There is so much doom and gloom around at the moment, it would make some sense to try and counter that and although a blog posting on a promotional gifts website wont change the world, I will feel better knowing I have put my thoughts out there for people to stumble across.

Without drilling down into fine detail on what is going on “out there”, that would not be right and is unnecessary – we are hearing it too much as it is.

The press must be feeling very good about themselves right now. Aside from whether you support the government, they are a target and their attempts and errors are stripped down and plastered everywhere to put the “woolies up us all”. They will say they are reporting what is going on but are churning out negativity on a daily and hourly basis. The modern day access we have to “news” on television, radio, online and via mobile phones means we cannot avoid hearing about how bad it is at some stage each day. I long for a report from China about the birth of a baby panda!

Is everything really that bad?  I have no doubt it is dreadful for a great many people, and I also believe there are few people that have not been affected in some way. Negativity does spread like a virus, is hard to prevent and is hard not to get dragged into.  If any company / industry is genuinely flying at the moment – I am delighted for them, and I mean that.

I spoke yesterday to a friend who is involved in construction – he has his own business, he is genuinely buoyant and he is working really hard and reaping the rewards. He remains positive and he cannot see a downturn. I am pleased as punch for him. He has been speaking to the trade and is hearing loud whispers that Q2 2009 will be the turning point for constructors who are currently quiet, this is what they believe and are working to.  This is a positive sign and to hear it more than once is a good signal of intent. It is not a hope, it is in their planning.

Up until recent years, the old saying would be “at the first sign of downturn, marketing spend is cut” – this just isn’t the case anymore. Marketing is the area now relied upon, it is seen as vital, it is part of a company’s strategy.  I heard recently “When the tough gets going, the tough market” – companies are looking at maintaining contact with clients, building new clients, advertising, PR, business gifts, being one step ahead of the competition, showing your presence.

We are trying to stay as positive at Steel City Marketing. We have a great team, we work with good suppliers who support us and we have a good broad client base. We believe clients want to spend, we can tell there is nervousness and uncertainty out there so we are more than happy discuss cheaper alternative promotional items, or something new that promotes a company well – spread the word…. “lets try and be positive”!

Given all the technological advances in society in the past 20 years you might expect the top selling items in the business gifts industry to look significantly different in 2008 than they did in 1988 but this is not the case and most sellers lists, then and now, will be dominated by promotional pens, clothing, promotional mugs, and bags!!

Often there will be the odd item, which makes it into the top sellers for a relatively short space of time and items such as USB Flashdrives didn’t even exist 20 years ago! So why does this consistency exist? All these gifts have a practical application and they all are consumables with a distinct shelf life – people want them and need to replace them, if they were not given they would be purchased – that makes the gift ‘needed’ and appreciated when given.

As with all consumerism there is a modern day desire to see the ecological impact reduced, and there is now usually a ‘green’ product alternative in most ranges and especially amongst promotional pens where both recycled and recyclable items exist. So the recycled & eco promotional products aren’t a new product area in their own right really, they are an extension of best selling ranges – showing that what was popular “back then” is still popular now, but we can make it eco friendly!

Should you wish to discuss a regular seller from the last 20 years(!!) or something unique and new, please contact a member of the sales team who will be more than happy to assist.

Steel City Directory Covers 1988 & 2008

Over the last few months, Bic Graphic have launched a “greener version” of 5 best selling promotional pens – “Ecolutions” - where a percentage of the final pen is made from recycled materials.

The “white” refers to the fact that all the barrels in this Ecolutions range of pens are white, with other (non recycled) components such as caps, plugs and clips being available in numerous colours.

This range is not therefore fully recycled – but Bic never pretend that they are, an honest business approach they continually demonstrate.

The pens available up to now as “Ecolutions” options (priced approx 10% higher than the standard range) :

Ecolutions Round Stic : Barrel is 99% recycled, pen is 40% overall recycled. Great priced cap pen.

