WOE TO SIDEKICKS. The ever-underrated second banana never gets his moment in the sun. Worse, they’re the ones who usually have to take the bullet so the hero can live to fight another day. Replaceable, that’s what they are.
Sure, time can fly, heal all wounds and save nine in a single stitch. But without its partner, the calendar, what would be there to bring order to time’s crazy impulses? OK, so the calendar has a tendency to run out when time has seemingly met its match (i.e. December 31, every year), but it always comes back renewed, and ready to face another day.
TIME IS MONEY
Which is, of course, the main draw for promotional products distributors. As one of the few hard-good items in the industry with a definitive shelf life, traditional calendars are successful year after year, due in no small part to the fact that the item is designed to “become obsolete” at a preordained point in time, said Bob Teese, vice president of sales and marketing for St. Paul, Minnesota-based Hotline Products.
Yet, with a new nemesis sweeping the streets—technology—will calendars have to become masters of disguise to continue to emerge victorious? Not necessarily. “We heard this concern even five years ago about digital timepieces replacing hard copies of calendars but we really haven’t seen that much invasion in the calendar industry,” Teese said. He as well as Rob Marold, account manager for The Deerfield Collection, Mankato, Minn., both agree that despite calendars’ numerous, successful incarnations, the classic wall variety will survive and thrive. Here are a few reasons why:
1) Tradition holds its own over innovation. The wall calendar is such a time-honored fixture, for many consumers, it almost seems wrong to not have one. “It’s what they grew up on, it’s what they’re used to,” Marold said. By virtue of it being a product of necessity for the “dark ages” prior to the rise of computers, at this point, the yearly calendar purchase is more a product of cultural conditioning than anything else. And old habits die hard, Marold added.
Similarly, Teese doesn’t see the technological revolution happening to calendars for another decade or more at least, even with the ubiquity of computers and PDAs. “[When] the current 25-year-old person becomes about 40, then I think we might see more and more people referring to their digital apparatus, such as a Blackberry,” he said. Today, the comfort of the familiar reigns supreme. “I think people like to see a calendar on the wall … they like to have it close by so they can make notations on it. You just can’t record everything on your Blackberry or your computer, the way you want to perhaps write it down,” Teese affirmed.
2) Repeat orders abound. In the words of Scarlett O’Hara: “Tomorrow is another day.” The very nature of time means, when it comes to calendars, “There’s a lot of repeat business,” Marold said. And with all the aforementioned habitual
calendar-buying, it seems people tend to, well, freak out (for a lack of a better term) when theirs aren’t delivered promptly. Teese related a typical ordering situation: “So if you’re a business like a bank, for example, and you’re giving away
calendars—[when] the following year comes along, your customer base [is] expecting to receive a calendar from you again.” Should the bank manager happen to forget, thinking it wasn’t that important, they quickly find some disgruntled customers on their hands. “That’s what actually happens! We get 40 or 50 phone calls in the month of November [alone] from frantic distributors, with even more frantic customers, [who] forgot for some reason … to order their calendar,” he laughed.
The annual business pales in comparison to tougher-sell digital items. Their higher price points, coupled with the fact most end-users will tap out at two, maybe three electronic calendars/organizers, means there’s
a longer turnover rate and by extension, less opportunity for distributors.
3) Branding opportunities are
constant. Blackberrys and the like tend to be more personal, private items meant for the user’s eyes only. On the other hand, calendars provide the opportunity for numerous glances throughout the day. Since they are typically placed in a public sphere, a logo will be not only within the owner’s line of vision, but many others’, every day for an entire year (and beyond, should the business be a repeat—it’s the song that doesn’t end).
Teese describes it as being akin to purchasing advertising space right in an end-user’s office. “You couldn’t rent a person’s office wall … here we are giving away a calendar that can cost a buck, or as high as $8 or $9 and we’re gonna use that space.”
And though the “sign” exists on a plain, old wall, instead of appearing, say, as a lit-up signal in the sky—the point is the same: calendars will go on saving the day, one at a time.
