Missed The Boat

Promotional Industry Misses the Boat

Even after the tech meltdown, overall marketing budgets fell by less than the decrease in sales in the promotional industry. And then when marketing budgets started to recover, the promotional industry lagged behind. Why is that?

Well, frankly, the promotional industry missed the boat, that’s why. Companies think about promotional items last. After, say, they have designed a marketing program for the quarter or the year worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, somebody says: “Oh, yeah, don’t forget to order a few hundred pens, mugs and key chains for us too.”

Well, that isn’t the future for this industry and if it is, we should all be looking for new jobs. The promotional products industry has to move up the food chain and embrace marketing solutions.

Marketing solutions is all about intricating promotional products into the very fabric of the organization’s marketing plan. Why, so the industry can make more money? No, so the industry’s clients can be more effective in their marketing and they can make more money (an coincidentally, the promotions industry can too).

People love to receive FS (Free Stuff); they’ll go to ridiculous lengths to get stuff for free. When you reward a high-performing employee or a valued client with a cash bonus or cash back incentive, almost half of it can be eaten up by the taxman (in the case of the employee) or it is just spent in a few days anyway on something else. Give that same employee or client a company-branded DVD player and every time she turns it on, she is reminded of what a great employer or supplier she has… for years.

And the company’s brand on the DVD player is visual and permanent and can’t be zapped like people zap TV commercials or flip radio stations when a commercial message comes on. And unlike a newspaper ad, it keeps on working for years, not 20 minutes.


There go your Marketing Dollars

Marketing solutions means doing more Agency-style work, like making sure that the right promotional items are selected reflecting the demographics of the target group, like making sure that the delivery solution is in place (no one needs a warehouse full of undeliverable FS), like having some type of call-to-action so you can track and measure the efficacy of the campaign and its ROI (Return on Investment) too, like doing some follow up study and research so you can constantly improve what you do.

Warren Gencher, President of Brymark.com, one of Canada’s leading providers of TQA marketing solutions in the promotional products space. warren@brymark.com

NegativeCostMarketing

Why People will Pay you to Market your Stuff

So, you don’t believe the title to this article, huh? The fact is that people will pay you for the right and privilege to market your stuff for you. Can you think of any example of this happening today in your city or town? Sure you can—just look at your local sports teams.

Isn’t it amazing that sports fans (don’t forget that is short for ‘fanatics’) will pay not just the normal margins but super-margin prices for clothing or other items imprinted with their favourite team’s logo on it?


Gee, Reverse Cost Marketing Does Exist After all

They will happily walk around (like out-of-work folks did during the Great Depression of the 1930s wearing sandwich boards in exchange for food) with a Lakers’ Jersey or a Raiders Cap promoting their affiliation with their team.

It wasn’t that long ago that people use to keep their underwear inside their clothes and, by the way, keep the manufacturers nametag hidden too. Now, they think nothing of having Calvin Klein prominently displayed on their CK clothing or purse or wallet or whatever and, better still (at least, for CK’s bottom line), they will pay CK for that right to advertise Calvin Klein.


People Used to Keep their Underwear Hidden

Now that is negative cost marketing.

So how does that impact the promotional products industry? Well, it matters a lot—the industry has to move up the value chain and offer large, national clients and even local clients too the type of solutions they need in order to keep ahead of their competition and to stand out in a noisy environment. Remember promotional products work because they are on display for months or years even.

Pepsi recently unveiled a new campaign (http://www.pepsistuff.ca/), which not only ‘sells’ Pepsi branded merchandise but co-brands some of the stuff with partners like Reebok, Sony, Timex and others. Presumably, their partners are also helping to pay the freight on this.


Pepsi Cobrands with Partners like Reebok

Now it’s true that Pepsi is not actually selling their merchandise for cash but it might as well be—they are using Pepsi points instead but the more a consumer drinks and the more Pepsi they buy, the more points they get so, in a way, Pepsi is getting paid. And these points programs work really well when the program owner (Pepsi) sells points wholesale for cash to others (like Reebok, Sony, Timex, RogersATT, FamousPlayers and more) who in turn use these points in their loyalty programs. (E.g., buy a cell phone from RogersATT and get so many hundred or thousand Pepsi points…) This leverages the investment and turns this marketing program into a negative cost in a hurry.

What all this means is that the promotional products industry has get out of the simplistic product pushing business and into the solutions space. It is a better to pitch to talk to your clients and tell them that, maybe, they can make money promoting their products. The industry has to examine every one of its client’s requirements and ask the seemingly contradictory question: “Will people pay for Free Stuff (FS)?”

Mark Gencher, Executive Vice-President, Brymark.com, one of Canada’s leading providers of TQA marketing solutions in the promotional products space. mark@brymark.com

Hope

The Role of Hope in Human Endeavour

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”



Dale Carnegie
City-building, nation-building, company-building are accomplished by people who are positivists, people with … hope. Hope plays an important part in all human endeavours.

Listen to what Winston Churchill had to say to rally the people of the United Kingdom as they faced their darkest day. The Nazis were in control of much of Europe, the British army had been defeated and the remnants had been evacuated from Dunkirk. On June 4th, 1940, here is the last paragraph of Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons:



Sir Winston: ‘We shall Never Surrender’
“I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty's Government-every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”

“Hope has two beautiful daughters - their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are,” St. Augustine

“There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope,” Bern Williams
We should use our ability to analyze alternatives and rank them to put ourselves in a position to make informed judgments. However, at the end of the day, no matter how good our analytical tools become, everything we do is ultimately based on experience, judgment and faith that it will all somehow work out.

Warren Gencher & Dr. Bruce M. Firestone, Ottawa, Canada.

Welcome

Welcome to Brymark's Blog.