The Debate is Over, Ad Specialties High Scores Can’t be Overlooked

Marketers often debate over what will be the next great advertising medium. A new study released by the Advertising Specialty Institute found it's not TV, print or radio that gets consumers' attention, but good old promotional swag.
This includes coffee mugs, pencils, retractable solar-powered flashlights or any other product bearing a company logo. Promotional products made up a $15.639 billion industry in 2009, per the ASI. Through surveys conducted both online and in-person in major cities, such as New York and Los Angeles, the institute also found that promotional products generate a cost-per-impression average of $0.004, compared to $.033 for national magazine ads or $0.019 for prime time TV ads.
The surveys asked 600 participants (who were mostly businesspeople over the age of 21) to recall promotional swag received over the last 12 months. Key findings include:
-- 84 percent of consumers remembered an advertiser based on a product they received.

-- 42 percent had a more favorable impression of an advertiser after receiving a promotional product.

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

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

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

-- Most (81 percent) promotional products were kept because they were considered useful.

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

-- Among wearable’s, 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.
The findings indicate that promotional products yield a higher ROI, along with very low cost-per-impression, compared to other advertising media. Moreover, items received this year generated a high recall rate among recipients, leading to greater purchase intent.
During a time when we're facing turbulent economic conditions, this research advises marketers and business owners to invest in advertising specialties i.e. promotional products, now more than ever. Advertising specialties provide measurable results for a very reasonable investment.

Promotional Products: Impact, Exposure and Influence.

Reach:

• 71% of an audience consisting primarily of business people reported having received a promotional product in the last 12 months.

• Moreover, Moreover 33.7% of this group had the item on their person—a coveted location for advertising that gets seen regularly.

Recall:

When asked:

• 76.1% of the respondents could recall the advertiser’s name on the product that they had received in the past 12 months.

• In comparison, participants were also asked if they had read a newspaper or magazine in the past week. 80% of the participants said yes, but only 53.5% of them could recall the name of a single advertiser.

See chart.
Impression Of The Advertiser:

Promotional Products are powerful opinion change agents. Results of the study reveal:

• 52% of respondents did business with the advertiser after receiving the promotional product.

• Of those who had not done business with the advertiser, almost half stated that they were more likely to do business with the organization that gave them the item.

• The impression of the advertiser is important in building a brand. 52.1% of the participants reported their impression was more favorable since receiving the item.

Frequent Exposure/Low Cost Per Impression:

The frequency of promotional products use is tantamount to advertising exposure. Of those who reported using the promotional item, 73% stated that they used it at least once a week. 45.2% used it at least once a day. In media measurement, the greater the frequency of exposure, the lower the cost per impression.

Repeated Exposure:

How long do people generally keep promotional products?

55% of participants generally kept their promotional products for more than a year. This means repeated exposure over a long period of time.






Why Keep The Item?

Note the chart above showing how long people generally keep promotional products. Why do they hold onto the promotional items for so long? This study found:

• 75.4% thought the item was useful.

• 20.2% thought the item was attractive.

• 1% refer to the item for information.

• 3.3% had other reasons for keeping the item.

Pass-Along Exposure:

Participants of the study were asked what they do with promotional products they do not plan to keep. Their responses indicate the possibilities of pass-along exposure.

• 26% of participants reported that they give the item away to someone else.

• 45% file the item away.

• 30% throw the item away if they do not plan to keep it.

The 26% who give the product to someone else clearly provide ample pass-along exposure to the advertiser similar to that of magazine advertising.

In A Nutshell:

Promotional Products furnish advertisers with advantages that may not be available in other media. These include:

• High recall where the name of the advertiser is remembered.

• Repeated exposure to the advertising message because of length of time the item is kept.

• A more favorable impression of the advertiser, resulting in a propensity to do business with the organization giving the item.

Promotional products can provide key elements to an advertising campaign and enhance opportunity for driving a message far beyond traditional media.

When Facebook Rules The World.....

"If competition breeds innovation, closed systems kill it . . . Today, there's no war over who can better mine the social graph. That's because Facebook holds the only key, and for now, we're all locked inside."

Facebook still holds the key, but yesterday it swung the door wide open. At the annual f8 conference for outside developers, CEO Zuckerberg took the stage to announce some game-changing new technologies. The first is the Web-wide "like" button. Now, when someone visits any one of hundreds of sites ranging from CNN to IMDb, he can "like" a piece of content there. That connection is automatically, intelligently integrated into your Facebook profile—if you like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Facebook understands that that's a movie, and automatically adds it to your list of favorite films. This is Facebook-as-magpie, a crowded nest to house every possible scrap of social information about its users, even if it's coming from elsewhere on the Web.