Ecolutions Media Clic : Barrel is 87% recycled and the pen contains 48% recycled material. Also available as a mechanical pencil.

Ecolutions Clic Stic : Barrel is 99% recycled with the entire pen made up of 33% recycled material.

Ecolutions Media Max : 87% recycled barrel, making the overall pen 32% recycled. There is a mechanical pencil version and this pen can have full colour digital wrap print to the entire barrel.

Print options are not restricted on the new range, with at least 2 print positions (sometimes 3) on each pen, allowing multiple print colours on at least one of these positions.

Lead times are fantastic for a “recycled” pen range, 7-10 working days for screen printing and 10-12 for the full colour digital print. These lead times allow the mix & matching of trim colour components and option on blue or black ink, proving that Bic have maintained their quick turnaround when developing this new area.

Should you be interested in this great new range of pens, or any other promotional gifts, please do not hesitate to contact a member of the sales team who will be happy to discuss your requirements further.

The Ecolution Range

We are already half way through November in the blink of an eye and Christmas will soon be upon us….when you read that is seems almost poetic rather than a shock statement of just how quickly the weeks are really flying by.

We are very keen to make noise about our special November offer, but I am concerned that the message just isn’t getting out there…Steel City Marketing are offering £20 worth of Marks and Spencer vouchers!

This offer is valid for the entire month of November 2008. Any order placed on any working days of Nov where the total unit value (excluding screens, originations, carriage and VAT) exceeds £1000, a voucher will be posted out during the early part of Dec – in time to top up you Christmas shopping budget.

Historically this offer has been well received. After all, if you are already in the process of looking to spend budget on promotional items or your client / staff business gifts for Christmas, why not take advantage of an offer like this. However, with the credit crunch, we are confident that this “bonus” will entice those clients that are still thinking about spending, but need a little incentive to do so.

The sales team at Steel City Marketing are happy to discuss any new promotional merchandise requirements that you may have. With new products constantly being added to the website and offers constantly available, there has never been a better time to put us to the test.

A recent report out of the US - conducted by the Advertising Specialty Institute, has shown that our great industry of business gifts outscored conventional TV, print, or radio adverts. Startling result and something I am more than happy to shout about in my latest posting.

From Data by Adweek (USA) and WARC, the promotional products industry generated $19.6 billion (£12.53bn) in 2007, which is a staggering and is a lot of promotional pens and mugs!

The online and face to face study showed that business gifts generate a cost-per-impression average of $0.004, compared to $0.33 for national magazine ads or $0.019 for prime time TV ads.

This was a survey conducted with business people over 21 in places such as New York and LA, and was based on promotional gifts they had received within the last 12 months.  Some of the key findings were:

* 84% of consumers remembered an advertiser based on a product they received.

* 42% had a more favorable impression of an advertiser after receiving a promotional product.

* Nearly one quarter (24%) indicated they are more likely to do business with an advertiser based on items they receive.

* The majority of respondents (62%) have done business with an advertiser after receiving a product.

* Writing instruments are the most commonly owned gifts, with 54% of respondents owning them, followed by shirts, caps and bags.

* Most (81%) promotional products were kept because they were considered useful.

* More than three-quarters of respondents have kept their items for about seven months.

* Among “wearables”, bags were reported to be used most frequently, with respondents indicating that they use their bags on average nine times per month.

* Bags deliver the most impressions, with 1,038 impressions per month on average.

If you are looking at promoting your company, contact a member of the sales time now and get the best return on marketing investment possible!!!!

USB People!

One of the most popular range of promotional gifts at the moment is USB flashdrives. The choice of colours and models is increasing all the time along with the memory capacity available. There is though a gap in the market for something that has design flexibility and a greater degree of personalization.

The USB people range is a lighthearted addition to this family of promotional merchandise. The little ‘playmobil’ style people can be personalised to match a corporate look, a uniform or perhaps a specific team’s sports kit.

