The EMC blog features articles, reviews and industry news on promotional products, business gifts and the promotions industry.

In an aim to target French residents in Tunisia, Risol, a solar power system manufacturer sent promotional bottles of promotional wine to prospective clients. The bottles were of Swedish 2057 vintage and were meant to highlight the possible implications of global warming: Wine production no longer being viable in France due to rises temperatures.

An accompanying letter detailed how energy saving now could avoid the impact of global warming, and that in particular solar panels can change the way the world uses energy.

We reported back in December that Fallon were working with Sony on a new advertising campaign and it seems that the advert went live last night... well at least in Australia. The full advert can be seen here:



Guinness have also officially signed it off as the worlds biggest zoetrope.

It's Carnival time in Brazil and samba is the music of the moment. But not in MTV land where have chosen to insert some "KISS" masks into their latest magazine release so they remind their readership that their is ultimately only one choice of music for the MTV generation: Rock and Roll!

Campaign run by http://www.loducca.com.br

1. Pens - One of the most affordable promotional gifts, pens are also one of the most used by recipients. Great for long term low cost recall.

2. Mugs - Perfect for home or office use, promotional mugs are a great way to market your brand.

3. Mouse Mats - Still popular and one of the most visible items on most peoples offices desks

4. Umbrellas - With the English weather as it is, printed umbrellas can be a well used promotional gift.

5. USB Flash Drives - Another tech gadget popular amongst computer users.

6. Bags - Get your brand advertised everywhere the bag goes.

7. Key rings - Another cheap and cheerful option, and like pens and mugs, heavily used.

8. Conference Folders - Great items for self promotion at trade shows and expos.

9. Clothing - Great for off site staff or for cult branding.

10. Carrier Bags - Eco product with great recall value.

If you are a drum teacher, what kind of promotional item can you use to promote yourself? What about a promotional pencil that is also a drum stick?

www.startupschwag.com is a promotional gifts site with a difference. Based in the US they are a company that distribute giveaways (mainly T-Shirts & Stickers) to a number of paying regular subscribers.





Each subscriber pays about £10 a month + packing to have the items delivered to them. The service is generally targeted to the online technology niche and the the following seems significant. It also seems a good deal for the sites supplying the giveaways; they get qualified interest and therefore, hopefully a better ROI.

Is this promo giveaways 2.0?

When it doesn't have any handles perhaps?

This promotional bag was developed for a Magic shop in Malaysia called Magic-i. The invisible handle is in fact very thin fishing wire. Although the design is an imaginative twist on the normal promotional shopping bag it does raise a question of how painful it is to carry!

The Civil War Museum of Philadelphia is in the middle of relocating thousands of historic items to a new site and their marketing team came up with a unique promotion to target potential benefactors. The branded box included a Civil War period hat called a "kepi" and a request for donation.

EMC opened it’s doors as usual on Monday (after pushing aside a few tons of snow)!

We managed to assemble over half the workforce including all but one of our sales team including Sarah who walked from 3 miles away. It was a slow day as expected, with many of our customers staying at home, but those people we did get through to seemed to be linked by a common enthusiasm for their work and the task in hand. That was what had got them out of bed to slip and slide over country roads or trudge through city streets to get to their employers against the odds.

I think many of the people in the business gifts industry on both sides of the fence share this passion for their work and the fun things they create. I know that our sales team at EMC are real enthusiasts for their work and love what they do. I think this shows in their keenness to provide our customers with the products they are looking for within their budget and delivery expectations. I also believe that in their tenacity to hunt down different options for a campaign they often introduce an idea that the customer hadn’t included initially and can really add something to the overall solution.

It’s this can do attitude in the people surrounding me at work, that gets me out of bed in the morning, whatever the weather and driving happily on my way into EMC.

I recently stumbled across this marketing campaign from 7-Eleven in Australia, to promote their "Biggest Ever Slurpee" (I believe their summers can get quite toastie) and the sheer size of the thing had me do a double take. After a bit of research it seems that Australians have a bit of a thing for oversized promotional items and this is just one in a series of super-sized models dotted around the (mostly) East coast of Australia.

The 11 metre model comes complete with straw although I have been reliably informed that there is unfortunately no drink inside.

We notice that McDonald's are running a promotion at the moment where they are offering free promotional mugs to purchasers of large breakfast meals. In what looks like as effort to re-highlight their partnership with the Rainforest Alliance, the multi national brand is rolling out the promotion across the UK this month.

McDonald's moved to Rainforest Alliance Certified coffee over 2 years ago in a deal with Kraft Kenco and was part of a bigger shift in policy from the fast food giant, to move to a more sustainable supply chain.

The free printed mugs come in three colour options and are all printed with significantly sized Rainforest Alliance Certified logos.

