promotional items in review

So many promotional items, how do you choose the best one?

Promotional items are just one way to reach your customers.  Handing out a trinket, a pen, a mug, needs to serve a specific purpose.  How do you choose?
There are many factors in choosing but the following are some we ask as we walk our customers through the process.

What is the marketing goal you are trying to achieve when you hand out your item?
We are a new retail company in town and need to our name out.
We want to say thank you to our employees for all their hard work this year.
We want people to remember where they get their service done.

How many will you need? And when do you need it?
This is probably one of the most important questions as it will weed out alot of options. It will pay to preplan.

What is the price range you need to stay within?

Is the product available in the color scheme with in your brand.  Do the colors match or coordinate with your logo?

Will the recipient keep it visible so others can see it?  Or will they show it to others because of it’s meaning and purpose?

How do you plan to distribute the items?
Will they be mailed, personally handed out, left on a table at a meeting?

If you need some ideas, give us a call. We would be glad to walk you through the process?

schwag, swag, trinkets, tchotchke

When looking how to spell “tchotchke” I ran across this blog post from a company in the UK that sells promotional items.  It is exactly why I was looking to how to spell  “shotzky” because I wanted to explain the different words that describe promotional items or ad specialties.  So here it is. 

The articles of merchandise which are used in marketing and communication programs are known as Promotional items. These various items are generally imprinted with a company’s name, slogan or logo. Its products are given away at conferences, trade shows, and also as a part of guerilla marketing campaigns. The Promotional items are referred by the slang terms swag from the British usage of word meaning as “stolen goods” and also as tchotchke derived from a Yiddish word which means “trinket”.Promotional items as Business gifts are used to foster customer goodwill and retention. The main objectives of companies behind using promotional items is to facilitate brand awareness, employee and public relations, new customer generations, internal incentive programs and marketing research. 

 

The Promotional items are same with the term Promotional products. Most of the promotional items are quite inexpensive and small in comparison to other items. But often expensive perfumes, electronic items and leather goods are used as promotional items for like celebrities at film festivals and popular award shows. Companies use to provide the celebrities with expensive gifts and in return ask the celebrities to allow a photo shoot with the gift item. Thus the gift presented to the celebrities act as Promotional gifts helping the company for promotional purposes with the brand name and product.

HOWEVER…. I sometimes take offense to promotional items being referred to as cheap plastic “stuff.”  It may be inexpensive, plastic or both, but remember if you buy it, you buy it for a reason.  Not because it is on special, or it is cool but what is it going to do to promote my company, organization, event and the message I want to deliver to the audience.   Oh, and YES…special pricing and cool can be very effective in marketing.

logo design

sweatshirts…t-shirts…polos

pens and more pens

fantastic famous food

From its inception, Coney Island was based on the events, places, food, and atmosphere of Coney Island in New York.
Allen Cronen and his wife recalled the memories and events of her childhood, growing up on the east coast.  Coney Island restaurants have popped up across the United States. It was their dream to bring Coney Island to the Hutchinson area. Moxie Media was hired to help create the identity of the restaurant.  Lots of time and research went into the logo design and pre-opening events. Moxie Media staff coordinated the first ever Hot Dog eating contest featuring Nathan’s famous hot dogs in conjunction with Water Carnival. Frisbees were given to everyone to build the excitement of the opening.  People in Hutchinson soon knew that something special was coming to Hutchinson, a family friendly restaurant with fantastic famous food.  A radio jingle was produced, a website was launched, the staff was outfit with colorful aprons and name tags, and the restaurant has opened. The menus were digitally printed at Moxie Media and people can order the famous food of Coney Island.  Overwhelmed by the number of people coming in, the restaurant got off to a rough start. Join their Facebook Fan page we created for them and let people know the food is really good, reasonably priced and if you had a good experience there.  I personally enjoy the cheese curds on a stick, famous from the Minnesota State Fair.

together, community senior care

Together, we became a part of the Hutchinson Health Care Foundation — Community Senior Care Campaign.
The satisfaction of being a part of this campaign becomes a reality when the groundbreaking for the new Senior Care Campus takes place in April.  It will reflect the foresight of the community to do something now to ensure the future of health care in the future.  Collateral materials were created to communicate the message to the community about the needs of senior health care.  The 4 color brochure was designed to correspond with a previous brochure and a website created by another design firm. Being conscious about the branding that had already begun was important to the continuity of the project. Once the new brochure was designed and we had coordinated the all the aspects of the mailing set in place, a newspaper ad was designed to run in the papers immediately before and after the mailing.  Post-it-note pads were printed to hand with major donor packets.  We plan to attend the groundbreaking this April.

rebranding hutchinson mall

New owners for the Hutchinson Mall prompted a rebranding of their logo, website and other marketing materials.
Working with new owners Gus Wurdel and Tom Daggett, Moxie Media was hired to update the logo and create a website to showcase the tenants of the mall. The new website brings attention to the tenants with rotating photo images of each store front. Information on the website includes featured events at the mall, mall tenant contact information. The goal was accomplished to fill the mall with tenants and bring new life to it corridors.  The holiday season gave us another opportunity to spark up the graphics for signage and Holiday Shopping Cards.

dispense an appropriate amount of hand sanitizer into a hand.

A complete array of items was needed for the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest held at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
After completing the design of the logo, a direct mail campaign was designed using oversize postcards sent to high schools to encourage students to register their teams online. When students arrived at the competition, they received a t-shirt with the colorful logo imprinted on it.  To top it off, trophies were created also reflecting the logo and were awarded to the top 5 teams.  Congratulations to the winners and their creativity in building this unique machine.

printing on triple wall cardboard

Can you make a brochure out of my triple wall corrugated cardboard?  YES. We did.

This 4 color brochure was prnted on brown kraft paper to match the cardboard.  We had the triple wall corrugated cardboard cut to size and designed the brochure to be adhered to the card with one panel.  The mailing has produced solid leads that have turned into new accounts that have more than paid for the cost of this marketing piece.   Out of the box thinking done here.

mnceme found results at moxie

mnceme.org  &  maximizeminnesota.org

After weeks of frustration from working with a different vendor and not achieving the results they anticipated, the Minnesota Center of Engineering & Manufacturing Excellence (MNCEME) came to Moxie for help.  Moxie had been working with the Center for other marketing needs and understood the vision and mission of the Center.  It was an easy transition to take what was already created and paid for by the customer  and transform it into the two sites shown above.  The first site was for the Center itself  www.mnceme.org and the second site that followed shortly was for their regional seminars called www.maximizeminnesota.org 

The Center is a liason between educational partners and industry partners which are manufacturers in the state of Minnesota.  The board of directors consists of members and leaders from the manufacturing industry.  The Center is state funded and its led by Minnesota State University – Mankato.  

This work was completed in June of 2009.