They have jointed arms, hands, legs and knees. In order to access the USB Drive itself, simply pull the head off and you are away. One of the best characteristics is the humour it generates when in use in the side of your computer - legs and arms flailing away, head shoved out of site!!

There is a good range of standard characters which are available from 50 units and a bespoke character to your design can be produced from 250 drives which isn’t at all beyond most Flashdrive budgets. We now have availability on some Christmas designs. Should bespoke packaging be required – this is available from 1000 pieces.

For the standard designs, memory capacity ranges from 512mb-4GB and be personalised simply by over-printing your brand or logo directly onto the bodies.

There is a free visual service which is a powerful tool for an items such as this, all that is required is a brief or idea of what the little chap needs to look like with any logos to be printed (in EPS format) and a mock up will be put together for your approval. Lead times from approval are around 4 weeks – again, these are standard lead times for a bespoke product idea.

To discuss pricing, samples or ideas, please contact a member of the Steel City Marketing sales team on 0114 2754150 - who will be more than happy to help on this exciting product range.

Standard designs include (all available from 50 pcs) :

• Doctor
• Nurse
• Surgeon
• Dentist
• Policeman
• Businessman
• Construction worker
• Christmas designs.

The Flashdrive Family

Some Business Gift orders appear from the outset to not have a single possible solution to get close to the clients initial idea. The design and imagination of both agency and end user clients can initially feel as though “mission impossible” has just been called through! But we have to look at matching these requirements or getting as close to them as possible.
A recent brief by a client was one of the oddest received in a long time. The requirement for us to supply them with various items to be placed into a mailing carton. Nothing strange in this everyday request. The items to make up the pack all needed to be connected in some way to old fashioned medicinal remedies. These were given to us as silver, honey, seaweed and aspirin.
A couple of these were pretty straight forward and easy to find a promotional item for. The client was given a few ideas and settled on a silver foil covered chocolate coin. For Aspirin, a pill or tablet shaped stress item was selected.

But it was the honey based and seaweed based items which posed a real problem and threatened the likelihood of an order being booked.
My first reaction was to do what everyone does these days and “Google” everything with these ingredients in. There was also an avenue within the promotional gift industry for one of the items. Confectionery provided the solution to “Honey” – with lozenges being ideal. So it then remained to come up with some seaweed based ideas otherwise the whole idea couldn’t possibly work.

The 4 items needed to be beneficial and useful to the recipient of the mailing, so this ruled out a bunch of seaweed collected from Skegness!  A few ideas later it was decided that “seaweed masks” was the final piece of the jigsaw. We could provide them in small pots, small enough to put into the mailing carton and a useful product for the recipient. A full house!  Order was placed and fulfilled.
At Steel City Marketing, we always try and sort out the weird and wonderful and the simple and straightforward of business gift ideas. If there is anything you would like to run by us, we rarely admit defeat and would only be too happy to try and find a way around your problem.

We are delighted to announce that Rachel Biggin has joined the company on the 10th November, as the company’s first Marketing Consultant.

With over 8 years experience as a Marketing Communications Manager for one of Yorkshire’s biggest companies, Rachel brings with her vast knowledge of an area we just haven’t had the opportunity to devote enough time to.

Rachel will be looking at driving forward several areas along with James and Lorraine, in terms of building upon our already high client retention rate as well as focusing upon increasing our exposure to a larger “audience”.

The main areas she will be actively involved in are :

The Annual 96 Steel City Marketing Directory – We remain one of the only companies to produce our own in-house business gifts brochure as opposed to putting a cover on a trade catalogue. This is fantastically well received in the marketplace, is a consistent format and is produced from industry best sellers and new product ideas.

The Steel City Marketing End User Show – Following a highly successful first year in Sept 2007, and a year off in 2008, the SCM Promo show will be back “with a bang” in September 2009. Around 26 Exhibitors showing individual promotional gift product areas and brands under one roof, this event received some amazing feedback from visitors and exhibitors alike.