As advertisers carry on the debate over the next great marketing medium, a study released by the Advertising Specialty Institute in the US found that it's not TV, print or radio that is grabbing customers attention the best; but promotional items.

The survey asked 600 participants (who were mostly ABCs over the age of 21) to recall promotional items received over the last 12 months and their effect on their purchasing habits. Key points raised by the study were:

• 8/10 respondents remembered a brand based on a product they had received.
• 24% said that they were more likely to do business with an advertiser based on items they receive
• Nearly 2/3 indicated they had done business with an advertiser after receiving a promotional gift.
• 80% of promotional items were kept as they were considered useful.

These statistics concluded that marketers get a more favourable return on investment from CPI, significant recollection amongst those who received promotional gifts, and improved purpose amongst recipients to make purchases from the promoter.

The UK promotional product industry is worth approx £2Billion of a £15Billion promotional marketing industry and although the study was conducted in US, where the promotional market is much larger than the UK, the report suggests something we should all be shouting from the roof tops: Promotional items are the best form of promotional advertising!

Barrack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States this week and his supporters were eager to show their support in what sounds like one of the biggest promotional item events in history (quoted source below):

"Take a look around and the new president's face is everywhere. His campaign slogan is everywhere.

He's on T-shirts, hats and buttons - or even more ridiculously, on skateboards, earrings and hand puppets.

The merchandise is overwhelming. Street vendors line themselves along the sidewalks across the capitol city and scream clever rhymes into the crowd, doing their best to convince onlookers to buy their Obama key chains, laminated poster reprints, foam fingers, action figures or clothes for dogs and cats, rather than the same stuff that is sold by the hustler three tables over.

"My daddy was a hustler!" shouts a vendor selling hats and gloves. "I got a hustler's blood!"

From car flags and coffee cups to every variety of Obama buttons, people were dressing themselves from head to toe in Obama swag.

"Ooh, I don't have THAT pin," gawks a woman wearing a ski hat already covered in similar buttons.

On the Metro, Washington D.C's underground transit system, the walls are covered with recognizable product ads alluding to Obama's grassroots campaign slogan, "Change you can believe in."

From sudden bursts of song to hustlers pushing Obama swag, it's barely contained chaos in the streets of Washington D.C."

(Quoted text by Caitlin M. Foyt www.cm-life.com), images from Flickr, click each photo for attributed photographer.

Women in the United Arab Emirates who suffer domestic abuse are guarded to speak up about their mistreatment and have formerly found a small number of places to rely on for aid. A centre for abused women in one of the smarter neighbourhoods in Dubai is the only autonomous establishment of its kind that provides protection and hope to battered women.

To engage with this issue of domestic brutality and to contact their target audience in a thought provoking manner, “City of Hope” dispersed custom printed makeup kits to women in Dubai shopping centres.

Via: (Ads of the World)

This years Macworld in San Fransisco (January 5th - 9th) was considered a more sober affair than in previous years, but there was much evidence that manufacturers were still doing their damnedest to grab the attention of visitors to the expo with free, branded promotional items.

There was evidence of many companies offering free badges, pens and key rings to visitors, and many companies were providing visitors with carrier bags, hold alls and backpacks; presumably so they could carry all of the rest of their swag a bit more easily!

Slightly less typical offerings included Iomega free shot glasses, cuddly dogs from software company Fetch, free promotional flash drives from Mimoco, custom printed T-shirts from a variety of companies, hats, caps and sports drink bottles. Google even chipped in with a quirky range of branded socks and flip-flops!

In fact Google had a very effective call to action model with their promotional item marketing: To get your free "swag" you had to demo their products! Visitors were given a card that asked them to visit each of their booths to receive a "stamp". After the card had been stamped the visitor was allowed their free promo gifts!

Just from the images below you can see how many companies had invested in their promotional item marketing this year.

As we are in the grip on one of the coldest winters in recent times, keeping warm at work or at play is an important consideration. At this time of year and as the cold weather continues, more people take to having a hot drink to warm them up and coffee mugs become an increasingly popular promotional gift.

Nearly everybody uses a branded mug at least once a day, either at home or in the office and on average us Brits get through 1,500 cups of tea and coffee per person a year, we take our hot beverages seriously and this goes to show the potential impact, a promotional mug giveaway could provide for your business!

What are the applications of promotional mugs?

Printed mugs are a really versatile promotional item. They can used for in house branding of your company, or offered as a token gift for regular customers (If Google can do it so can you!). They can also be used for external branding and promotion, for example as giveaways for special events, trade shows, expos, conventions, product launches or guerrilla marketing campaigns. Promotional mugs can also be used for fund raising events and to raise awareness of particular issues you are trying to bring to people’s attention (whether they are customers or not).
Mugs have always been a cost effective, useful and much-appreciated gift (they are also one of the most robust promotional gifts you can give) but how can you make your coffee mug gift as special and as memorable as possible?

