The Redbows Promotional Gifts Blog

We have just updated our Chocolate Easter Eggs collection. This is always one of my favourite times of year because I am a ‘chocaholic’. I just love getting the chocolate samples and then taking as much time as is absolutely necessary to put together the perfect Easter Chocolate confectionery collection. We have quite a range of chocolate items for this Easter including traditional boxed chocolate Easter eggs which can be fully personalised with a foil block or 1-4 colour imprint, as well as more novel finger boxes, small Easter gift bags and novelty bunnies. After such a cold winter we think that Spring is a great time – sunshine just puts everyone in the right mood and our personalised chocolates will simply help to promote your brand to even higher levels. We find that a lot of our clients are using chocolate Easter Eggs simply to say ‘thank you’ to their clients and employees. Whatever your use for them, we know that you simply enjoy and savor our mix of UK-made and Belgian chocolate Easter Eggs.  For a wider selection of chocolates and sweets visit our new Confectionery website – the Promotional Sweets Store.

Well in January we roll the VAT forward to 17.5%, back to its pre recession levels. So now is a great time to get your orders in for new year stock of your favorite promotional gifts. For most business-to-business organisations the change will mean little off course but for organisations that cannot claim the VAT back they will effectively be looking at a 2.5% price increase. Its a shame but let’s hope that we do not see VAT rise to 20% in 2011.

Can you really get cheap promotional items? Well the answer is off course yes but there are other factors to consider. Firstly, let’s talk volume. The pricing of promotional items is volume related; so the more you purchase the more lower the unit cost. Secondly, there are often one off charges like origination (and sometimes a set up or mould cost). You  can ‘amortise’ – accounting term – these costs and spread them over your total volume run. So, take promotional pens or promotional mugs as examples. Typical purchase quantities are 250-1000 pieces and there will be colour origination charges. If you opt for more than one colour, expect higher origination charges and therefore a higher overall unit cost for your promotional items. Thirdly, think quality and longevity. How long do you want your personalised mugs or personalised pens to last? The higher the quality, the longer the promotional items will last and be in use for. The lower the quality, the more general ‘wear and tear’ will impact on them. Look at the materials we use in our pens and mugs. Mugs can be made from plastic, recycled plastics, ceramics, earthernware and even china. The imprint can be a single spot colour, photo or CYMK print. All will affect the unit price and longevity of the products. If you consider pens, Redbows supplies personalised pens that include plastic, frosted plastic, recycled ECO plastics, metal and wood from sustainable forests. So when planning your promotional campaign, think wider than simply finding the cheapest promotional items, think about client impact, product quality and longevity, and exactly what you want the promotional item to say about your brand.

Promotional Gifts exist for a reason – to get response and increase the ROI (Return-On-Investment) of a marketing campaign. But how often do you measure the ROI and where do you actually begin? To answer this you have to set some strategic objectives for your campaign. Let’s take the example of using stress balls to direct people to a new website. Every campaign needs objectives because if you do not know where you want to go, you won’t know how to get there. So set them. Make them SMART – specific, measureable and timed etc. Secondly, choose a promotional gift that ties into the campaign theme. And finally capture response data for analyis and comparison to the campaign objectives. As an example, let’s take a campaign centred around reducing stress at work.  Perhaps a stress armchair is chosen and printed with the website address and a ‘call to action’ – giving people a reason or incentive to visit the new website. Then in the website monitoring and tracking software – Google Analytics or some other stats package, measures are set to capture the number of visits to specific pages and actions such as requests for further information and sign ups to programmes. Once the data has been collected over a given time period, it can then be compared to the campaign objectives – the strategic objects set in terms of number of visitors and actions.  Off course you cannot measure everything and there is a trend in some organisation for ‘analysis-paralysis’. However, simply spending marketing budget is not enough in these economic times when every business action has to make positive contribution.

