I is for...Interesting!

Much of the art of promotion and advertising is figuring out a way to grasp the attention of your target audience. Usually this is done by appealing to the things that interest us most; sex, violence and alternate worlds that offer some respite from reality. However, making your product interesting is not always easy to do and, as pioneers of the world of promotion, it is our job to come up with ingenious new ways of spicing-up otherwise mundane promotional products. If putting women on bonnets sells cars, surely there must be a way to adapt this simple methodology for everyday businesses? Check out this example of interesting promotion.

So you know how you've always wanted your drink to be sexier? Well look no further than this piece of super-promotion - the Beverage Babe Wrap! In a range of colours, shapes and sizes; the beverage babe puts a sexy new spin on the old concept of beverage-insulation, making the simple act of drinking into a sexual adventure that transcends even your wildest fantasies! Providing, of course, that your fantasies involve drinking liquids from the torso of a tiny, limbless, headless women wearing sports clothing...


Designed to zip-up and fit snuggly around your bottle, the beverage babe is essentially just a pair of neoprene breasts that can be attached to your bottle for that added feeling of "What the hell am I doing?". Having said that, if the product actually featured tiny replica breasts, it might add some kind of comedic vibe to the whole thing - akin to the "Beer" episode of Blackadder II. However, the "breasts" featured on the beverage babe are very much hidden away from view, in what would be a suggestive and alluring way if they weren't rubber lumps attached to the torso of a mutilated jogger.

So that's how not to use sex to advertise your product. You can't deny that it's quite an interesting idea though, can you? The point of the matter is that it's not hard to make your products interesting, so put some more effort in!

H is for…Hip Flask!

What better way to ensure customer loyalty by suggesting they are alcohol dependent? Joking aside – really, what better way to ensure customer loyalty than by providing a means by which they can actually carry liquor around in their pocket, making it available at any moment they find themselves in need of some Dutch courage? (How selective acceptable racism has become these days…)

Alright so I accept I'm being unnecessarily harsh on the idea of a promotional hip flask; one could easily fill it with frappachino or, heaven forefend, smoothie! The strange thing is that, in this age of accepted alcoholism, these things are actually considered quite trendy -yet rarely do people not drinking from the flask ever actually know what is swilling around inside. When we see a bearded man swigging from a hip flask we keep him at a safe distance in case he pukes, swings for us or passes out; we do not pull up a stool and say “You know what, I don’t think there’s whiskey in there at all! I think it’s apple juice you fraud! You’re not charmingly addicted to booze at all – you’re nothing but a wannabe alcoholic!”

So maybe these promotional hip flasks - with their large, smooth print area for your enrgraved logo - might not actually encourage the drinking of alochol at all, making them a good idea for companies that are concerned about being seen to advocate such immoral behaviour. Personally I actively encourage it; anything to change our state of conscious to one in which we forget the agony of the ironic falsity behind our perception of utter-freedom is good by me. But unfortunately there is yet another problem with this idea, which is – strangely – the same as the advantage.

You see, these things ARE trendy, but this doesn’t make them a good promotional product. They are trendy because they are seen to stand for everything that things like promotional products do not stand for; hip flasks are seen as a sign of rebellion, of self-destruction – of a rock n’ roll lifestyle! Not as a sign of belief in Cheap Roofing or A&M Food Safety Certification. Unless you are a cool company with a cool logo, nobody who will actually use these things will want one with your name on it – it’s a sure-fire way to go from cool to tool in a matter of seconds. Of course, the ironic truth is that any genuine alcohol dependant existentialist wouldn’t care what his hip flask says on it – but the market is in the posers and it’s the market that you’re after.

So, if you’re a cool company – selling motor bikes, guitars or liquor– you can go with one of these; ditto cigarette companies. If you’re not a cool company, just stay away from the idea – and be honest without yourselves, not of this “Sure accounts are hip! That’s where all the dawgs be at – gol’ diggin’ n’ all…” If you’re a seriously uncool company however, maybe embrace the irony and go with a post-modern hip flask that boldly proclaims that the wielder oft frequents Blossom Petting Zoo; I for one would consider buying an Alcoholics Anonymous hip flask. I’m just saying.

G if for...Golf Gloves!

Looking back over the last posts, I got the feeling that the lack of alliteration in the A-Z so far is frankly disgraceful; hence I bring you G is for Golf Gloves. Ah, alliteration at long last - lovely! (I hate myself).

I feel that promotional golf gloves really do speak for themselves; they are the obvious choice of promotional product for anybody who...wants…to…no, I'm finding this trickier than it looks. Let’s be honest for a moment here; people that play a sport who name means Gentlemen Only Women Forbidden are willing to pay an overpriced membership to hit a ball around some hills, having also purchased some clubs, a variety of ridiculous shirts and some special golf shoes with spikes that directly represent the manliness of the sport when compared to rugby studs. Call me a cynic (it’s my job after all) but I’m going to guess that these people and their surplus of money have probably already got themselves a golf glove or five. What’s more, their own golf gloves – which they have hand-chosen from a selection of golf gloves in the shop – are probably of a higher quality than anything your company may be able to afford to give out and, what’s more, they won’t have your name and logo slapped across the wrist as if to say “I can’t afford my own glove, so my boss has given me one”.