Promotional mug marketing ideas

Try choosing an interesting design of mug printed with your logo or design you will ensure the recipient remembers what they are supposed to: Your brand! Make sure that your logo compliments the mugs size and shape.

Try to think a bit different too. The typical ceramic mug is a very popular promotional gift, but if you are willing to consider something a little different it can really make an impression on your clients. For example as more people commute to work the need for travel mugs increases and brand exposure takes on a completely new dimension!

Don’t just look at a mug as a thing to hold a hot drink! How often have we all received a nice gift mug full of lovely chocolate? Perhaps consider giving the recipient a bag of fresh coffee beans with your gift?

Overall more and more organisations and businesses are utilising the value and reaping the benefits of promotional mugs as a marketing apparatus. This is because mugs are considered amongst the most efficient and cost effective promotional items that businesses use.

As newly installed MD of EMC, I decided to visit the PSI trade fair in Dusseldorf and see what all the fuss is about. I had heard that the fair was the biggest and best in Europe for promotional gifts and corporate clothing and well worth the 600 mile round trip. Despite the early start, (I was up at 4am), and a 2hr delay at Stansted the trip was relatively painless.

The fair itself was very impressive, our biggest suppliers had all turned out in force with their 2009 ranges and huge stands, it reminded me a little of attending the car show at the NEC, certainly a far cry from other fairs I have attended for our industry.

Both days were spent alternating between meetings with current suppliers and seeking new ones. Of the two, I think the latter is my preferred activity, I get a buzz from finding exciting new products that we can add to our range some of which will be appearing on our site www.emcadgifts.co.uk over the next few weeks.

On the Thursday evening I was invited to a reception by one of our main suppliers and after a few drinks on their boat found myself in the Alt Stadt or old town of Duseldorf in an Irish Bar full of my industry peers all escaping the cold of the street for a few Pils and Jagermeisters and swapping tales of good business done over the past year.

After the fair closed on Friday, I stayed for the weekend and had a lovely time perusing the shops on the Konings Allee and visiting the Stadt museum and the New Forum which had a very interesting collection of photographs by Albert Watson a Scottish photographer with an acute feel for American culture.

Arriving back at work on Monday, I was ready to face the challenge of putting our 2009 catalogue together, with the confidence of having found a few new items that should be bestsellers by the summer!

I think I will go again next year.

Simon

The promotion market is always up to something as were BMW recently. They sent Porsche drivers a mystery jiffy bag through the post with the non-branded envelope enclosing an MP3 player on which was a spoken message inviting the receiver to a special, top secret test drive.

The receipients had no idea that the envelope came from BMW, as the mystery package had no branding. They could just figure out that the post came from Germany, as it got a German postmark and a small sticker that says ‘Luftpost’ which is the German word for ‘air mail’.

As the BMW team are were happy to find out, many people were fascinated by the mystery message as they wanted to know what is behind it all and they accepted the invitation. Many agreed to the test drive and were chauffeured to a private airport, where the new BMW X6 was unveiled. Each test drive was recorded in-car on camera.

The guerrilla promotion was so successful, that 72% of people targeted, responded and they had to cut the planned mail out short as they did not have any further capacity for the test drives.

Times are tough. Small businesses especially are feeling the squeeze as credit dries up, and customers tighten their belts.

And when times are tough, one of the first things to happen in the small business world are advertising budget cuts. Businesses ask themselves “do I need to spend this money to grow my business?”. That is a difficult question to answer as it can depend so much on budget and expectation. However, what is undeniable is that there is a patent need for all businesses to endeavour to keep in contact with active clients as well as bringing in new customers at the same time: This is the dilemma – You risk losing business if you stop branding and promoting yourself, but you really need to save money any way you can. The important point to remember is that you can have your cake and eat it if you promote yourself cost effectively.

Much of the aim of choosing promotional gifts to brand your business is to promote your professionalism and corporate identity, thereby gaining the trust of your current clients and peaking the interest of potential ones. If you think about it objectively are YOU more likely to work with a business if they present themselves professionally, brand themselves well and are promoting themselves actively? Remember you are not the only business looking for optimal use of their money.

You don't have to spend a fortune on promotional gifts or promotional products to get your message noticed. For example promotional pens and pencils can cost pence to produce, but they are one of the most effective promotional gift items around.

Custom printed clothing is also a very effective way to promote your brand and is especially effective at this time of year, where your employees may need to wear hi-visibility or warm clothing; all branded with you company logo perhaps?

And let’s not forget that we live in one of the wettest places in Europe: Promotional umbrellas are always gratefully received by staff and clients alike and make a great statement.

Social Souvenir is a community project by Danish designer Sebastian Campion.

