Archive for the ‘Promotional Gifts’ Category
Monday, August 23rd, 2010
The last decade has started to see a real push towards more ethically produced goods. Whether it’s food, clothing or corporate gifts, commerce has been more driven to produce items that are organic, Fairtrade and environmentally friendly.
Unfortunately these goods still come at a premium, with extra costs needed to adhere to ethical and environmentally sound working practices. With the economy still reeling from one of the biggest recessions in history, cost has become more important to consumers and as a result, sales of organic food in 2010 are down by 12.9% when compared to last year.
With consumers priorities seemingly changing, can we put the recent eco-craze down to a fad, or is there more to it than that? And just how eco-friendly are many of the products that are advertised in such a way? Given the disposable nature of many corporate gifts, can there ever be such a thing as an eco-friendly corporate gift?
Many have argued that the craze for all things environmentally friendly was indeed a craze, with many choosing to paint themselves as eco friendly as a fashion statement. The recession has certainly had a hit on the revenue of such products, but to write the ethical movement off would be a mistake. Sooner or later, all companies are going to have to look at the way they produce their products and although the sales of organic produce are down, there is no doubt that the movement left a big impression on the conscience of the world.
So just how accurate are a company’s green credentials? Although many products can be marketed as being eco friendly, do they fulfil these criteria in the real world?
This question is especially important when we talk about corporate gifts and promotional products. By their very nature, corporate gifts and promotional products are disposable items. Promotional pens only have a limited shelf life due to the fact that they will inevitably run out, promotional clothing will outlive it’s use when the specific promotion is over, and many corporate gifts may well be simply tossed in the trash. So although these promotional products may have been produced ethically, is there an argument that they are just destined to clog up disposal sites, polluting the planet even more?
This problem is not exclusive to corporate gifts and promotional products. Many items that people use every day and are important for businesses are disposable in nature, and as a result bring their green credentials into question. So what’s the answer?
As with many things, it is a matter of common sense. If green credentials are important to a company, they should encourage staff to buy corporate gifts and promotional products that are made in an ethical way, but also be sensible with the quantity ordered and ensure they are buying the most appropriate product for the occasion. In the case of promotional products, order size should reflect the size of the event and the relevance of the item to the promotion. When promotional items are personalised in this way, they are more relevant to the people who will receive them, meaning there is less chance of them being tossed into the bin.
It is the same with corporate gifts. Make sure you buy a corporate gift that is ethically sourced and make sure it is right for the recipient. A personalised corporate gift will make sure it is relevant to the recipient and will make for a well received gift. Generic corporate gifts that are bought on mass and with no personalisation stand a much better chance of being thrown straight in the bin, meaning a waste of money for the company, a wasted promotion and a real dent in the green credentials of a company.
In many cases financial constraints will govern this anyway, but it is important to consider the environmental effect of your promotional products even after they have left the factory.
The theme of the green movement is to avoid waste, be it products or energy and the same is true with eco corporate gifts and promotional products. Only order what you need and make the products are relevant to the recipient. In this way you will avoid waste and improve the success of your promotion.
The Corporate Gifts Company have a range of eco corporate gifts that will add to the green credentials of your company. You can also use our sister site The Promotional Gifts Company for their range of eco promotional gifts.
Tags: eco corporate gifts, eco promotional gifts
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Tuesday, August 17th, 2010
There are many benefits to having a strong brand in business, and more than ever brand values are being used as a way for customers to find their way around an increasingly saturated marketplace.
Whether you’re an online business, a high street retailer, even a political party, brand identity is becoming an important way of getting a company noticed and enabling it to speak with one clear voice.
Once a business has decided to enhance their brand it can be difficult to know how to use it to their advantage. Companies may have invested a great deal of time and money into developing their brand, only for it to stagnate as they have difficulty in realising it’s potential.
The Corporate Gifts Company have come up with a guide to getting the most out of your brand to make sure a company’s efforts don’t go to waste.
1. Make sure it gets noticed
Many businesses choose to rebrand in order to better communicate their brand values and create an identity in the market place. In order to do this, your brand needs to be thrust under the noses of the people who will take notice, whether that’s potential customers, existing customers, suppliers or shareholders.
Promotional products can help to do this. Promotional stationery and promotional items can help with this, as it puts your brand in a prominent position in the workplace or the home. Whether it’s promotional pens, promotional t-shirts or promotional calendars, items such as these can help companies spread the word about their brand, their business and their product, getting themselves noticed by the people that matter.
2. Use your brand to motivate staff
The right brand used correctly has the ability to inspire and galvanise a workforce. It can be used to transmit the core message of the business throughout the company, ensuring everyone is pulling in the same direction. It is important that everyone working for the company is made aware of the brand and taught how to use it correctly to make sure the message is kept consistent.
