Pin badges are a great low cost way for your business to have a completely bespoke promotional product. Pin badges are a neat way for your organisation to make little awards for your staff, or for bigger brands they can make excellent collectables.

Promotional pin badges are made from soft enamel in the recessed areas which can achieve a great vibrancy to your design. Alternatively you can leave the badge colour-free, for the traditional metal look. We can even supply an epoxy finished promotional badge, which is a posh way of saying a smooth domed area.

You’re only limited by your imagination, when it comes to the design of your next promotional pin badges, included in our costs, you can have practically any shape you want within a 25 x 25mm area. Of course if you want something bigger, we can still accommodate, just the let the friendly team at Gift Selection know exactly what you want.

Promotional badges are light hearted and fun, yet are a powerful and cost effect way to communicate your corporate identity and promote your business. Promotional badges such as these would be perfect for a charity or a social society in particular.

Prêt a Manger those lovely people who supply city workers with their dolphin-friendly tuna sandwiches, has revamped the design of its Pure Prêt sparkling juice drink cans, to draw on its use of natural ingredients.

The range features variants such as Grape & Elderflower, Ginger Beer and Yoga Detox Bunny. The cans carry the strap-line ‘absolutely no nasties’ and are now white in colour. Each variant features a different image on the can, created from the ingredients themselves.

Grape & Elderflower features an image of a flower made from grapes, Ginger Beer features and image of a dog made from ginger root and Yoga Detox Bunny features and image of a rabbit made from avocado and French beans.

If you think using a drink would work well to promote your business, then www.sweets2order have a range of promotional drink items that are bound to draw people’s attention.

They have a range of traditional promotional water bottles and promotional fruit juices, which are especially great if your brand is associated with a healthy life style. However my favorite promotional drink item is the award winning ‘Drink Bax’ (pictured).

The personalised bottle comes in soft packaging, made of silver aluminium composite foil. This promotional drink has a range of styles and flavours. If it’s a promotional drink to use a mixer for cocktails, or an energy drink to have in the gym, or a soft drink to enjoy in the sun, the Drink Bax is the promotional drink to suit all tastes and occasions.

Please note that the minimum order quantity for the promotional Drink Bax is: 504 pieces when digitally printing, 504 when flexo-printing between 1-3 colours, and 1008 in 4 colours.

What could be more innocent then a promotional lolly pop - a fun piece of corporate confectionery, that you would have to have a heart of stone not too enjoy. What sweetso2rder doesn’t know about corporate lollypops isn’t worth knowing. They can supply practically any kind of promotional lolly you could think off.

If you know exactly what you require, then ring the friendly team up at sweets2order and bark your order down the phone, and they will quickly prepare it, faster then you can click your fingers. On the other hand, maybe you’re a new comer to the exciting world of promotional lollies. Well they will talk you through the wild and exciting possibilities open to you and your organisation.

You can have your promotional lollipop branded in so many different ways, the possibilities are practically endless. You can have the packaging branded or the lolly itself branded. Now when I say the packaging, I mean either printing the cellophane wrapping directly or a have sticky label stuck on, or some cardboard behind the lolly, or maybe a card box that goes over the top of the lolly. Still not enough choice? OK what about printing the foil that wraps around it, or the cardboard stand that they sit in…

For corporate lollies in all shapes, sizes and flavours – contact www.sweets2order.com – you’ll get more advertising for your lolly.

If you take the swoosh away from Nike, what are you left with? What would happen if Apple lost their apple and Shell misplaced their Shell? If your business doesn’t have a logo at the moment, then you’re missing out on that instant recognition - which every large business needs.

Your logo will be your business’ hardest worker – your employee of the month all year round. Your logo provides the essential service of communicating in a moment the whole philosophy of your business.

Something this magnitude shouldn’t be taken lightly. A great logo is something that every business should have. Often with logos - less is defiantly more. However resisting the temptation not to over complicate things is a challenge. Remember a picture says a thousand words. You need to think which are the thousand words that will best match your business’ ethos.

It is always worth taking considerable time to get your logo perfect, because once it is set in place - it is not advisable to change. Certainly one should never change their business’ logo just for the sake of it. Marlborough has been associated with cowboys for as long as anyone can remember - and the business is still as popular as it has ever been.

Thinking of the right theme to associate your logo with can be crucial. Certain brands lend themselves to certain topics – while others are less obvious. Nike for example, predictable relates itself to sporting excellence. Obviously sports may not relate to your business – but this isn’t a problem. Let’s take coca cola for example…a simple fizzy drink.

A stroke of genius, created Coca-cola’s association with Christmas. So much so that Coca–cola creating the red Santa, that we all know and love. Could you imagine seeing the original green Santa now? Would you want to sit on his knee, and tell him what a good boy you’ve been all year? No I’d want to know who this impostor was – posing in a damn green suit! I’d be pulling his beard – convinced that I had been fobbed off with a stooge. It’s incredible to think, that all this was down to marketing from a simple drinks business.

