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 and with different uses too. A product that can go around the neck has the obvious advantage to free up your hands so you can present or perform tasks in a tradeshow or work environment. So what types of products are available that you can sling around your neck?

- Dog Tags (for identification)
- Pen & Lanyard
- Lanyards (for identification)
- Lanyards & Pouch
- A branded clock
- USB flashdrives and lanyards
- Lanyard for branded drink bottles
- Lanyard for sunscreen lotion

To find out more about different products that can be work around your neck just give us a call today!

1 Stressball makes for a great promotional item and one happy recipient. However in a tradeshow setting where every one of your competitors is competing for the same attention of a particpant it would take a lot of creativity to draw their attention in the first place. I have seen all sorts of gimicks in conferenes such as free popcorn, fake cash giveaways, video games, gigantic inflatable balloons and more! However how about this for an idea for your next conference. Typically for any tradeshow a client will easily go through 500 stress shapes. Typically a thousand stress balls is enough to keep up with demand over a normal 2 day tradeshow. So how about using your promotional stress toys to attract attention? Here are 3 easy tips to get the most out of your stress balls for your next event!

Tip 1) Really show off your stress shapes by sticking with 1 colour. If your logo is red and your trade booth is red in theme then obviously go for a red stress ball only!

Tip 2) Why not opt for a fun custom shape so instead of a red round stress ball go for a red stress shaped tomato! It still in your theme colours and will make things interesting. If your colour is yellow try a stress hamburger. Green? Go for a stressball green apple. Blue? Go for a blue pyramid or a blue water drop stress ball.

Tip 3) In your trade booth dont leave brown paper box’s visible. Hide them. If the stress balls came in one some how get a big vase or a big box…. any container that can be used to utilise your stress shapes as a decor and a visual point of interest.

3 Easy tips which can be implemented easily and along with friendy approachable staff and good booth decor you are guaranteed to attract good attention.

There is more than one place to decorate when it comes to embroidery on Polo Shirts.

The left hand side on the chest area is the most common request for our branded jobs but there are also other areas which can be embroidered as well. The collar is actually a good location to embroid a business logo and can often look very sleek. It is also good location to brand to avoid the awkward looks one may get when trying to check out a business’s branding (which is on a ladies chest!). Another place to decorate polo tshirts are the sleeves, especially for co-branding. Remember MasterChef? Well it was obvious that Qantas had sponsored MasterChef, their Qantas sysmbol was on the sleeves of the contestants branded shirts.

Back of the Promotional Polos you may ask? Screen printing Yes, but not for embrodiery. Embroidery on such a large space won’t look good we always recommend screenprinting instead.

What other promotional products would be suitable for embroidery? Promotional Caps, Branded Scarves, Beanies, custom towels and promotional bags. All fabric products would be suitable. Don’t forget, with embroidery you can have full colour logos. Pricing of embroidery will be based on the stitches required and not based on the number of colours. This could be more cost effective than to chose printing. Contact us if you would like to discuss your decoration options when you need promotional products next time.

One of the most common questions we get asked by our customers is “How do I supply artwork or logo to print on promotional products?” and “What is an EPS file?”

To brand on promotional items we require your desired image to be saved in a format called EPS File with Vector lines. This can be emailed to us or should it be too big, to send it through via CD or USB Flash Drive and post it in the mail.

We specifically require the artwork in an EPS file saved with vector lines. This file type is editable by color and size and has no background. Most commonly originated by design software such as Adobe Illustrator. If you don’t have this program or the original file, we do offer design service to have it created from scratch for you. Files such as JPG or TIF are not suitable as these are not editable or scalable which is very important when it comes to placing an image onto promotional items which come in all different shapes & sizes. Unlike EPS vector files, if we were to edit a JPG or TIF file, the results will be blurry and distored. Try it yourself!.

Note, its not simply changing the file to EPS, the artwork needs to have been drawn from programs such as Adobe Illustrator and then saved as an EPS. Simply taking and TIF file and changing the file path won’t do the trick!

For more commonly asked questions when it comes to ordering promotional merchandise read our Promotinal Merchandise FAQs

What is the most popular colour of promotional merchandise? By far it is blue promotional products. Blue has been synonymous amongst various historic cultures as being associated with nature. Its also been know to represent and symbolise trust, traditional values, dependability and intelligence. It’s with little wonder that it is a colour that has proved extremely popular with logos, corporate colours and event themes. Blue is such a popular colour that almost all our promotional products come in some sort of shade of blue where possible. In may instances a lot of different items come in both navy blue or royal blue and in other instances dark blue or light blue.

So what do different blue shades of colour convey about your business?

Rich Royal Blue - Conveys generosity, extravagence, confidence, flamboyance.
Dark Navy Blue - Conveys a warm trust traditional feeling. Also conveys honesty and hence its no co-incidence that many of our clients in the financial industry use this colour.

Much like the colour pink there are a few events and fund raisers around that exclusively utilize the colour blue as their flagship idendity marker. So no logos no smart witty slogans just the colour blue. If you were thinking of opting for a suite of promotional products in blue try mixing and matching different shades to create a sense of sophistication and to keep things interesting. It will have the added benefit of making your promotional items stand out.

Some of the blue promotional products we stock include:

Blue Corporate Mugs
Blue Promotional Bags
Blue Stress Balls
Blue Promotional Pens
Blue Custom Printed Umbrellas
Blue Branded Polo Shirts

& Heaps more…. check out our range of products for more!

This Sunday the Dallas Mavericks won the NBA Championship in a best of 7 game series. They clinched the title deservedly from the Miami Heat in an away game. It was a great demonstration of the power of team work over individual brilliance (more on that another day).

