The Redbows Promotional Gifts Blog

Key Note, a market intelligence company is reporting that benefits from winning the 2012 Olympics are already being felt in the sports promotions industry. The organisers of the games are hoping to earn £625m from sponsors and it is expected that these will come from familiar industries such as banking, energy and sports goods. The promotional gifts industry is also starting to gear up for this event which will make up for the rather disappointing fact that we will not have any UK teams in the Euro 2008 football championships this summer. For sure, a number of traditional items will be used for Olympics-related promotions including sports bags for example and we are also expecting to see manufacturers launching a number of bespoke products. Sports marketing is an important below-the-line activity for a number of organisations and it is interesting to note that without major events like the Olympics, the sponsorship market grows by around 5% annually.

They say that if you are not in Google, you do not exist. I reckon Wikipedia is approaching a similar stage when it comes to describing, well almost anything - take the current hot topic ‘Credit Crunch‘. This phrase needs to come with a health warning. If you lend money to people with a limited ability to pay it back, gamble on interest rates and disposable incomes, and make it your main revenue earner then you are sure to have created a business that is too sensitive to economic swings. The world is changing fast and the internet and our demand for data is driving it. Economic growth in the UK for 2008 may only be forecast at 1% by Ernst & Young, but this is an average with both lows and highs at opposite ends of a Bell Curve distribution. The UK promotions industry continues to expand - rapidly. A slower economic growth rate is actually useful. It forces organisations to step back and realign their strategies to the environment they find themselves in - or should do. At Redbows we are seeing clients focusing their spends on more measurable promotional activities - they are increasing their direct mail and sales promotions budgets. Promotional gifts are also being used as part of wider PR and advertising campaigns to help improve call-to-action response rates and drive prospects towards tailored-landing pages - all easily measurable activities. So, we need to appraise what is happening in our industries, keep scanning the horizon for changes but perhaps relax a little and question whether we really do always need to catch a cold if America sneezes.

Yesterday was off course Valentines Day and what a diversified bunch we have at Redbows. I just wonder how much our team reflects our client base. We had flowers and chocolates turn up at the office from partners and loved ones, and even the threat of a dancing monkey - now this never turned up but we were all in anticipation. Off course Valentines Day is more of a personal gift day and so we do not see that many enquiries for volume chocolates. However, we always keep some Chocolate Hearts around for any Romeo needing to order anything from 500 upwards. He’ll need some extras just to give him energy.

This week on the Promotional Gifts Store we have been working on our ranges of Executive and Corporate Gifts. So, what makes an executive gift? Well we like to think that they are more of a premium item. Gifts that are individually packed and given, with a more personal feel, even though they may be produced in volume. Executive gadgets are a definite favourite and as their pricing is often linked to the dollar, prices have fallen over the last two years. They are well worth a look for a campaign aimed at executives and senior managers.

My IT guys started to install a Dell PowerEdge 1900 server on our network today. This latest piece of hardware is part of an on going strategy designed to take us towards single-source data storage. Redbows now has over 5,000 products on its Promotional Gifts Store, with access to several thousand more. The new server will be used to store images and price data, pdfs and specifications, providing our Gifts Consultants with the ability to generate Virtual Visuals and self-serve data to clients. There have been some interesting aspects to this project. Aside from the construction of a new server room, I was intrigued by the artistry of the packing materials used to protect the server in transit, and Dell’s ordering and tracking process.

Now I am not going to put a racy calendar photo here but had to chuckle at a conversation I had with someone about promotional calendars. The fluff ‘n’ stuff variety is one of the biggest sellers in the country, probably more popular by a ratio of 5:1 compared to other wall calendars. So I thought to myself that here we have a definite competitor to Microsoft Outlook in the form of a very simple, analogue device that one puts on the wall. I am all for liberation and am wondering if I can get one with that guy on from the latest Aero or diet-coke adverts? Joking aside we supply an awful lot of calendars which even in this digitised age are still a very popular promotional item. Probably one of the best formats we supply is the desk top calendar verison.

Some time ago, I was showing a colleague from the promotions industry our new Promotional Gifts Store and we got to discussing the role of the humble promotional mouse. These were once one of the most popular desktop gadgets. Somehow they have been overlooked in recent years, despite several innovations and a dramatic fall in overall unit cost. Walk into any office environment and you will find computer mice, often constantly on view and in use. These gadgets offer a number of benefits: they are a practical gadget with a good sized imprint area, and generally have a very good working life, often several years. Now for the Chinese 2008 is the year of the Mouse and we hope that for more clients it will be the year of the Promotional Mouse.