On the other hand, let us suppose for a moment that you are the employee of a very well respected business – the kind of business that people are proud, even smug to work for. The kind of business that employees go out of their way to bring up in conversation at the drop of a volavon… The kind of business that wants all other businesses to know that so many of its employees play golf that it actually gives out free golf gloves in an attempt to alleviate the agony bought about by the perpetual tide of ruined golf gloves, mangled by hours of highly competitive golf-tournament playing! As an employee of such a company, would you not actively desire to advertise your chosen career and employer? As the company in question, would you not desire to have your logo seen in a place full of potentially high-earning customers? As an onlooker, would you not be quietly impressed to know that the guys in front of on the course work for Face and Face Limited – the world’s largest supplier of wireless shopping bags?

Essentially these are great products for companies whose employees have a burning desire to jump up and down on the green and scream “Don’t you know who I am?! Don’t you know who I work for?! YOU MUST RESPECT ME!” at the ball every time they miss an easy put. Since we all know this to be amongst the fastest ways to get yourself kicked off a golf course (along with nudity, murder and having working class parents), it is a much easier option to allow your employees to advertise their love of power - I mean love of your company - on their golf apparel.

See? I already respect the man in this photo, just by looking at his golf glove! Now you too can get such meaningless, shallow, easy-to-come-by respect as mine by giving such gloves to your employees! I found this picture by google image-searching "golf gloves" - you can find it there too if you're really that bothered about where it can from ORIGINALLY. (Though technically I suppose everything comes from the same place ORIGINALLY and hence I will attribute all the ideas, text and pictures in this blog to the infinite artistic genius of the Big Bang. If you believe the Big Bang stole your ideas, feel free to sue existence for plagarism - I hear God tried that a while ago but failed when the court ruled that He couldn't possibly have MADE Himself. His lawyer made a good case (well done Moses), but the Lord couldn't provide a satisfactory answer to the defence's key question:

Defence: "Mr. God; where were you on the morning of the first of the first, first ever time ever - the morning on which you claim to have bought yourself into existence?"

God: "Well I was..."

Defence: "Oh you already were, were you?"

God: "...yes?"

Defence: "No further questions your honour."

F is for...Flat Whistles!

Nobody enjoys that everyday struggle of trying to fit their whistle into their bag. It's a chore we could all do without.

Unless you are some bizarre non-whistle-carrying type of person, you will be relieved to hear that we whistlers can now overcome this biggest of pains in our collective arse by using these - flat whistles. They work just as well as normal whistles (better, some say), yet they slot easily into your bag, without the embarrassing whistle-struggle that we have all become so used to.
In terms of promotion, this flat-whistle is streets ahead of normal whistles, providing a huge flat space for a logo and information, compared to the small curl of uselessness that is a normal whistle. Oh how I hate those normal whistles. What's more, they come in both blue AND white, so you can have...one for day and one for night! Or one for weekdays and a special weekend-whistle! The possibilites are endless.*

So at last we have an answer for the age old question; how many whistles does it take to teach a dog to sing? The answer; ONE! One of these awesome flat whistles that fits in your pocket as snugly as half a dozen credit cards all stuck together with chocolate - delicous! I mean, incredible.
*Possibilties stated may or may not actually be endless, depending entirely on whether said possibilities involve whistling, carrying a whistling or any other whistle-related activity and, naturally, whether the activities involve the use of either a blue or a white whistle. Recommended as a promotional product for companies whose target audience is mainly football fans.

D is for...Databank!

What the hell is a databank? Good question. It may read like a Russian call to arms, but Wikipedia declares it to be "a repository of information on one or more subjects that is organized in a way that facilitates local or remote information retrieval". So, that about clears that up.

End.

Only kidding. Much as I would love to just copy and paste wikipedia definitions (wikinitions?) into my blog posts, I have too much time and pride to stoop to such levels. So, some thoughts on these datebanks are required since, after all, I did say that I was going to try to make this interesting. How hard can it be to make databanks interesting? Ahem.

If you're anything like me, you'll do anything to look slightly more like a super-villain. Enter the databank; shiny, metallic-looking and touch screen, this "repository of information" features an abundance of features to keep you organised and entertained (providing you find inputting data to be hilarious fun). Behold the following list of stuff that databank has built into it:

• a world-timer (en guard magic slide-calculator!)
• a telephone book
• a scheduler with an alarm
• an address book
• a 10 digit calculator (hohoho)
• an 11 set currency converter
• memo mode
• to do mode (that's right, it can do memos AND to do lists!)
• a metric converter
• 40 major world city times (unlike the world-timer which is...something else?)
• a 3 line display (whatever that is)
• 7 languages! (and no more; try to write in Slovenian and it blows up)
• a 4-language translator (despite having 7 languages)
• and finally...wait for it...GAME MODE!

Satan Himself only knows what Game Mode involves but I'm 80% certain that it will be about as much fun as washing your clothes. I have left a 20% margin of doubt to honour the fact that hurling the databank at a train would probably be enough fun to warrant a degree of recognition.