Printing your logo on promotional merchandise is a smart move for any business - no matter what their size. When ordering promotional gifts from an expert like gift selection, we will be more than happy to create or develop a logo to print on your products. If your thinking of some ideas for your new logo here are a few pointers we would always recommend:

☻ A logo that is simple and sophisticated will stay in people’s minds rather than a loud and vulgar one.

☻ A logo needs to be original and distinguishable - with a bold and striking design that is easily recognisable from everyone else.

☻ A logo needs to summon a mental image that matches perfectly with the ethos of your business.

☻A logo shouldn’t be extremely tall or wide for practical reasons – and shouldn’t be associated with any current fads. Timelessness is the key to any successful logo.

Bob Marley’s name has now been licensed to sell branded products bearing his name. The estate of Bob Marley, who look after the late Reggae stars finances have teamed up with a private equity house to license the singer’s image to retailers.

Hilco Consumer Capital have paid $20m (£13.3m) to acquire half of The House of Marley, in conjunction with Bob’s family. Bob Marley promotional items will include apparel, food and video games.

This new venture will aim to reduce the huge number of bootleg Bob Marley product currently available. It sounds like we could be soon expecting some promotional Bob Marley doughnuts we’jammin…

Coinciding with Obama’s promotional campaign, Pepsi cola have tweaked their famous logo. Their logo has seen various alterations over their history. The artist responsible for their first logo was also one of the chaps who developed the drink. The very first Pepsi logo was drawn by hand back in 1898 by the pharmacist Caleb Bradham.

The latest theme revolves around the white band in the middle of the logo, which will form a series of ’smiles’. These different smiles are set to characterise the different Pepsi’s on the market. A ‘grin’ is used for Diet Pepsi and a ‘laugh’ is used for Pepsi Max, while the smile pictured is for regular Pepsi.

Pepsi is going crazy for marketing at the moment. From October last year it plans to spend $1.2 billion over three years to change all aspects of the brand – “How they look, how they’re packaged, how they will be merchandised on the shelves, and how they connect with consumers”, all of which will be carried out by the Arnell Group.

In case you are interested I have complied a list of their famous marketing phrases from the last century:

AND NOW FOR 2009…     “Refresh Everything”

The government in their paternal wisdom has been mulling over the idea of banning tobacco companies from using their logo’s to promote their products all together.

 Since Labour has come to power in 1997, they have liberated us from passive smoking or infringed our civil liberties and rights - depending on how you look at it. I personally feel that the branding of cigarettes makes little difference, as other advertising is already banned,  so there is little to associate a particular brand with anymore. I would say that smokers are driven more by price and flavour rather than a particular association to a specific brand.? Do you feel sorry for tobacco shareholders? Should tobacco companies have a rights to show their logo’s, after all they are making the government millions of pounds. Or are cigarettes simply the vermin of society. In my opinion, this news may see a welcome return to glamorous silver cigarette cases (or even snuff boxes) to the world of promotional products…

What do you think on the matter - are the governments efforts commendable

Businesswoman Lady Carole Bamford has been blasted by advertising watchdogs, after falsely claiming thousands of her pheasants were organic.

Lady Bamford failed to observe EU laws, which ban shot pheasants from being classed as organic, as they are the products of hunting. %3Cbody%3E%3Cdiv%20id%3D%22adDiv%22%3E%3CA%20HREF%3D%22http%3A//ads.anm.co.uk/ADCLICK/CID%3D0000b139bb3f965200000000/AAMSZ%3D452×118/SITE%3DTHISISGLOU/AREA%3DNEWS/SUBAREA%3DHOME/ARTICLE%3D531940/acc_random%3D6229420650/pageid%3D/RS%3D%22%20target%3D%22_new%22%3E%3CIMG%20SRC%3D%22http%3A//iad.anm.co.uk/house/1×1.gif%22%20ALT%3D%22Click%20here%21%22%20border%3D0%20style%3D%22margin-bottom%3A%200px%3B%22%3E%3C/A%3E%3C/div%3E

It is also an offence to market any product as organic without proper certification – which Lady Bamford’s pheasants failed to have. A spokesman said: “The image implied the pheasants were organic but there was nothing to prove that was the case so the adverts were incorrect.”

 The pheasants are sold at outlets in Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, and shops in Pimlico Road and Sloane Square, as well as her country estate in Kingham. It seems shopping in designer shops doesn’t guarantee you’re getting what you thought you were getting.

Animal Aid shooting consultant Kit Davidson said: “No matter how much you pay for them, shot pheasants start their journey to your table as factory farmed birds, shot for fun and picked up by a dog from the mud. What Lady Bamford’s firm did was irresponsible and they should have known that the advert was untruthful.”

If you’ve just spat out that mouthful of expensive pheasant that you were previously enjoying, then I do apologise. However there is a business that specialises in real organic products. They don’t have pheasants, but they have other promotional organic goodies I think you will enjoy.