Retro is cool!! The term retro commonly refers to a theme or colour or product which is closely associated with a trend that was popular within the last 40 years. There is a nostalgic quantity which is associated with Retro as it can bring up past experiences or the perception of a past which may be a positive association with a bygone era. In other instances retro themed products or retro themed marketing may have amusing or funny connotations such as:

- Mullet Haircuts

- Hyper Colour Change T shirts

- Bad Music

- Bell Bottom Trousers

In other instances retro re-invented in some way can simply be cool. There are quite a few promotional products in our range that can be viewed in some way as being Retro and can bring a lot of positive attributes to your marketing campaign. Here are the top 5 retro products which we believe be really strong marketing tools:

1) Custom Branded Slinkies - (invented in the 40’s But synonomous with the 50’s & 60’s)

2) Fortune Cookies - (invented in ancient China but made popular in the 80’s)

3) Personalised Rubik Cubes - (invented in the mid 70’s but associated with the 80’s)

4) Promotional Yo Yos - (invented 500bc but associated with 70’s 80’s and early 90’s)

5) Jelly Beans - (much loved since the 60’s and have been popular ever since!)

6) Magic Colour Change Mugs - (definitely an 80’s and early 90’s association)

7) Bubble Blowers - (definitely an 80’s and early 90’s association)

8) Promotional Magic 8 Balls - (associated with the 70’s)

These products are all items which we carry and stock in Cubic Promote. You are able to brand on these with your own logo or event details. These retro items all come available in various colours and when used as promotional items in your marketing can really elevate and make your campaign magical and memorable. To find out more give us a buzz today!

Promotional items are a fantastic way to raise funds or awareness for your cause. Whether it be a charity not for profit or simply to raise awareness having a product allows you to create a great ambiance as well as attracting buzz and crowds to your stand. However despite the appeal of what funky promotional items can provide to your event it can all be ruined by simply bad body language.

What do I mean? Well far too often I see seemingly unenthusiastic or annoyed people selling fund raising products or guarding tradeshow stands. This morning walking up Martin Place to work in the city I saw members of the military selling products to raise funds for Veterans. This is a fantastic cause and they had some fabulously unique products which is unique to them only. Unfortunately the little tent they set up attracted no traffic and seemingly no buyers for the duration that I had seen them. My theory as to why? Well they had some huge blokes selling the products….. not a problem! however these blokes had a glum look on their face. They also had their arms crossed and their heads up and stood in a wide stance. In summary they looked uninterested except to talk amongst themselves. They had no inclination to engage with the public and simply looked disinterested in what they were doing. I could imagine most people being quite uncomfortable approaching them due to their body language.

So this is the point. Having a successful fund raising campaign or advertising campaign requires more than fun little promotional items or remembrance products. It requires staff that are genuinely ready to engage with the public and to show enthusiasm. Without the key ingredient of you and your team your event will more than likely never meet its potential!

Promotional items come in all shapes and sizes. However like many things the smaller the promotional item is there is generally a premium on the price. Things such as promotional flashdrives and other items generally get more pricier with a smaller size because of the complexity involved in designing and creating the product. Unfortunately with smaller promotional items the branding area space becomes smaller. From experience many people prefer to have their logo branded in an absolutely huge size. We normally recomend against this as subtle branding makes for more effective and memorable brands. However this becomes even harder with smaller sized promotional items. Therefore when selecting a product for your company or event we do recomend to consider the complexity of your logoas well as the size you wish to brand before selecting the product so that you can have a good balance between an aesthetically attractive product at a resonable size yet still have a decent branding area size for you to show off your logo or your event!

Okay first things first. Stress balls are rarely used in times of stress as I have rarely seen someone so agitated that they grind their teeth whilst squeezing and punishing a stressball. If someone was in such a severe emotional state I would probably recomend them therapy as I doubt that a custom stressball will do anything for that person mentally. However what personalised stressballs are great for is having fun. Throwing them around the office is fun! Throwing them at people is fun! Having them come in some funky shapes or some really weird colour is fun! Kids love them…. adults love them…. hec even cats and dogs love them. Promotional stressballs are simply fun!