Website / E-Marketing – With a complete overhaul of the Steel City Marketing Website in early 2008, time, energy and focus is now needed to giving exposure of the site to an audience we haven’t been able to reach up to now. Although a massive task, we have the commitment and drive to be able to achieve our aims.

With the addition of Rachel backing up a committed and experienced sales team, as well as every other valued member of staff - we are certain that we can continue to build upon a well placed position in an ever changing market.

The question clients appear most nervous about asking is “can you make a tight lead time on this?”  There are obviously some pretty concerned people out there in “client land” whenever they receive a promotional gift enquiry where an event is imminent and obviously cannot be missed.

A great deal has changed over recent years in terms of technology to reduce lead times and allow promotional gift distributors to fulfill orders that wouldn’t have traditionally been possible. This is not a reflection that the industry is quiet, a misconception that may be true of other trades should work be turned around very quickly.

Clients often leave decision making on business gifts until the last minute – fact! That is not a complaint, as we appreciate that for events, launches, conferences etc, there is a huge amount of preparation and promotional items make up a tiny proportion of the overall planning.

We therefore have to be flexible in what we do. Lead times up to around 5 years ago would have been around 3-4 weeks (from proof approval) – for all items. It was rare to be able to improve on this and it was something that very little could be done about.

Production of a vast majority of promotional items is now based in the Far East, meaning stock needs to be held in the UK or at least in other European countries. Printers (or embroiderers, engravers etc) therefore have quick access to plain goods and have invested recently in bigger capacity machinery and newer processes to turn finished goods around quickly.

So what are we looking at  today….?

Promotional Pens (Now a large choice available on 5 day dispatch.)

Senator pens – Great example of short lead times. They can now achieve (at slight premiums) a dispatch of up to 1000 promotional pens in 1, 2 or 5 working days on a limited range, 1 colour print.

Bic pens – Now work on 5-day dispatch from proof approval.

USB Flashdrives
Certain models are now being held in stock in the UK (lower memory drives), so a 5-day turnaround is now possible. Normal lead times are 3 working weeks from the Far East, so this opens up this product to tight lead times.

These are just 2 product areas to demonstrate the improvements in lead times. To state what lead times now are is very general – but the average will now be down to 10-12 working days, a significant improvement. Plus it must not be forgotten that extremely short lead times are possible, so never assume it cannot be done!!

Steel City Marketing makes every effort to achieve whatever lead time you have, however short. Please contact a member of the sales team with your next enquiry and put us to the test.

Promotional Drinks – what a refreshing idea

If you are looking for something different for your next conference or exhibition, then the extensive range of promotional drink ideas should definitely fit the bill.

The popularity of bottled spring water as a giveaway need not be debated with both the 330ml and 500ml sized bottles often purchased by clients and usually forming part of a bundle of items for an event.

The popularity of drinks in the retail sector has like many other trends, found its way into the business gift market and the “drinks” range is now a classic example of this.

There is availability of around 8 more promotional drinks products, all with low minimum order quantities and all boasting full colour branding options to either the labels or the entire cans.

In Red Bull style 250ml cans, there is:
8510 - A Revitalising Energy Drink,
8508 - A Sugar Free Energy Drink,
8507 - An Isotonic Sports Drink,
8509 - Multi Vitamin drink…. and finally
8501 - An Iced Macchiato coffee drink.

Most of these can be purchased from 96 units with Iced coffee as 504 units min.

The final additions to the range are in 500ml PET bottles. All have full colour branding to the wraparound labels. There is:
8505 - A Low Calorie Sports Drink,
8506 - An Orange / Fruitmix PowerDrink…. and finally
8504 - A Low Calorie Lemon Iced Tea.

Only the Iced Tea has a higher min quantity of 504, the rest again being 96 units.

Lead times are fantastic – Approximately 5 working days from proof approval for all items other than Iced Tea and Coffee.

Steel City Marketing is delighted to be able to promote such a new and exciting range of products. Please ask a member of the sales team if you are interested in using promotional drinks as part of your next campaign or event.