What I admire about American sports is the absolute efficiency of organisation from game coverage through to promotional merchandising. You see the moment the final whistle was blown the players and all associated staff members and owners miraculously donned promotional caps, and emblazoned shirts along with printed bottles and wristbands of their team name as well as the words NBA 2011 World Champions!!! There was no possible way this merchandise could have been branded within the 5 minutes leading up to the final whistle. All this merchandise was pre-planned in the anticipation and hope that they will win. It’s no guarantee they will win the gameof course however some smart marketing procurement person made sure that if they did then the celebrations will be all the better and the atmosphere all the louder and notto mention the T.V coverage to millions and millions of viewers.

So here are some tips to pre plan for your promotional items for sports events if your team is ever lucky enough to be playing for something important.

1) Plan early. How Early? Well for anticipation of a large event 2-3 months in advance.

2) What to plan for?
- The type of merchandise you think will be appropriate
- The quantity of merchandise you may need
- Artwork and logos created design wise
- Artwork and logos created and visually applied to the merchandise (ready for you to give the go ahead)
- Organise for a certain amount to be air freighted and the remainder to be sea freighted
- Logistics! Where the product needs to go and how!

3) As you near the climax of your season or your event…. typically within 3 weeks (you will know the probability of your team making the finals usually) then place orders on locally stocked products in small runs… ie. enough for your team, your staff, some key sponsors and enough to distribute to some select fans. Therefore perhaps a few hundred in quantity!
- Large visible merchandise. ie. Branded Caps, Personalised Tee shirts and even shorts! Why? well its the first thing Fans see and it is also the first thing cameras will see too.
- Place orders on related smaller merchandise such as branded stubby coolers
- Keep in mind some products store really easily too. eg. personalised keytags

4) Once your team wins immediately give the go ahead to all the work you did for in points 1 and 2. Ensure that no time is wasted as your fans are now waiting to purchase products to join in on the team merchandise celebrations.

So why go to all this hassle? Well using this guide you can simultaneously meet the demand of the initial hard core fans. Then you can have product for your team to celebrate in countless photo and video opportunities. Thirdly you can meet the demand of general fans. Fourthly you can ensure your merchandising needs are well planned to maximise exposure yet minimise cost. Lastly it allows companies like ourselves time to ensure that there is no delays and that quality is up to standard. Finally it also gives you insurance that if your team is on the losing side (like the Miami Heat) that you will only lose out on a small quantity of product and that it will not effect your oganisation too much financially.

Hey just came across some really interesting stats on young workers and old workers or as the media would like to call them Gen Y or Baby Boomers. Apparently many Aussie managers find Gen Y staff easier to work with than Baby Bomers. In fact a recent survey by company LMA found that baby boomer generations themselves dont want to report to older workers. The findings are interesting in that the Baby Boomers will still be occupying most leadership and management positions this decade. Myself personally? I find both working with younger or older generation of team members as well as customers equally as easy to work with. There’s definite skills and traits that gen Y can handle like learning real quick whilst baby boomers have a sense of responsibility not matched by their young conterparts.

So on with the stats where survey particpants were asked which generation they prefer to work and report to:

* 17% of Baby Boomers prefer their own generation; 40% prefer Gen X; 27% Gen Y
* 57% of Gen X prefer their own generation; 32% Gen Y; 4% Baby Boomers
* 53% of Gen-Y prefer their own generation; 29% Gen-X; 4% Baby Boomers

To report to:

* 41% of Baby Boomers prefer their own generation; 33% Gen X; 5% Gen Y
* 71% of Gen X prefer their own generation; 14% Baby Boomers; 6% Gen Y
* 50% of Gen Y prefer Gen X; 24% their own generation; 8% to Baby Boomers

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!

A brand name which is not only well known and recognisable but also associated with all things good such as reliability, prestige, quality and other positive traits will give your company an unbelivable boost up in all aspects from being able to sell more, sell at a higher price and even help in business products such as borrowing funds. We work with many companies who are very strict in how their image is portrayed and they have branding guidelines which run into dozens of pages long.

So why bother with all this fuss about your brand?

Well take this example. You are at the super market and your about to purchase a can of sardines. There are 3 different brands on offer all at the same price. One of these is attractively packaged with nice colours and graphics and its also a brand that you have seen a lot on T.V too on cooking programs and in advertisments. The other 2 brands are so-so in packaging and come from a company that you have never heard of. Take a guess which brand of sardines would be more attractive to consumer?

You see we unconsiously make these decisions every single day. It’s this brand recognition which precisely makes our promotional items so neccessary to be an essential part of any marketing campaign and any conference or tradeshow.

It is critical that your company brand reflects your business otherwise no matter how good of a product or your service you will never be perceived as anything but average and business will suffer. So first thing, ensure that what your customers see are all professionally presented and consistent. Consider things such as colour, structure, layout and design on items such as:
1) Website
2) Business Cards
3) Letter Heads
4) Promotional Merchandise
5) Advertising

Commonsense, a critical eye, graphic designers and feedback from a variety of honest opinions will all help. Whats really cool about having a really popular and liked brand is that you can charge more for a product. There are many companies I can list off the top of my head that does these from service corporates to consumer brands. Brands such as UBS (stock broking), any of the top 5 accounting firms, any of the top 5 marketing companies, Apple, Coca Cola, Mercedes, Luis Vuitton, Nike. I can go on and on.

For clients who are offer premium products under the umbrella of a premium brand it is important that their promotional merchandise be mid to higher quality items. It would be beneficial for these companies to offer corporate gift products in lower numbers yet higher in quality. For mass market companies it would make sense to have promotional items in higher quantity yet be slightly lower in quality.

If you need any free advice on branding just send us an email and we would be glad to help. If all else fails a marketing consultant should be well versed in strategies to assist in implementing a strong brand and better still implement general guidelines for you and your team members which will make all decisioning streamlined and consistend!