Otherwise, that's a fairly impressive list of features Mr. Databank! Providing the user is utterly devoid of joy to start with, not much can go wrong using this piece of technology. However, even the most dull of people should be wary of one potential flaw with the databank. You see, the product description declares "these stylish promotional databanks are great for storing and whole wealth of information"! Despite not actually making any sense, this quote is also quite misleading in terms of...well, everything. I'm no expert on modern electronics, but when it goes on to boast that the databank has a full "32k data storage", I cannot help but furrow my brow. 32k? As in...32,000? 32,000 what?! Letters? Words? High-scores in GAME MODE?! Realistically; 32,000 bytes, or 32 megabytes of storage? Or does it mean 32k as in 32 kilobytes? Surely God no; that's a 45th of a floppy disk! Remember them? No? EXACTLY!

Mega or kilo; in either case the description seems to imply that this "repository of...a wealth of information" can hold either a 250th or a 250,000th as much data as my mobile phone. I wonder if these people researched a "wealth of information" before writing their product description... If their definition is anything to go by, such research would be the equivalent of tripping over a poodle.

I'm all for gadgets, despite the fact that I cannot afford to buy any. But even I, as Mr. Mc.Brokeus would be wary of trusting all my important dates and information to a promotional touch-screen databank; that is, if I could actually FIT all my important information onto something with the internal capacity of a Caprisun. I'd rather stick with my phone, again.

Despite everything said above; definitly consider this over the magic world time slide-calculator. That thing doesn't even have Game Mode. Pah.

Please note: if anybody can better explain this 32k data storage, I would be delighted to be informed!

C is for...Calculator!

In the same way that rappers have guns, businessmen have calculators; they've probably never used them, but they look good and make them feel secure in the knowledge that, should the faeces hit the propeller blades, they've got it there as backup. You know the scenario; "But Walters, if we lose this investments-deal with G-Com, our overheads will go through the roof! Christ, our projected net profit is slipping as I speak! At this rate the end of the week will see us at...at...DAMMIT I CAN'T DO THAT MATHS! WALTERS, FETCH MY CALCULATOR!"

It could make a great movie; Death By Numbers; An Accountants Tale. One man's struggle against maths; Keanu Reaves plays Frank, incredibly stupid son of a powerful accountant. Keen to follow in his father's footsteps, Frank must overcome his stupidity and lack of facial expressions to prove to the world, and his father, than he...is...the one...two, three, four, five...

"I was thirteen when my father first showed me numbers. I didn't know what to think - there were so many! Too many! I tried to count them all but by my fifteenth birthday I still hadn't managed! That was when my father gave me a birthday present that would change my life...a magic, world time slide-calculator"

Aye, you heard Frank right - magic, world time slide-calculator. You know like a slide-phone, only without anything good? Oh wait, I am mistaken; they feature an alarm, a clock, a world timer and a "date function" AS WELL AS a slide-calculator! Forgive my cynicism but, in my experience, clocks, alarms and world-timers don't really count for three individual features...not REALLY... As for the "date function" well, that count mean a host of things! Maybe it guesses at the date four times a day, or recalls past dates when you were doing cooler things than you are currently doing. Maybe it systematically goes through your phone book, calling everybody and asking them if they'll go out for dinner with you...oh no wait, it's not a phone. Sadly.

I assume it actually means that it tells you the date, probably after you have originally told IT the date during the set up. So really it just keeps track of the date for you...in the same way that your phone and laptop do...only without the billion other features that make phones and laptops useful and calculators pretty much pointless. Hooray! If it was a proper badass scientific calculator, I would bow down right now and worship at its..."feet"! But alas, it is not. It is a calculator with a sliding cover and added clock.

I suppose the clock can at least tell you the time anywhere in the world...as if that is actually a useful thing for anything to be able to do. How many people genuinely have family living in other parts of the world, yet still can't remember the time difference? "I should call my mum, she'll be home from work by now, it's 19:00... Oh but wait...she lives in Spain! It could be 03:00 in the morning there! I'd wake her up...I'D WAKE HER UP! Excuse me, excuse me, help - does anybody know the time in Spain? Anybody?! MOTHER? MOTHEEEEER! NOOOOOOOOOO! IF ONLY I HAD A MAGIC WORLD TIME SLIDING CALCULATOR!"

So, like I said - a slide phone without anything good. Not the best promotional product ever, but certainly an interesting one.

B is for...Beach Set!

It is well-known fact that people hate going on holiday and spend their entire time wishing they were back at work. Right? Right.

Well you'll be pleased to hear that there is, available on the market right his second, a entire collection of beach-orientated promotional accessories to ensure that you feel as close to work as possible whilst on holiday! A mesh beach bag, which I assume can be used for carrying goodies, comes filled with a pair of flip flops and a beach mat, all in matching mushy-pea-green, nuclear-orange or slag-pink! I assume it's a sort of one-size-fits-all arrangement with the flip flops, though I can't imagine how they'd conduct the market research into discovering the shoe size of the cross-section of society most likely to wear promotional flip flops..

On the downside, nobody is going to want your logo on their beach mat. On the plus side, the convenience of the mat/flops/bag combination means that people might well put up with your little promotion for the sake of the beach-easiness. Furthermore, anybody that witnesses another human being so bedecked in promotional love is bound to assume there is a reason so such insane brand-loyalty...

Alternatively, this product is ideal for the proud employee that just can't bear to leave work. You know the ones.

A is for...A-Z! (kinda)

Forgive me for this brief moment of arrogance, but I feel I am doing quite well in my quest to tell you many athing that is relevant to promotional products; I have shown you good ones, bad ones, interesting ones, boring ones, eco-friendly ones and even alternative solutions to non-eco-friendly ones! For this reason, I have decided to challenge myself to write an enjoyable A-Z of promotional products, in the hope that it will further drive home the point that there a BJILLIONs of options available to you, hence you should spend some time and choose wisely.