Use a brand launch to make a special event out of the occasion. Rather than just replace old stationery and logos with new ones, give the event a real sense of occasion to get staff excited about the brand and it’s message. This will not only encourage staff to accept it but also provide an important occasion to educate them on the message and how to use it correctly. Promotional banners and branded corporate gifts can be used to give the event a special feel, as well as corporate awards to encourage staff to be an ambassador for the brand and raise awareness.
3. Be Prepared
The strongest brands are those that have prepared in advance. Before launching your brand, consider what message you want to portray and what voice you want to transmit. It can be easy to get carried away with colour schemes and logo designs, so think carefully about what you want your company to say before deciding on a brand image. This is especially important if you are a charity or an organisation that gives opinion and advice. If there are tricky or controversial issues that your company gives advice on, it is important to decide on your position before your brand launches. This can save answering tricky questions when it’s too late to change.
Once you have launched your brand effectively, don’t be shy about it! Use promotional gifts and promotional products to show off your brand to anyone who will listen!
Tags: corporate gift, corporate gifts, promotional gift, Promotional Gifts, promotional product, promotional products
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Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
At The Corporate Gifts Company, we keep an eye out for stories of vintage promotional gifts and promotional products raising a fortune at auction, and the latest example comes from Michelin, as was reported on in this article from The Drum.
200,000 Euro was raised from the sale of classic promotional products, and for established names like Michelin, promotional items can be extremely collectible.
Michelin are not alone in producing much sought after promotional gifts. Brand names like Coca Cola and Guinness are world renowned for producing collectible promotional items, and both have made separate industries out of their promotional wares.
Although not every company can produce such collectible promotional items, it shows what can be achieved with relevant, high quality promotional products. By producing unique, brand consistent promotional gifts, you will not only enhance your reputation but you might well end up producing items that are sought after by staff and customers. Remember, the more people who want your promotional products, the more places you logo and brand will appear.
For more information and ideas on promotional gifts, visit http://www.corporate-gifts-co.com.
Tags: corporate gift, corporate gifts, promotional gift, Promotional Gifts
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Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
Only a couple of years can make a huge difference in the way people spend. What people look for when they are buying is often guided by changes in fashion. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the fashion industry, where shoppers change their tastes by the season, often guided in their choices by magazines and celebrities.
The craze for organic foods and green produce peaked in 2008 but has been on the decline ever since. Since the recession hit, cash strapped shoppers have seemingly opted for price over sustainability, and sales of organic food alone fell by 13% during 2009.
But just as magazines can influence style, could the media at large have been responsible for guiding a green fashion statement? Now that the papers are full of tales of financial woe, has the green message become outdated, much in the same way a dress loses it’s appeal after a few years?
It’s an idea that’s worth exploring. How many people can genuinely say that they understand the meaning of organic foods, or the Fairtrade symbol? Indeed, how many products that are marketed as green can honestly claim that they are making any positive difference to the state of the planet?
There’s no doubt that companies cashed in on these ideas during the boom times, and many shoppers, often with much disposable income, were keen to play up to the role of the ethical shopper. It almost became a statement of your personality rather than an effort to shop more ethically.
It also became a popular device in the world of business, with more and more companies keen to show off their green credentials to appeal to those consumers who followed that ideology.
It can be argued that for all it’s good intentions, the green craze did more harm than good. The issues it raised were often trivialised by people looking to jump on the boat, and surely any increase in consumerism will only result in an increase in waste further on down the line.
These ecological conundrums are even played out in the world of promotional gifts. A feature of the new product range on our sister site, http://www.promotional-gifts-co.com, is an environmental showcase of recycled and Fairtrade promotional items that tick the box of being eco friendly. There is an argument that says that given the disposable nature of promotional gifts, such as promotional bags and promotional pens, can there ever be any such thing as an eco friendly promotional gift?
The answer has to be that if there is going to be a demand for promotional gifts, it makes sense to try and produce these in as green a way as possible. While they will be used to some extent to further the green credentials of the companies that use them, it also makes sense to produce an often disposed of product in as ethical a way as possible.
If the eco craze was a fashion statement, it certainly was a popular one. But surely if it is going to teach us any lasting lessons, it is of our responsibility to produce products, promotional or otherwise, in an ethical way.
Tags: promotional gift, Promotional Gifts
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Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010
As the business and economic worlds try to find stability after a long global recession, the aims and strategies of marketing are in a state of flux. With many companies not surviving the downturn and marketing budgets cut across every sector, business bosses are having to come up with more innovative, meaningful ways of promoting their business to potential customers.
Rather than marketing to a large, general population, businesses now need to focus on how to appeal to a more specific target audience who will offer a much higher return on investment. It is important to make a connection to this audience in a personal way, and one technique that can be used to achieve this is promotional gifts. It is a powerful area of marketing which stands out amongst its peers for being able to offer a unique brand experience that cannot exist with any other form of marketing.
