The Redbows Promotional Gifts Blog

Wow what a night we had last Friday. It was my absolute thrill and pleasure to be awarded the title ’2009 Business Woman Of The Year for Denbighshire’ by Network She. An award like this is one for the whole team at Redbows. It is a great result for our company which has continued to develop its marketing and promotional activities during this most turbulent of years. We are already looking forward to 2010 but this award will be hard to beat. Click Promotional Gifts and the Network She Awards for more details.

Promotional gifts are continuing to rise in their popularity. For sure average order values are less than normal but overall volumes are higher. This is because organisations are turning to promotional gifts as a form of Below-The-Line (BTL) promotion as they cut their traditional Above-The-Line (ABL) spends on advertising. Public Relations (PR) is always seen as the second choice alternative to main stream advertising when it comes to promotion but even PR is seeing a resurgence in demand. This is because PR has longer legs and can be used more effectively to promote an organisation and build a more sustainable, long term image. Promotional gifts work well with either ABL and BLW promotions but are in themselves becoming a force within the marketing communications mix. Within tighter economic times, organisations are looking for bargains, promotions and incentives – a perfect environment for promotional gifts to prosper and play a pivotal role in developing marketing momentum.

As a female entrepreneur I am very proud to be associated with Network She. Ruth Lloyd-Williams started this novel approach to networking when she found that the only meetings available for business people were generally breakfast briefings and meetings. Great for blokes but not so hot for mamas with kids to get ready for school etc. So Ruth founded this new organisation which meets generally in the evening. She has done an excellent job promoting her organisation and running out fun packed networking events at a host of venues. Also she has made it open to men to join and my other half loves attending when he can drag himself away from his two passions: Tae Kwon Do and his beloved Apple Macs. Sure it is a different type of promotional marketing but one Redbows is very actively involved with – we just started our first space advertising with them. I am not a great fan of space advertising and much more prefer the quantified approach offered by internet PPC advertising. However, Network She offers us the chance to engage with a specific target market witin a geographic area. We will see what happens. Perhaps it will change my view of space advertising.

Well we just added a new feature to our Promotional Gifts Store website – ‘join our mailing list‘. Now we use a double opt-in sign up form to we comply with all the latest regs and standards when it comes to spam email. So if you do sign up please rest assured that you will not be spammed and we will only be sending you relevant information ‘irregularly’ and you can always opt-out at any time.

Research last year on the North American gifts market by PPB Magazine showed that the US spends a staggering US$6bn on promotional products. Now that’s an awful lof of promotional products. How are they  being used? Well the primary uses are to reward customers and generate goodwill. Coming in third is prospecting and recognising employee contributions.

For customers and prospects the facts show that organisations tend to favour those suppliers from whom they receive promo items. They do not mind the logos, imprints and slogans. Somehow the companies using promotional gifts get a far greater share of ‘mind time’ and create greater goodwill and loyalty than those that do not use such merchandise in their marketing. The same can be said for employees who also exhibit greater loyalty and productivity when rewarded.

So which corporate gifts work the best? Well it appears that even every day office items like promotional mugs and promotional pens are just as effective a larger or more expensive promo items. This is interesting research which supports many of our own findings in the UK market.

It is funny how the growth of the promotional products industry matches that of mass manufacturing, industrial and technological revolutions. I comment on this because the first known promotional items were used in the US for the George Washington 1789 election. Apparently, commemorative buttons were all the rage back then. Later on promotional calendars and wooden rulers began to be used and the promotions industry really started to take root during the 19th Century. Our industry is now dominated by the internet and this is being used more and more as a way to present information and secure valuable sales leads. My only concern is that the quality of websites within our industry varies considerably and I find a number using ‘cloak and dagger’ methods to gain search traffic and hoodwink clients into thinking they are dealing with two or more separate organisations. All this is off course possible with database driven websites that can deliver content to any domain. However just because the technology exists do we have to abuse it? If we can be true to ourselves in how we promote our organisations, clients will benefit and standards in the gifts industry will only rise.

This Christmas I predict the UK will see the highest levels of spend – ever. We are witnessing a transformation in how we shop and this is something that few businesses have yet to catch on to. You see when I look at the high street I see two factors that are turning cash notes into electronic transactions. Firstly, there is simply too much of the same, and too much competition. Double speak perhaps. But look at clothing and home furnishings – two things close to my heart. Now look back down your high street and you can see that most retailers stock and supply almost identical items in terms of quality, price and features. Secondly, why do I want to go down the high street when I can do it online! Going shopping these days is no longer a pleasure in itself, if it means finding a parking space, dodging the traffic wardens, passing the odd speed camera and dragging three kids with who would rather be at home. I am no different to the millions of other people who now use the internet to search out ideas, then check them out physically on the high street before turning to the internet to find the best possible and most cost-effective source. Job done and there is no going back. How many times have you heard a shop assistant tell someone this year – ‘yes I know you can buy it cheaper online’. And what are the implications for my own industry – promotional gifts? Well more clients now find us through the internet than any other medium. Search for promotional products on line and we are top-ten Google and other search engines for a number of ranges. So taking things from a flip-side, would we open on the high street – no but we need to keep one step ahead to make sure we keep evolving and innovating.

Well the boy done good! I cannot recall such a fascinating election and just finished listening to President Elect Obama’s victory speach in Chicago. I am sure it will go down in history as the ‘Yes We Can’ statement of all time. It is time for change in the world and it looks like Obama will be the one around which it will become polarised. You have just got to admire the positive approach and the way he has connected people from all demographics. No other modern politician has acheived so much in so short a space of time. David Cameron must be anticipating the next UK general election with fervour and will expect the UK people to show the same determination to bring about change. Yes we can – it something we get to say everyday at the Redbows Promotional Gifts Store!

Redbows has recently joined Promota – one of the promotional gifts industry trade associations. Already a member of the British Promotional Merchandise Association or the BPMA as it is known for short, this latest accolade for Redbows shows how the company is developing. We are very proud to be associated with both Promota and the BPMA and look forward to developing our relationship with these leading gifts industry bodies.

I am not what you would call a politcal person but I do think that Gordon Brown may be one of the last gentleman politicians around. I read the other day that he and his wife took their children to China for the Olympic games but no where did you see the whole family photographed as a publicity stunt. Unlike the Blairs and Camerons who open up their lives as though we are all readers of ‘Hello’, the Browns have decided to keep their children out of the limelight to give them as normal a childhood as possible. What a gift and something that for me shows that Gordon Brown deserves more respect than he is actually getting at this moment. He may have inherited a financial bubble and his gamble not to go for an election last October was probably his biggest political mistake but he knows what to value and treasure. Well done.