So here we go; 26 ideas for promotional products and my thoughts on them.

A is for...Atlases!

Indeed my friends, there are people out there who feel their company is best represented by stamping their contact information on the front of finecell-bonded atlases, or Alti as I prefer to refer to them in the plural (not just because pseudo-Latin is fun but become it is an alternative name for Thor, who is badass). I always thought that an atlas had to be a collection of maps of the world, with "world" being the foundational part of the definition. However, the particular example I found declared itself to be an "Atlas of the United Kingdom" - so I suppose I must be wrong.

Wikipedia informs me, in its infinite wisdom, that an atlas is simply a collection of maps, usually of the Earth, which makes me wonder; just how many maps make up an atlas? Three? Is three enough maps for an atlas? If not, what do you call a collection of maps that is too small to be an atlas? A micro-atlas? Furthermore, you could technically make a collection of maps about anything and hence have an "Atlas of My Pond and Surrounding Shrubs"! Combine these two problems and you could have genuine 3-page atlas/micro-atlas of driveway. Nonsense.

Hence I think the term "atlas" should be reserved for collections of maps that detail the whole world. But this is all essentially beside the point; there are A4, leather-bound collections of road maps available, upon which you can foil-block your own logo. Sound fun? No? I'm not surprised, but it would at least make an interesting and useful product for car salesmen to give away or geography teachers to receive. What's more, since it will almost never be opened or used, your logo on the front cover will to on show the whole time! Unless of course somebody puts if away on a self, in which case it will never be seen. Ever.


I'm not here to cast judgement; I'm just reporting the truth! They don't call me Edde
"Pravda" Gamester for nothing.

Green Promotional Products

Alright, I have written enough on bags to last a lifetime already. As such, I am going to move on in my quest to document every corner of the world of promotional products and write a small post about a new wave of products - the eco-friendly promotional product. Sorry to all those readers that were expecting a post about products that are literally green - I'm sure there is a "Green Things" club that you can join somewhere on the internet if its’ that important to you.

There is incredible pressure to be eco-friendly in every aspect of our lives - probably for good reason too. Personally I don't really believe the hype; we're all going to die anyway and we'll probably destroy the world no matter what kind of shopping bags we use, or how many trees we replant. This doesn't bother me personally, but it scares enough people that I think there is something to be said for putting these poor people at ease.

So, as promotional product distributors, users, buyers, seller, lovers, eaters and such, what can we do to ensure that our industry is as eco-friendly as possible? Well, here are some ideas to get you started.

Firstly, try these eco-friendly key ring bottle-openers; made from recycled steel that is ground into powder, pressed and shaped. Apparently the powered metal is heated to 1120 degrees Celsius in order to ensure that the finished product is one continuous piece of metal! Incredible! Must take a hell of a lot of fuel to heat those furnaces, but I guess that's what trees are for. Ha. Funny guy. Anyway, the company that produces these things claims that they are unbreakable, which is a challenge enough in itself to warrant buying them!
Correct, this one is indeed branded with a Coca Cola logo. Irony? I certainly hope so.

The same company also produce recycled flash drives! Crazy eh? The little things that people think will make a difference! They offer a fully customised design service and claim to be able to make flash drives in almost any shape that we can imagine! I know what you're thinking, but I bet you can't actually imagine a chiliagon...

Other ideas include ballpoint pens made from recycled paper and bags made from "sustainable wood pulp". I assume they mean "pulp made from sustainable wood sources" because, in my opinion, when something is made into a bag, it is no probably longer being sustained. But of course, I am deliberately being an arse - it's my job. There is also a wide variety of wooden stationary available, in case the rest of these ideas were scintillating enough! I have NO idea why people associate stuff made out of wood with eco-friendliness; sustainable forests or not, they're still destroying trees to make rulers - what the hell is eco-friendly about that?!

So there you have it; a few ideas to help you understand what you can do to help make your promotional products more eco-friendly! (Make them out of recycled stuff apparently - who would have guessed?) a

Alternative Solution Number 3: Starch Bags

It sounds ridiculous, but it's true; there is a market for bags made out starch! When I think of starch all that comes to mind is old men in uncomfortable clothes, bizarre Elizabethan ruffs and potato maranading in iodine...but none of these wonderful things is used in the creation of strach bags - let me tell you more:

Firstly - I lied. One kind of starch bag is actually made of potato starch! Sadly not edible, these bags disintegrate into carbon dioxide, water and biomass in around 3 months (in "standard composting conditions", as stated by EU standard EN 13432 & International standard ASTM D6400-99 - don't act like you haven't been reading it at bedtime for months!) That's pretty good news for our eco-problem that renders both plastic and paper bags unsuitable for use, or "unethical" as they have somehow come to be defined - how a bag can possibly possess moral properties is beyond me.

But that sillyness is not the point; the point is that these bags are bigger and tougher than paper or plastic bags, but completely biograde in 10-12 weeks instead of 10-12 thousand years! They can also be printed-on and used to advertise whatever you fancy - making them fanastic eco-friendly promotional products! The downside? Well, I suppose there isn't one really...except for the cost; these badboys come at a price, and that price is incredibly expensive...