There is nothing that can rival the experience of receiving a gift. Most major holidays revolve around the theme of gift giving, and as a marketing tool promotional gifts can evoke an emotional response like no other. In order to achieve this response, promotional gifts have to follow some guidelines.
When a promotional gift is personalised, it becomes the embodiment of the company’s brand, and as a result people will associate that product with the company who gave it. To that end, it pays to give a durable, practical and novel promotional gift that will convey the message of the brand and of the company. If a gift breaks or isn’t fit for purpose, the disappointment of the customer in the promotional gift will be transferred onto the company that gave it. That means it becomes vital for a businesses to ensure the quality of the item they will put their brand onto. After all, it makes no sense to spend time and effort on perfecting a brand image only to let a promotional gift let it down.
As well as durability, businesses also have to think about the sustainability of the product and the ethical connotations attached to how the gift is produced. In today’s world of organic, fair trade produce, companies not only have to conduct their business in an ethical way, but also consider the business practices of the companies they choose to supply their products. With the values of the brand embodied in a promotional gift, companies have a responsibility to ensure their gift is produced in a way that reflects the ethical commitments they pursue themselves.
There will always be a cost consideration when it comes to sourcing ethical produce, but as more emphasis is placed on the importance of responsible trading by governments and businesses, it can become more costly not to conduct business in an ethical way. A company’s reputation can hinge on their business practices and with consumers more aware of where their goods come from, giving an ethically sound promotional gift can have a positive impact on that reputation.
With a new dawn emerging for marketing, quality promotional gifts can play an important role in securing a prosperous future.
Tags: promotional gift, Promotional Gifts, promotional product, promotional products
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Monday, June 7th, 2010
With the Summer arriving in splendid style, 2010 looks set to be a great year for outdoor events. Many businesses choose this time of year to attend conferences or organise exhibitions and open days. For many of these events, promotional gifts are a must. They provide the company involved with a fantastic opportunity to spread the word of their business and increase their reputation by gifting quality promotional gifts.
The Corporate Gifts Company knows how important a successful promotional gift can be, so we have put together this list of how to get the most out of your promotional gift.
1. Get something that people will use!
It sounds blindingly obvious but it’s a common mistake to make. You’ve spent ages choosing the item, putting your logo in the right place and getting it in just the right shade of green, but if it’s not a gift people will use or want then it’s all time wasted! Think about the people who are attending the event and choose a gift that will make an impression with them. Your branded item is doing nothing for you at the bottom of someone’s drawer, or worse, the bin.
2. Match the item to the event.
It’s important that the gift reflects the importance of the event. If it’s a major event, people will be expecting something on a grander scale. Equally, if it’s a smaller event, you don’t have to break the bank. For these more intimate occasions it’s possible to get a quirky, original gift that people will enjoy and hold on to but won’t cost the earth. If it’s on the higher end of the scale, you don’t want to take the gloss off it by giving out a cheap gift! Make sure the gift matches the scale of the event.
3. Order in plenty of time.
If you know your event is coming up, get in and order your gift. The longer you leave it, the less choice you are giving yourself. Often there will be negotiations on colour schemes and type of product, so make sure you don’t leave it too late to get the gift you want.
You can see our range of promotional gift items at http://www.corporate-gifts-co.com
Tags: corporate gift, corporate gifts, promotional gift, Promotional Gifts
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Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
With the World Cup just around the corner, all eyes are firmly set on a wonderful Summer of sport. The great and the good of the football world will converge on South Africa for what promises to be a thrilling world cup. But for thousands of amateur enthusiasts, their season is just coming to a close.
It’s not just football where amateur players across the northern hemisphere will have their weekends back. Rugby, hockey and the full compliment of winter sports are all drawing to a close as the summer arrives.
Although we can’t all play in the Premiership, many clubs will be having end of season award ceremonies. Though probably not as glitzy as the professional awards and seriously lacking in the supermodel WAG factor, these can be great occasions for singling out the star performer in a team and rewarding those who have had a fantastic season. And even if you’ve been relegated, there’s no better way to cheer people up!
For those who don’t wish to go down the trophy route, awarding promotional gifts can be an effective and affordable way of rewarding players. By using promotional gifts, you can make the award specific to the player. So rather than just give a token trophy that will be destined to gather dust for twelve months, give your star player something they will be really excited about. By personalising your promotional gift it will mean more, ensuring better morale in your team.
The promotionlal gift can be personalised further by branding it with either the name of the player or logo of the team and it will add a fantastic feature to an end of season awards night.
Check out http://www.corporate-gifts-co.com for some great promotional gift ideas.
Tags: promotional gift, Promotional Gifts
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