This year, the Be Bold, Be Different, Be Memorable blog postings will have a common theme. Promo Marketing has asked me to focus on the topic “My Best Promotion,” in which I’ll present exactly that from a variety of distributors (or even suppliers!) from across the country throughout 2015.
My best promotion!
Love that! Part of what I love about it is the versatility of the subject matter. One person’s best promotion is and should be wildly different from the next person. The very definition of “best” will vary from column to column. “Best” might be defined as the largest order they ever obtained. Or perhaps as the most wildly creative solution they ever devised. Or the most unusual combination of product, theme, copy and color to achieve a client’s goal. Or the one that won you a Golden Pyramid award. Or, well, you get the picture. The variations are limitless, and we can learn from and be inspired by all of them.
And thus, let thy startling coolishness flow! (Sometimes I talk like Shakespeare to class up the joint. He used the word “coolishness” way totally often, like).
This inaugural “My Best Promotion” case history comes to us from Linda Stevens of LS Enterprises, based in Napa, Calif. Linda is a promotional products distributor veteran of 20 years and she is most definitely bold, different and memorable! Her personal “best” is a case of collision between a non-industry product and a long-time trusted supplier, and the creative chops to put them together in a unique solution that only a creative thinker could have thunk.
Here is how it all came down.
Our hero Linda, who has an extensive background in the fashion industry and is always selling herself, met someone in a dress shop who ended up referring her to the marketing director at Bebe, a pretty impressive fortune 1,000 client to land! It was launching its first perfume line and wanted a very inexpensive gift with purchase—20,000 of something at no more than 80 cents sell! Those “under a dollar” challenges can be moider, can’t they?
A few weeks earlier, Linda had met someone who had invented a tea bag infuser that would infuse flavor into vodka instantly, rather than taking a day or longer. She found this to be interesting, never dreaming it would factor into a promotional program solution.
Linda traveled to Bebe, met with her buyer and saw the perfume line. She smelled the scents—jasmine, rose, vanilla, and she experience the notes of the perfume. And that is when she had her brainstorm! The solution could combine the sense of smell with the sense of taste! She reconnected with that tea bag infuser pooser (I love making rhymes that involve the word “pooser.” And, by the way, there is no word “pooser.”) Could this inventor make up tea bags that suggest these unique scents so customers could infuse water or juice (or vodka!) with vanilla, rose and jasmine and taste the perfume?
The answer was a resounding yes, and a wildly clever promotion was born! Magnet LLC did a printed card to hold the tea bags and there were some shared recipies on the back with which to use the infuser tea bags. The client even gave LS Enterprises credit on the back of the card, which led to some additional referrals. Bebe loved the promotion so much that it tasked Linda with doing large versions of the tea bags and big carafes in which to infuse them as POP store displays at perfume counters across the country!
The moral of the story is you can’t be too bold when crafting creative solutions for your clients. Linda discovered a unique product with no relation to our promo industry at all, and she remembered that product when a challenge came at her later. We can use and sell anything to achieve client objectives and deliver the message! Wherever you go, whoever you meet, there are possibilities for sales and solutions. Everyone is a potential client or a potential solution. And everyone has something they need to communicate to some audience, and we can make that happen. That is what we do do.
I did that on purpose.
Be Bold. Be Different. Be Memorable.
Rick Greene, MAS, is the Western Regional Vice-President of HALO Branded Solutions, a past president of SAAC and on the PPB Editorial Advisory Board. His comic fantasy novels “Boofalo!” and “Shroom!” are available on Amazon.com. Buy one! Or Both!! Or all three, even!