Oh wait, did I say incredibly expensive? I apologise - I meant to say CHEAP AS CHIPS! Which isn't really a fair expression to use since chips cost 99p per portion, where these bags are as cheap as £0.01 EACH (when you buy something like a BILLION of the mothers). Otherwise they're still only about £0.40-50 which really isn't that bad considering their reusable and eco-friendly nautre :)

To be honest, I expect I would decompose into biomass if you left me in standard composting conditions for 3 months, but then again you'd also have a fight on your hands if you tried to use me to carry your shopping home (I am open to negotiation; please see my Terms and Conditions*)

*I don't have Terms and Conditions - I rock and everybody else deals with it.

Alternative Solution Number 2: Onya Bags

The biggest problem with taking your own bags shopping is the amount of space that they take up. Even plastic bags are quite bulky and likely to have people looking at you funny when you have five of them scrunched up in your trouser-pocket. Enter Onya.

Onya make three kinds of bag, each better-suited to the role of carrying-stuff-around than plastic bags could ever be. Their bags are made from parachute material and hence are fantastically lightweight and won’t weigh you down in the slightest, unless you carry 10,000 of them around on you at one time, in which case you forfeited the right to complain when you signed the “Strongest Man in the World” disclaimer. Despite their flimsy appearance, loads of up to ten kilograms can be lugged around in Onya Bags; four-times more than a standard carrier bag, or so they claim!

The best part about Onya Bags however, is their capacity to scrunch. Whether it be the Onya Original in the style of a regular plastic bag, but with nice handles that won’t you’re your fingers drop off; the Onya Back full-sized backpack that compacts into a tiny pouch when not in use; or the Onya Side satchel-like bag worn over the shoulder; all Onya Bags can be scrunched up into a tiny pouch, which can be attached to your belt or bike, or hung from an appropriate piercing.


No more must we face the agony of lugging around bulky bags in which to place all of our eggs! Huzzah Onya – HUZZAH! I have possessed an Onya Side for a couple of years and used it to carry everything from books to uni, clothes to the gym and cables to gigs. I have taken it travelling through Europe with me for a month and around the USA for another month and, despite some ink stainage, it looks and works as good as new.

AMOCERI result: PASS

Onya Bags start from a mere £6.50 and could take the place of over 1000 plastic bags.

Alternative Solution Number 1: Paper Bags

Paper bags are quite often handed out as an alternative for plastic bags or, in some places, they are the commonplace method of carrying groceries; who hasn’t seen a mother figure in an American daytime TV programme, fumbling with the front door keys as she balances the bags of groceries in one arm? Or the classic American school kid grabbing their paper bag of lunch and running out the door to catch the bus to school. I’m not sure why I’m illustrating this point; it’s fairly obvious on its own.

But enough nonsence. The point is that paper bags have a reputation as being a more eco-friendly version of plastic bags; probably because they biodegrade more quickly and don’t use up as much of the valuable oil reserve (which many, many people have died for after all). What’s more, one paper bag can hold the same amount as four plastic bags AND the burn better too – for all you crazies out there. What isn’t immediately obvious, however, is that producing paper bags actually uses thrice the energy and six times the raw material than producing plastic bags! In fact, each paper bags take a gallon of water to create – a GALLON! Personally I don’t take issue with water wastage; 63% of the Earth is water so, the way I see it, waste away my friends! But you get the point…right? In case you don’t; one ton of paper pulp takes three tons of wood chippings to create; that be a lot of dead trees right there! Not to mention the amount of petrol and electricity used in the felling and moulding processes.

So, is the greater volume really worth the effort? Are paper bags a realistic alternative to plastic ones? Well, technically speaking, yes they are; they do the same job, but probably better. However, the issue with plastic bags is not that they don’t do the job, but that they are screwing up the environment in the process. Given the amount of wood, water, electricity and all sorts that paper bags use, it doesn’t seem to me that we’d be gaining any ground by changing from plastic to paper (the reverse of the financial trend). Hence I conclude that no, paper bags are not a decent alternative to plastic bags.

AMOCERI result: FAIL

Bags are for LIFE!

When you do the weekly shop (if you do a weekly shop) do you take bags with you, or do you strip them from the wad o’ bags at the end of the checkout? I expect that, like most people, you do the latter – you AWFUL person! Of course I am exactly the same; I choose to do my part in ruining the environment for the sake of not having to carry around my own plastic (or other) bags. Unlike most however, I am not going to appeal to human nature or any anti-hippy propaganda – I am happy to admit that I am just lazy. Walking to the shops is effort enough for me without having to carry all the bags I intend to fill as well.

However, the Society for Probably Totally Invented Statistics informs me that approximately 13.5 billion plastic bags are used per year in the UK alone, less than one percent of which are recycled. Given that the amount of petrol it takes to make one plastic bag could drive a car over a hundred metres, our plastic bag consumption uses enough petrol to drive around the world about 40,000 times. Hippy or not, you’ve got to admit that’s pretty messed up.

Never having been one to turn down an opportunity for super-heroics, I shall now put an end to the 100,000 cases of bird/marine life death per year from plastic waste, via a series of blog posts detailing alternative promotional bags and how much they destroy, or do not destory, the world. Join me on my incredible journey as I subject a variety of plastic-bag-replacements to the test called the Alternative Methods of Carrying Everyday or Realistic Items (or AMOCERI as it is known).