The second and more important technology is the "open graph." For the first time, outside developers can get a good look at the Facebook social graph, and use it on their own sites. In practice, that means when you go to CNN.com, CNN can show you a list of articles that have been "liked" by your friends—even if you've never been to CNN.com before, let alone created an account and signed in there.

This is the most ambitious thing to happen on the Web in a long, long time. The coverage has been breathless. A TechCrunch post carried the headline "I Think Facebook Just Seized Control of the Internet." Slate's technology writer, Farhad Manjoo, declared that "Facebook is basically going to be the Web."

The implications are enormous, and Twitter, for one, should be very, very scared. During his keynote, Zuckerberg seemed to take a dismissive swipe at the micromessaging service and its ceaseless "stream" of tweets:

The stream is ephemeral. You post something to the stream, and it's there for a few hours, and some people will see it, and then it mostly floats away. And the services that consume the stream, they don't actually form a connection between you and that restaurant; they don't actually understand the semantic relationship that exists between you and what you're connecting to.

Facebook is now going to create and store that "semantic relationship," which is both great and terrifying. Computer scientists have long envisioned a Web 3.0, a smarter Internet that understands the difference between objects, people, places, animals, etc. In other words, computers and servers should know that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is an object, and in particular it's a film, and in particular a film by Michel Gondry, who is a person. Right now computers see words like "Michel Gondry" only as dumb, meaningless text. Facebook wants to change that—which is great. But it also plans to own that information—which is scary.

Brand Marketing & The Long Term Effects of Promotional Products

Brand Image:
The impressions consumers have of a company extend well beyond the product or service the firm provides. Brand image is a mental image that reflects the way a brand is perceived, including all the identifying elements, the product or company personality, and the emotions and associations evoked in the consumer’s mind.


Objective:
The study was designed to determine the impact promotional products have on recipients and its long-term effects

Methodology:
This study was conducted by Georgia Southern University using an experimental design. The participants, who were students at the university, were divided into two groups. After completing a pre-test, the experimental group received an imprinted promotional product that reflected the company’s image. The control group received nothing. A post-test survey, conducted approximately a month later, asked questions to determine the groups’ image of the company. The results of this study are based on a sample size of 647 completed pre-test surveys and 538 completed post-test surveys. For the study, the researchers selected, as the test company, a restaurant located in a college town a few miles from a university campus.

Overall Image
Promotional product recipients held a more positive image of the company than the non-recipients. On scale of 1 to 7 with 7 representing a positive image, both groups were above the neutral score of 4 for four out of five categories. Although the differences are within a similar range in the figure below, they are statistically significant.

Perception Of The Business
The group receiving the promotional product had a more positive image as evidenced in their comments about the company than the non-recipient control group. The difference was statistically significant.

Likelihood Of Recommending The Business
The group receiving the promotional product was significantly more likely to recommend the business to others than the group that received nothing.

In A Nutshell:
Promotional Products have a positive impact on brand image. Specifically, when comparing people who receive a promotional product from a company with others who do not, this research shows that people who receive a promotional product have a significantly more positive opinion about a business through:
• More positive overall image
• More positive perception of the business
• Higher likelihood of recommending the business
• Higher likelihood of patronization

ROI
The study did not set out to specifically measure ROI. However, after the study, the business reported:
• 10 - 15% increase in sales
• 5 - 10% increase in new customer group (students)
• Opening a second location on the university campus

Published by: Promotional Products Association International

Promotional Products: Lowest Cost-Per-Impression & Highest Return On Investment

There has been some recent positive news with regard to an improving economy. So, what is your brand doing about it? Maybe your marketing budget was cut in order to save money during the flailing economy, so are you just sitting around waiting for customers to come to you? Now is the time to be aggressive and grab your share of the clients that are actually ready to let go of some money. You must continue to market your business. There is no other form of advertising that is more cost effective than using promotional products to market your business. Recent studies have shown that using custom printed promotional items have the lowest cost per impression over television, radio, newspaper, and even billboard ads. This means that more people are exposed to promos items with your business logo printed on them. Most promotional products are only cost a fraction of a penny for each marketing exposure.