How often do we act global but go local? The internet provides everyone with a global information search facility but how often do we then search out a local supplier? The point is we like (and possibly still want) local service and that personal touch when it comes to even commodity purchases. This was all brought home to me the other evening whilst watching Pretty Woman. Remember the scene when she fails to get service in a high class boutique, then returns the next day saying ‘you work on commission right? Big mistake, big, huge….sorry I have to go now, I’ve got shopping to do.’ So what has this got to do with promotional gifts? Well people still buy from people. When it comes to promotional gifts it does not matter how much we automate the quotation and buying process. People like to speak to a professional gifts consultant and make sure that they are going to get the service they want, with a dedicated project manager looking after their every need and making sure their promotional products arrive to time, and as intended. Part of the issue for a company like Redbows is the size of the ranges we supply. Take our pens, coasters and mousemats. Your’re talking 1000 plus products, all within a similar price range, with similar specifications. This can be daunting for a client and the main reason why they want to talk to someone who knows the ranges inside out and can guide them to the right product for their need and budget. I am pretty sure other industries are very much the same. Yes, we are turning into a world that will purchase on-line without seeing a physical product or sales person but for some products and merchandise I can see full automation will be a way off, if ever.

I’ve been wondering whether the Labour government or any of the political parties should be advocating a little retail therapy. Firstly as we all know it does you good to have a splurge from time to time. Secondly UK retail needs it, as does manufacturing, services and most other industries. But not every silver lining has a clould behind it. Look at this week’s news – we hear that over 12,000 retail stores have shut up shop over the last year or so. Now you have to delve a little deeper here because there is a missing statistic – how many have moved to an online operation only i.e. Woolworths? Whatever the stats say though we all need to keep investing and spending. We just need to make it more strategic and thoughtful. Looking at our own ecommerce statistics, I am amazed at the sales growth of some of the promotional products we supply – such as bags and stress gifts. We have even recently supplied bespoke stress shapes including a handheld speed camera – yes they even sent us one to model from….great fun. What do these trends tell the Redbows team? That people are stressed and being subjected to a flood of stress balls and shapes? Or that buyers are getting out into their markets and ‘bagging’ all those special offers? I am not sure what the answer is. All I know is that if you are strategic and focus on growing your marketing momentum, your sales will follow.

Have you ever wondered what are the three most popular uses for business gifts? Well you might be surprised to know that they include: exhibitions and tradeshow giveaways, employee and client rewards, incentives and brand builders. Not that surprising really but then the promotional gifts industry is essentially based on the simple premise that people like to receive gifts, that corporate and business gifts in particular can help to engender receptive feelings and responses towards a supplier and develop their overall brand image. So what are the most popular business gifts? Well by far and away the prime movers are the lower cost items that can be found everyday within an office environment like mugs, keyrings, pens, rulers and coasters. Off course in these environmentally conscious times, ECO gifts are also rising fast in popularity but so to are more novel ideas as the growing range of gadgets, in particular USB flashdrive variations, shows.

When you think about business gifts do you see the gift or the brand? I ask this question because we have been spending a lot of time thinking about watch brands recently and their use of celebrety endorsements. A similar analogy can be applied to coffee. For example when we watch a coffee advert what we see is the coffee brand name and not the mug or cup that the person is drinking from. Now wouldn’t it be nice if we could see the promotional mugs names themselves catch on as brands in their own right. Some are well down this road – for example the Photo Mugs and Wow Mugs which have unique characteristics and print options and make ideal business gifts.

The other day we were asked what gifts we would put into a start-up gifts pack for new businesses. Off course the hardest part here is determining a gift selection that would fit most budgets. So we decided to start with a small spend of £250 and see just where this could take us. Now for this sum you really want to get to the highest possible volume of products whilst still trying to ensure that the items you give out have some longevity. When you look solving the problem from this point of view promotional pens are the one item that hits you head on. Whether you opt for plastic or frosted plastic pens makes little difference to the overall spend. Promotional pens are ideal for start up businesses who need to get their name, brand and contact details across. They offer a great print area – the barrel and in some instances the pen clip themselves. Off course another great attribute is that promotional pens also come in a range of colours and can generally take an imprint from one to four colours. So our recommendation for a start-up business would be to opt for plastic promotional pens – the perfect business start-up gifts.

We have just been updated our promotional stationery products – yes it is that time of year. This is one of the best collections we offer for clients looking for a range of desktop giveaways. Stationery are must have items in an office and ones that few people really give any though to. What a missed opportunity to have your brand and imprint on dispay 365 days a year in a form of subliminal advertising that always gets results. So what sort of promotional products are we talking here – well they range from everything from adloops to wallets. A personal favourite of mine are the paper pads as they offer such a wide choice.