To Conclude

As for quills…well, I would say that people using quills should get with the times, but the more I think about it the more it occurs to me that if we all used quills it would help make sure only those people that are truly dedicated to what they are writing about would persist in the writing. There’d be a lot less to read, but what would be available would probably be pretty damn good! So I’m pro-quills (and pro quaffs, but anti-quiffs).

So, to summarise the kind of pen that might be best suited to the type of thing that you are advertising.
• Everyday products and services: ballpoint or gel pens.
• Specialist products and services: ballpoint or rollerball pens.
• Arty Products and services: fibre-tips or pencils.
• Kids product: fibre-tip or gel pens.
• Or something along those lines.

So to the final question; what do I use when I write? Why, thanks for asking! I use a keyboard; it’s quicker, hard to lose and doesn’t stain your pockets. Obviously keyboards aren’t as easy to carry around as pens, so I wouldn’t advise it as a replacement promotional product. When I do write with a pen, I like to use a felt-tip but tend to use a ballpoint; they’re cheap, they write well, they’re nice to chew one, they can be disposed of without feelings of guilt and they shatter nicely when you toss them across the room in a rage. I’d love to use fibre tipped, rollerball or fountain pens but I have neither the money nor the can-be-bothered-to-find-a-pen-shop to ever break free from the biro prison in which I find myself perpetually encaged. As for the psychological analysis; my use of cheap biros highlights the way in which I tend to live more in my head than in the real world. Not only would the use of a nicer pen would distract me from the content of my writing, but waiting for the ink to dry would hold up what needs to be as swift and natural a process as possible.

The conclusion; with a little thought and research you can boost your promotional effectiveness by choosing the write promotional pen for your clients. Ooooooow!

5) Fountain Pens

Finally - the age-old classic, the fountain pens. Truly the only type of pen for the person who genuinely enjoys writing. Or so the claim goes. You see, I enjoy writing. But I enjoy writing in the artistic sense; choosing the right words and constructing them in such a way that they ebb and flow with the mental tides of the reader. Since it would take me fifteen times as long to write using a fountain pen, I can quite safely say that I do not use a fountain pen…because I enjoy writing. So it seems to me that the type of people that use fountain pens can be divided into two main groups. Firstly, the sensualists; people who, however much of a wordsmith they might be, love the physical act of writing as much as they love the words that they write. These people are often the best of writers and their use of fountain pens means that they can put feeling into their work, not just be the words, concepts and construction, but in the way in which the words are literally written on the page. The nib of the fountain pen allows the writer to accentuate their words in the same way that a violinist can vibrato the living hell out of the most badass note in a solo; these people rock.

Sadly there is a second category of fountain pen users; the snobs again. These are the people that use fountain pens because they feel like they should do; to maintain social status or look like they are one of the aforementioned writers, when in fact they have no idea what they are doing. Such people use the most expensive and expressive pens in the world for signing large cheques and decorating their desk and/or top pocket; a tragic state of affairs for sure and proof that the best of things should be unavailable for purchase and awarded only on merit.

In terms of promotion, I can’t really see the benefits of giving out nice fountain pens outweighing the costs. What is more, most people that will truly appreciate a fountain pen will probably resent you for running it with you logo and phone number.

4) Gel Pens

Similar to a rollerball pen, but more fun, the gel pen is capable of writing on a lot more surfaces that rollerballs. Appropriate for writing and drawing, gel pens also have much thicker ink, allowing them to come in a massive range of colours. An even cooler fact is that the pigments in gel ink are insoluble in water; this means that, unlike normal ink, gel-pen ink cannot be analysed using thin-layer chromatography and hence cannot be traced back to its manufacturer; is UNTRACEABLE! I don’t know why, but for some reason I shall hence conclude that people who use gel pens are mainly spies, terrorists, evil billionaires – or a combination of all three. I’m not sure why since, of all things, government agents, explosions and large amounts of money are probably well up in the “Top-10 Most Easily-Traceable of Things” chart. If there is such a list, which I expect there is.

In any case, such people are more likely to be traced by the fingerprints they leave on their gel pen than by the location of the particular factory that made the ink; but nevertheless I stick by my interpretation. These pens are also often popular with children, “graphic designers” and other people who are easily impressed by bright colours and glitter. “So…” you’re thinking to yourself, “If my target audience is terrorists or children, I should go with a gel pen!” Not so quick, punk; it’s not that simple. Despite the eye-catching colours and ease of use, the majority of gel pens that I have laid eyes on simply do not have enough room on them to write contact details of any kind, excepting those written in Braille or symbolic Morse-code. They’re not the cheapest of pens either so, all things considered, giving away expensive items with no sign of your company on them is about the worst kind of promotion that you can do.

--- Update! ---
Contrary to my last point; further research has suggested that gel pens come in a range of shapes and sizes! Curse my narrow mind; as narrow as a gel pen. Based on this new evidence, I would suggest gel pens instead of ballpoints if you can afford it.