Now, I’m not saying to stop all other forms of advertising. I am saying that you should think about diversifying your marketing strategies and use some less expensive mediums that may actually be more effective for your business. The key is to choose the right products for your target audience and your business. You also have to choose the right price range. If you choose something to cheap, the giveaways may not be used and will end up in the trash. If you choose something to expensive, you will bust your budget and not reach many people. Use a qualified promotional products expert to help you choose a product that is both useful and unique to help you bring maximum results from your advertising campaign. This investment will bring in more money than you spend.

Photos and research statistics are courtesy of The Advertising Specialty Institute.

How Will You Get Your Business In Front of a Customer Where They Make Purchasing Decisions?

Two strangers, Ed and Fred, run into each other at a bar and soon learn they are in the same business—sort of.

It quickly becomes clear that Ed is at his favorite watering hole to drown his sorrows. He is a media buyer with a large ad agency that has lost its biggest account. This makes him expendable. Fred, however, is celebrating. A promotional products guy, he has just knocked down a $75,000 order for imprinted wearable’s and 10 gross of higher ticket writing instruments. It takes all the restraint he can muster to refrain from telling the bartender to keep ’em coming.

Reach is an advertising measurement that has always bedeviled Ed because his work seldom involved the promotion of universal products—the things that everybody buys. Toothpaste and toilet paper are among the most frequently cited examples. No, he has had to apply mass media to push products to market segments and niches. He’d be absolutely lost without the audience breakouts and demographics he gleans from SRDS, Arbitron, Yankelovich Monitor lifestyles, Claritas Prizm and those Nielsen People Meters. Ed is beginning to think his future is in the new media—cell phones, PDAs, the internet with its banners and blogs, or product placement in Hollywood blockbusters. Can’t you just see Sharon Stone, once more legs crossed and lighting up a Virginia Slim in Basic Instinct 3?

But Fred is with the old media. After all, promotional products was a thriving endeavor at least 50 years before Vladimir Zworykin remarked, “Gee, this is a cathode ray tube. I think I will invent television.” Although he doesn’t have to mess with all those voluminous reports like Ed, don’t think Fred doesn’t know his research. He’s aware that reach can be a problem for him, too. Put the wrong promotional item in the hands of the targeted audience, and the message or impression is wasted. Fred will have seen his last $75,000 order. Consider the client who says, “I want my company’s name right in front of buyers where they’re most apt to make their purchasing decisions”—like in their office. Fred can respond by presenting a catalog of desk and office accessories. He confidently announces that 38 percent of business people refer to these items at least once a day.

Is Fred making up this stuff? No, he’s referring to page 25 of Promotional Products: Impact, Exposure and Influence, the DFW Airport Study published by PPAI. Like I said, Fred is into research. If you want to be authoritative, you’ve got to be an authority.

Usage Of Desk/Office/Business Accessories

Frequency             Percentage

Once a Day                38%

Once a Week             39%

Once a Month            10%

Once in Six Months    13%

Never                          0%

Abridged from Promotional Products: Impact, Exposure and Influence, report on research by LJ Market Research, San Diego, and published in 2004 by PPAI.

Thinking Green, Being Green, Living Green: Using Eco-Friendly Promotional Products

By living the green way, people, the environment as well as the entire ecosystem stand to benefit from its positive effects. Being active in recycling efforts can enable young people enjoy the earth’s natural resources as they grow. In this way, they will also learn to teach the generation that follows them the importance of taking care of the environment.

Going green, though, should not be limited to life at home. Outside of our homes, there are numerous things that can be recycled that can be made into useful and unique items. It’s good news that many companies have taken steps to manufacture products from recycled materials.

You’ve most likely heard about these recycled products that have flooded the market in recent years. Companies who support environmental efforts have, in fact, used some of these customized promotional items for their corporate giveaways and promotion efforts as well. Some of them that prefer to highlight their corporate identity have chosen the logoed products, which serve as perfect gifts to their loyal clients as well.

For businesses, utilizing eco-friendly promotional products can be an effective advertising and promotional strategy. With the awareness we now have of global warming, it’s not a good idea to be complacent and ignore the ever growing trend. It’s best to contribute in the preservation of the ecosystem. It does not take much effort to help preserve the environment. All it takes is self discipline; you need to be able to sustain the recycling and green attitude in our everyday lives. When we’re conscious of the positive things we do to our surroundings and the benefits they can give to us and to the many people in our community, then we can have peace of mind and joy in our hearts. This feeling of goodness and satisfaction will radiate within us and towards other people for years to come. Happy St Patty’s Day from All-Ways Advertising.