This makes them a perfect candidate to base marketing campaigns centered around them. A popular example is the starlight foundation who uses the star shaped stressball intensively for their charity. We stock a huge range of shapes. In fact we have so many shapes in stock that we have the largest range in the world behind China and America. If you are promoting a renovation TV program or you are in the housing business a house shaped stressball is perfect and you can make the shape of the stressball represent you in print ads and on T.V. Are you perhaps promoting healthy eating habits? How about an apple stressball Perhaps you have a them you would like to stick to? Well we have a raft of shapes which can be adapted to your needs from Stop sign stres shapes to muscle man shaped squishy balls.

Its because stressballs are fun that make them so adaptable to your marketing needs. So why not consider using a humble stressball for your next marketing campaign?

It never too earlier to start planning. Today I’ve received numerous calls from clients requesting promotional products to be custom branded by first week of May. However with the Easter & Anzac Day public holidays plus Labour Day in QLD, this has meant the number of working days available to customise promotional merchandises in time is limited.

May and June is a time for many upcoming conferences. June is also time for end of year budgeting spending!
Get in quick with your promotional items requests and this will help you with:
- ensuring you get the stock you wish including quantities and colours.
- if we don’t have the colours now, at least we can organise more to be stocked
- ensure we have the capacity to schedule your job in time
- offer you options to have your promotional items custom made using an indent service thus saving you money and better buying power.

So its never to earlier to plan ahead for custom branded merchandise, in fact we encourage you to contact us today so that we can help you plan ahead!

Our huge range of promotional post it notes have been a huge hit this year. These nifty little promotional items are a product you know that will get used almost 100% of the time. I mean who really ever throws away a new post it note right? We have the largest range of custom post its in Australia. With heaps of different sizes in our stocked range as well as personalised post its where we can die cut a shape to your desired size too! However did you know that our simple brandable post it notes we offer come in a huge range of options to suit your needs and budgets such as:

- Option for 25 / 50 or 100 pages per pad (our standard is 50)
- Option to opt for recycled paper
- Option to choose from white or yellow standard paper colour
- A premium color exist for paper colour in fluro blue, green, orange, pink, bright yellow, red
- A super quick turnaround premium option

These are just some of the extra options available to you when you order promotional post its from us. So check out our range today of custom branded post its! As a marketing tool custom post its are perfect as they are portable and infinitely useful.

Just check out how this company has been using post its to advertise in a unique way….. On the back of each of the post its on these billboard advertisements for Nintendo WII are special messages for fans!! The creativity and the interaction is amazing. On top of that post its such as ones from ours are low in cost too!!

I’ve been hearing more and more about Kogan televisions in various websites and blogs lately. For those who dont know Kogan is a young Australian fellow who sells Kogan branded T.V sets online. What I found curious about him is that he really makes dramatic statements regardless of authenticity and his comments more often than not are really really out there! This makes him perfect fodder for the media to latch on and in the process this gives him free publicity.

Securing free publicity is not easy and never happens instantly. However no matter who you are you it can be accessible to you and consistent efforts will help you get some rewards.

I recently read about Justin Herald who grew a $50 outlay selling t shirts at Parklea Markets to a multi million dollar enterprise. One aspect about him was that he managed to build publicity momentum. How? Well he had an odd type of personality & in his words “ In a quarter of an hour, you could email a pitch to five journalists, place three follow-up calls, or research a new media outlet to see whether it might be a PR opportunity for you. ”

He first appeared on an Alan Jones radio segment, later he realised that journalists often found their next story by checking out their peers….. this led to his next interview with A Current Affair. The next morning he got heaps of calls from retailers wanting to stock his products.

Here are some tips that may help you garner some PR for your business:

1) Persevere and put in the time to develop new ideas to spark media interest. Then follow up with journalists that you want publicity from.

2) Start small. Locally in fact. Its easier and gives you credibility as you are already a local.