3) Fibre Tipped Pens

For the less patient but equally pen-interested consumer, there are fibre-tipped pens. These items of Japanese invention are a fantastic compromise between the good looking, water-based inks of the rollerball pen, but the swift drying of the ballpoint pen. The ink is absorbed in a spring-loaded fibrous-tip and expelled through said tip in a lovely, smooth motion that lets the ink dry almost immediately. However, the spring-loaded nature of the fibre-tips does not agree with everybody’s writing style and the heavy-handed can often find the finer tips “scratchy”. Fibre tip pens can usually take rollerball refills and don’t run dry as quickly, but the writing process can take a while to get used to; by which point you’ve probably given up and grabbed a biro. In terms of promotion, I think most people would be confused by what you’ve given them should you chose a fibre tipped pen because, let’s face it, we’re all expecting a ballpoint. When they press down and find the nib disappearing into the end of the pen, the shock might just be enough to have them tossing it aside, along with your contact details. These pens might work impress artsy-people though, since they are used in drawing more frequently than most other kinds of pen.

2) Rollerball Pens

People in the know understand that, if you’re thinking of buying a decent quality ballpoint pen, you may as well buy a rollerball pen. Rollerball pens use water-based inks which look and feel a lot nicer than the oil-based ink of a ballpoint pen, providing a much nicer writing-experience for your money. The actual writing itself, once it has dried, tends to look considerably more stylish than ballpoint writing often does; making you look even more pro than you would using an expensive biro. That being said, the ink does take longer to dry, greatly increasing the risk of smudging; hence, in terms of promotion, it would take a fool to advertise a company making specialist tools for left-handed people by giving away free rollerball pens - utter chaos would ensue. It seems to me, as somebody who is not a psychologist at all, that rollerball pen users probably put a bit more thought and effort into their writing and their ability to wait for the ink to dry shows patience and understanding (maybe I should consider astrology…).

Since the majority of companies use ballpoint promotional pens, there is a lot to be said for using rollerballs as an alternative. They look almost identical and the client will immediately feel and see the difference of your pen compared to all the competing pens and their shoddy oily ink. The main disadvantage of rollerball pens is that they run out of ink much quick than their ballpoint brethren; but as a promotional product, the impact they make to start with may well outweigh their short lifespan

1) The Biro

Where better to start than with the simple biro, or ballpoint pen; yes that’s correct, they are the same thing. Whether it is the clear plastic tube with a flimsy insert or a spring-loaded steel case containing an aluminium-coated flimsy plastic insert; they are all just ballpoints. It’s the equivalent of me putting on a suit; I would still be a bum, but it would look like I’d robbed somebody more successful. Hence, people that use ballpoint pens probably come in these three main categories.

Firstly, the student-like category of people who need to write but can’t afford to spend over 30p doing it. These people buy multi-packs of cheap plastic biros; the kind that can be melted down and made into tiny decorations when they run dry. The second group of people are the majority of pen-users; the kind of people that give little or no thought to which pen they are going to buy, but are still too proud to stoop to the plastic tube. These people walk into Staples, grab the first cheap pen they see, pay for it and leave. Time is saved, money is saved, stress is reduced; but in the world of the pen-connoisseur…an angel dies.

The final category of people who use these pens are the ones who buy the carbon-fibre, super-edition ballpoints; the kind with replaceable ink-inserts, as if they are ever going to bother replacing the ink rather than simply tossing the pen aside and picking up a reliable plastic Bic when nobody is watching. Snobbery really, isn’t it? When considering whether it is worth spending more money on fancy looking promotional ballpoint pens, remember that all you are really doing is appealing to snobbery nature and reducing the risk of staining your clients’ pockets with sticky metallic ink.

In terms of promotion, ballpoints are pretty much the cheapest pen to give away. The obvious problem is that everybody knows that they are the cheapest pens to give away and hence it doesn’t exactly look great for your company. Nicer-looking ballpoints are considerably more expensive, but will undeniably be more impressive, especially to people with very high-self esteem and very low levels of education. That being said, they are all the perfect size and shape for writing an address or phone number on…but then again so are business cards.

What Does Your Pen Say About You?

A large part of choosing the correct promotional product is to do with knowing your target audience and catering to what they might actually find useful or interesting. As such, it is worth investing time not only deciding which product you are going to put your logo on, but also on which type of the chosen product would be most effective. In the case of pens, for example; no classy company is going to be impressed by a clear plastic tube with your slogan on the side. A free, gold-nibbed fountain pen, on the other hand, will wow your clients but consume your budget like a biscotti. The key is compromise and understanding; famous promotions-guru Sun Tzu had the right idea, I quote;

“Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War, roughly 600 BC)

Obviously Sun Tzu was Chinese and, though my linguistic skills aren’t perfect, I can loosely translate this into English as meaning “Know thy product, know thy target-audience. A thousand clever items, a thousand new clients”

The poignancy of this statement is undeniable and, in tribute to Sun Tzu, I shall further expand on this key feature of promotions with regards pens, in order to help you decide the correct kind of promotional pen to give away to your specific target audience. I begin;

From the schoolboy boldly using the writing-end of an ink eraser in the confidence that he won’t make a mistake, to the businessman carrying a golden fountain pen in his top pocket that he will never use; pens have a strange way of accompanying us throughout the journey of life. But what does your choice in pen say about you?