The idea is based on 300 printed T-shirts that are exhibited and put on sale at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde, Denmark,
Each T-shirt is imprinted with a text fragment inspired by 15 renowned artists represented in the museum's collection, such as Yoko Ono, Erik Satie, Marcel Duchamp and Per Højholt.

Guests can purchase a T-shirt of their own choosing, the only condition being that they share a little personal information about themselves, specifically: their name and address. When paying for the T-shirt at the museum-shop, the information is automatically mapped to Google Maps, thereby making it possible to see where each T-shirt ends up after leaving the museum.

During the course of the exhibition, the 300 T-shirts will steadily disappear from the physical museum space only to re-appear in digital form on the web. Subsequently, by buying a T-shirt visitors do not simply get a personal piece of the art installation – they also contribute to its existence.

(source: www.socialsouvenir.net)

AC Milan's Kaka stars in biggest zoetrope of all time.

This is the Sony Bravia-drome, which at 9.98 metres in diameter and 10 tonnes in weight is officially the biggest zoetrope ever built.

The zoetrope is a piece of 19th century optical illusion kit that through the repetition of gradually changing static images, creates a flipbook type "film". Sony's modern version features 64 images of AC Milan and Brazil forward Kaka showing off his silky skills.

The advert is promoting Sony's new motionflow 200Hz technology for it's new Bravia TVs, which eliminate jerkiness by examining broadcasts and inserting transitional images to smooth out onscreen movement.

Indian campaign tackles global-warming crisis

This rather exotic image of two people swimming over a city skyline is, in fact, part of a HSBC advertising campaign to raise awareness of global warming in India.

The Bank was highlighting what might happen if climate change is left unabated; namely, our capitals will become Kevin Costner-style waterworlds. So, the savvy marketing team glued a city image to the bottom of a Mumbai pool, giving the effect of a of a submerged metropolis.

The result is stunning, as was the impact. Soon after the advert went live in India, hits to HSBC’s eco website jumped by 300 percent, as did registrations pledging support.

India’s pollution is predicted to double by 2030, making the advert even more poignant. But despite our unsure future, Costner’s vision is unlikely to materialise.

Best Practice is pleased to present EMC Advertising Gifts with the highly prestigious Excellence Award for December. This award has been given to recognise the supportive and consistent service their sales and order progressing team have developed and the high quality of work completed in their studio and factory in North London.

The leading UK supplier of a wide range of promotional products, EMC boasts over 40 years’ experience within this highly competitive trade. The business’ primary focus is ensuring that all companies working with EMC go away with nothing less than their exact requirements fulfilled, printed accurately and delivered on time for their event or promotion. This may sound easy but with a range of over a thousand products and a diverse customer base including charities and local authorities as well as major multinationals such as Google this can be a challenge. However, no matter the size of the customer or the value of the order the same level of service and care are taken working with the customer to develop their idea and produce printed promotional products and more bespoke items.

One line which has been consistently developing and expanding within the business is their range of corporate branded clothing. For a company looking to improve its corporate image or stand out at an event there is nothing better than a logo embroidered shirt, polo shirt, fleece, baseball cap or jacket. EMC have their own in-house embroidery digitisation and fulfilment team who work to accurately reproduce your design in up to 12 different colours. EMC’s selection of clothing encompasses well known brands such as Slazenger, Ping, Cutter and Buck, Kooga and Dickies Workwear. EMC also offer a range of climate neutral garments made from 100% organic cotton employing only fair trade employees from plant to print.

On the success of the corporate clothing EMC are looking to expand their offering of school clothing, creating a range including shirts, polo shirts, sweatshirts, sports clothing and blazers; there is an excellent capability to expand on this as demand grows and develops.

The care taken in order progression for which EMC have won December’s excellence award can be seen throughout their process. Following a completed sale the order goes to the design studio where the in-house team of artists set to work on finding the best way to display your logo on the product of your choice. Once the artwork is completed a visual proof is sent to the customer, for their final approval.

Once signed off, the artwork is passed down to the factory with instructions on size, colour and orientation of print. The factory have a multitude of printing methods at their disposal including screen printing, heat transfer, embroidery, laser engraving, embossing, foil blocking and sublimation printing. Having an on-site factory gives EMC the advantage of a quick, efficient and flexible service not available to other competitors who have to outsource their production.

The boast of the business is the accuracy in the printing process; there is over 200 years of printing experience among the factory staff and it shows in the quality of the work and invention of methods used to print on almost any surface including many transfer and cut-vinyl processes giving wonderful full colour finishes.

A company that is not only highly respected amongst its competitors, but is paving the way for competitors to follow, EMC is consistently advancing with an expanding client base and new products. Known to have been able to get an order out within the same day and with a double proofing process throughout production to ensure that your goods are printed right first time, it really is a company that can only excel. Within an economic climate that is taking such a harsh downturn that really is the stamp of success.

Tel: 0845 345 1064