3) Alternatively focus on one area. Eg. Marketing Press or Engineering Press only.

4) Write down what you achieve and 3 things to do to achieve them.

Ultimately persevere and focus. Its a daily task to follow up and to strategise. Pitch and follow up with phone calls to journalists!!

Now this is a promotional sports bottle worth keeping and using.

A unique brandable water bottle that comes with a chiller tube inside. Simply pop the chiller tube in the freezer to chill. When you need to take the promo bottle for use, place the chiller tube inside the bottle and refill with water (or juice, your choice) and you get the nice icy cool drink to sooth your thirst! How cool is that!?

This promotional water bottle comes in 2 colours Translucent Red and Blue and is also available for quick turnaround times when choosing a 1 colour print. Plus, this 946ml plastic sports bottle is BPA free So its safe to use and reuse. Want to see more promotional products like this one? Click on promotional bottles for more of our range!

After working on literally every logo imaginable from companies to government bodies we have learnt quite a bit on logos and design. I would like to share with you some of th things we have learnt. This is Part 1 of a series of posts which I will use to provide handy hints and tips on logo design and what works best not just for promotional items but for branding in general.

I will focus on Usability & Flexibility today!

Usability and flexibility of your logo means how many different ways can you use your logo but still keep the overall aesthetic and design integrity. You see your corporate logo wil be displayed and viewed by your customers through many different mediums such as:

1) Internet Website
2) Newspapers
3) Television
4) Promotional Products (anything from corporate umbrellas to promotional pedometers)
5) Business Cards
6) Glossy Magazine Print
7) Sponsorship banners
8) Sponsorship flags
9) Clothing apparell
10) & more (I’m sure I have missed a couple here)

What all these mediums have in common is that they are all different. They have:

- Different brand areas
- Different brand orientation (portrait/landscape/diagonal etc)
- Different ability to accomodate colours!

This means that your logo must be flexible to suit all these needs yet still maintain its core design to be recognisable. We have been lucky enough to work with multi national companies and it amazes me the amount of resources they devote to enable their logo to be represented in different formats. (in fact we recently did work for one of the worlds largest banks and their brand guideline was a stagering 40 pages…took me ages to read through it).

However for something a bit more practicle for the average business I can recomend these 4 tips for you to have a flexible logo:

Tip 1: Have your logo available in a black & white format
Tip 2: Have your logo available in a single spot colour. (no shading and no half tones)
Tip 3: Design your logo so it can have a portrait as well as a landscape format
Tip 4: Have an alternative design where it can be visible when shrunk to a very small size

The designer of your logo should be able to create this readily for you at a resonable cost. By having these 4 formats available your logo will be able to be represented in virtually any format and allows you flexibility to engage in any marketing activity easily.

Stay tuned… I’ll cover more on core design principals in upcoming posts!

(ps if you were looking for promotional items and weren’t sure about your logo we also offer graphic design as a service too!!)

Why organise events? To strengthen ties with existing customers and to attract new ones. It also puts you in pole position as an industry authourity i your industry and makes launching new products and initiatives easier.

1) Set Your Objectives - Would you inend to:
a) Strengthen existing client ties
b) Mainly attract new lients
c) Bit of both?
d) New Product Introduction
e) Book in appointments?
f) Actually sell at the event

2) Do a lot of Homework and Study what your client needs or want and address it to attract them. A good example would be a tax consultant researching and speaking about new issues which effect your client and how you can save them money. Or a jewellery store hosting a private event to your top customers to show case new products.

3) Select a Suitable location - If you have a large retail shop or a large office…. perfect. If its held somewhere else consider:
- Noise Levels
- Presentation stage visibility
- Lighting
- Location
- Seating

4) Budget - This can include Speakers, audio visual, insurance, promotional merchandise and marketing

5) & Most Important of all …. MARKETING - some short tips include: mail outs, ads in magazines and newspapers, website, twitter, facebook, media releases, friends, business partners, email, websites and more!!

6) Have fun…. your enthusiasm will show and it will engage your audience!!