What do you consider somebody’s pen says about their personality? Nothing? You’re probably write, but in classic pseudo-psychology style (or “meta-pseudo-science” as physicists may snidely refer to it), I am going to go ahead and do some personality analyses regarding a person’s choice in pens. Am I am psychologist? No. Am I a pen expert? No. Do pen experts event exist? In the modern world this is a ridiculous enquiry; of course they do. A better question might be why do pen experts exist? However, this is the kind querying that is likely to provide more questions than answers and, despite my Socratic nature, I am going to spurn it in favour it in favour of simplicity; pen experts do exist, I have no idea why and I am definitely not one. However, I have done enough writing in my time to know my rollerballs from my ballpoints and hence I feel qualified in casting judgment upon all writing implements. I shall start in the next post...on biros.

Why Use Promotional Products?

My second post; some insight into why you should actually use products to help promote yourself.

No matter how good your product is, nobody is going to buy it if they don’t know that it exists. Hence advertising was invented. However, in the modern world there are almost always a host of other companies that offer the same product or service that you do; sometimes they do it better, or cheaper or with a smile that you simply cannot muster. As such, the only real way to get people to buy from you instead of other companies is to promote your company relentlessly.

The use of promotional products is a well-tried and tested method of making potential customers aware that your company exists and of getting them to associate your company name and logo with the products and services that you offer. Even the most simple of pens provides readily available information about your company, in an unintrusive but nevertheless specifically targeted manner. Where a million-pound TV advert comes and goes in twenty-seconds, if at all in the world of Sky +, the useful nature of many simple and cheap promotional products means that they often kept and used on a daily basis. Hence the overall exposure to an advert placed on a product like a pen is not only greater and repeated, but is also voluntary in that people choose to use your promotional pen every day, where they don’t get much choice in which adverts come on between a TV show.

Furthermore, some products like umbrellas, T-shirts and car-stickers are not only large adverts, but they are mobile adverts for your company! For every person that receives and uses your promotional umbrella, hundreds more will be exposed to your advert on every rainy day (and let’s be honest, that is pretty much every day in the UK). As much information as paper fliers, handouts and business cards offer when you hand them out, they are rarely ever seen again because they are otherwise useless your audience; unless somebody has a specific place to keep these things, they will almost definitely be thrown away or used to light a fire. People are much less likely to throw away a T-shirt, even if they do only use it for playing tennis in.

There are a massive variety of promotional products available; from pens to plug adapters to sim card readers, there are products to suit any target audience and any size budget. The bottom line however, is that big or small, expensive or cheap, the fundamental role of the promotion product is to provide a constant reminder of who you are, what you do and how people should go about contacting you. This is the most important thing a potential new customer or client can have with regards to your company and is essential for surviving in the world of business.

Promotional Products: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The world of promotional products has come a long way from the days of business cards and bill-boards. This should come as no surprise; the crazier the world you inhabit, the more abnormal things have to be before they grab your attention. This is true for all markets; Agatha Ruiz De La Prada’s breakfast-themed fashion-wear was only another manifestation of the ever-more horrific content of modern horror movies; when crazy becomes the norm, it’s time to get extreme. Promotion is no different and the internet is teeming with companies offering to stamp your logo onto any product that can take a stamping – from the simple and mundane to the simply insane. As Sartre would tell you; when the amount of choice is so vast, the mere act of choosing becomes all the harder, yet equally inevitable. But fear not! Though it would be impossible (and rather pointless) to give a breakdown of every product available on the market, a guide is always a useful way of figuring out where you do and don’t want to go. As such, here is a quick guide to the good, the bad and the ugly of promotional products:

The Good: Compressed T-Shirts!

Available in containers of a veritable host of shapes and sizes, these are full-sized, heavy-weight cotton T-shirts, emblazoned with artwork of your choice, that are then compressed (would you believe) into containers as small as your hand! (I assume the hand in question is that of an average adult, although this is not explicitly stated anywhere). There are hundreds of containers to choose from, including guitars, baseball bats, flags, crowns, pianos and mobile phones! Even Beavers make an appearance, coming alongside Burrito Wraps and Sushi Rolls as the weirdest shapes I could find. Due the basic necessity of clothing in modern society, it is unlikely that promotional T-shirts will ever become an unpopular choice of promotional product. Nevertheless, it is ideas like this eye-catching and unique approach to T-shirt distribution that push the boundaries of promotion for all of us. Amen.

The Bad: Stress Balls

I think it would be fair to say that one doesn’t need a PhD in psychology to spot that creating a deliberate mental connection between unpleasant feelings of tension and your company logo is probably not the wisest plan of action. When there are literally thousands of different desktop-based products upon which you can plant your logo, why chose the one that gets crushed repeatedly after frustrating experiences? With the exception of counselling services, travel companies and gyms I cannot understand who would consider a stress-ball to be a better advert for their company than say…a stapler. Be creative!

The Ugly: Mugs

It may be a clichéd expression, but nobody wants an ugly mug. OK, so that’s less of a cliché and more of a blatant social observation but nevertheless it rings true. The point I am trying to make here is, if you’re going to use a mug to advertise your company, for goodness sake make sure you have the kind of logo that people don’t mind having to stare at first thing in the morning! Put my face on a mug and you’ll get my point. Nobody wants to have to look at my ugly mug in the morning so think twice about whether they’ll want to look at yours.
So there you have it; an overview of the kind of products that will get you noticed and the kind that could potentially ruin your reputation forever. Clearly the best choice of promotional product depends largely on the target audience and the nature of what is being advertised; but in my opinion, you can be more inventive than cups and balls.