I recently interviewed Mark Trotzuk, president of Boardroom ECO Apparel, for one of the articles I’m currently writing for our upcoming June responsibility supplement, which is a mini-issue about all kinds of great stuff like corporate social accountability and environmental stewardship.
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Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone! I’m sure you’re all aware, but “Cinco de Mayo” translates to “fifth of May” in Spanish, or “Congratulations! Your magazine is kicking butt, but is also starting like three new projects in May! Enjoy trying to write a blog!” if you speak Promo Marketing.
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It’s serious deadline business time right now on the magazine, so I don’t have a lot of time to devote to a long, clever post neatly relating to our industry (or attempting one anyway). I thought I would instead just give you all a quick blurb of something that that didn’t get into my computer accessories story for May.
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PPAI announced yesterday that it was buying advertising time on one of Time Square’s JumboTrons to run a 15-second commercial explaining the value of promotional products in general as advertising tools. If you didn’t get their initial release, Charlie has the story in the newsletter for this week.
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I finished up research for my article on computer accessories last week, and I can’t believe all the crazy stuff I found. There are USB watches, Internet phones that are also mice, and MP3 players so complex they make iPods seem like sleekly designed doorjambs.
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I’m still working away on our Top 50 Distributors List, making dozens of follow-up phone calls and trying to keep track of the results with about 15 hand-written, needlessly convoluted lists. God help me when I’m doing this again next year, as I’m sure I’ll no longer recall why I have corresponding charts and notes in Spanish, German and early Incan pictographs. Being thorough has little to do with being logical, I suppose.
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It’s been a while since I’ve told a story about my rookie adventures in this fine industry of ours. It’s probably going to be a while longer too, since this post is really more of a convoluted philosophical observation than an interesting coherent narrative. Don’t worry though, I’ll work in some jokes in about pyromania or checkerboards to keep things punchy (you scoff, but let me tell you, I can tell a checkerboard joke like no other).
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I know I didn’t tease this in last week’s post, but I thought it might be fun to give you all a glimpse of what it’s like on deadline day here at Promo Marketing, mostly because it’s deadline day today, and that’s pretty much all that’s on my mind. Not that deadlines really bother me, it’s more that if you can see the finish line, you mind really isn’t on kittens or the great sandwich you had for lunch. We’re going to do this piece time-stamp style, and promise each other that we won’t think about kittens until it’s over.
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I’ve recently started work on Promo Marketing’s Top 50 Distributors List, which is amazing and wonderful if for nothing else than the fact that I’m getting paid to make a list. The Top 50, much like the masthead of our magazine, is arranged by income level, ability to wreck house at shuffle board, and whether I can get ahold of your information or not.
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In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to write a bit about selling to the hotel industry this week. Larry Wilhelm, president and owner of Custom HBC, gave me a ton of information that I wasn’t able to use for my March travel feature, but I thought was interesting and useful and I don’t want to let it slip by. What follows is Wilhelm explaining different ways distributors can target the hotel industry with health-care promotions, more or less directly from our interview, edited only for length and clarity.
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