - Yes we Can! (at that point in time these 3 words resonated loudly wih voters)
- Loreal - Because you’re worth it!
- Mcdonald’s - I’m loving it!
- DeBeers - A diamond is forever! (men around the world should be really upset at this slogan as its been ingrained into our culture now)
- Intel - Inside! (seriously a 1 worded slogan is pure genious)
- M&M’s - melt in your mouth not in your hands (i remember this from the 80’s)

Its amazing but a really well placed witty slogan can work absolutely miracles and allows you to cheekily extend your marketing message beyond a simple brand logo on your print marketing and promtional item marketing!

In terms of colour the 2nd most popular promotional product range by colour is green promotional items. Behind blue green is the most popular. For that reason most of our custom branded products have an option for a green colour. In some instances we offer both a lighter green option as well as a deeper bottle green option. For our range of cool dry polo and promotional tee shirts we even have some products which have an attractive contrasting colour trims too.

So whats so appealing with green promotional products? Well other than the obvious connection to sustainability and care for the environment the colour green has been known to be a calming colour much like Blue. Green is commonly associated with being calm and stable. Both of which are very good traits for your corporate image. From a Fung Shui perspective which is a traditional chinese way of cultivating luck and fortune represents growth and springtime.

Some of the promotional items that come in green that we stock include:
Green Promotional Caps
Green Brandable Post its
Green Promotional Pens
Green Corporate Mousemats
Green Custom Umbrellas
Green Customised notepads
Green Personalised stubby coolers
Green Promotional Bags

Do you have an upcoming event but are a little short of funds to add anything that is fun? Well sponsorship and having an additional logo on your promotional product may be a good idea. The trick here though is to choose a promotional item which have a larger than normal branding area to ensure that there is enough branding space for the both you and the sponsor. If you are looking for a sponsor it is generally a good idea to have the sponsor in a similar field to either what you do or the event that you will be using the promotional items for.

However first things first. How do you attract sponsors in the first place? Well here are some tips.

1) Be persistent. Assuming 1 out of every 35 companies will reject you it makes sense to contact as many companies as possible. So statistically speaking if you contact 70 companies there is a chance that 2 of them may be interested.

2) Be patient and plan early. The wheels within a large organisation can move slowly so please plan ahead and contact your potential sponsor early. It can sometimes take as long as 6 months.

3) Target businesses first that are either related to what you or the event does. eg. If it was sponsorship for a motor car race then perhaps target companies that sell oil or car accessories first.

4) You must be precise on what you offer. You need to consider something that is measurable and articulate this quickly and briefly to the potential sponsor. If they are briefly interested you need to have more in depth detail and a measurable benefit to them in order for the sponsor to be interested.

5) Put yourselves in your sponsors shoes. Identify if they will benefit from increased brand exposure and if that will lead to greater sales.

6) Create and emphasize cross marketing opportunities like internet websites, social networking site exposure, print and media exposure, promotional items co - branding like team shirts and the like.

Hopefully these tips may help you secure sponsorship.