1.) Promotional items do a fantastic job of raising awareness of your company, great for if you are about to launch a new product or re-branding! 2.) Instead of spending £££’s on Ad campaigns that will only be seen once or twice then discarded, promotional items put your message into the hands of your customers and have a much greater life span! 3.) Promotional items are a great way to reward your customers. Whether it’s to say thanks for their loyalty or congratulate them on a birthday/milestone. 4.) Promotional merchandise gives your company brand repeated exposure every time that the item is...

Moonpig is certainly climbing further up the market ladder, announcing online digital photo service Photobox shall be merging with the popular greetings card company as part of plans to expand Moonpigs personalised cards service onto mugs, t-shirts and bottles too! Founded in 1999, Moonpig.com have reeled a spectacular 3 million customers, selling more than 12 million personalised greetings cards a year. No wonder Funkypigeon.com have jumped on the bandwagon! Printed mugs, personalised t-shirts, branded bottles….The guys at Gift Selection don’t just stop at that! The sky really is the limit. If you...

iPhones, iPods, iPads… People are going nuts for them! And recent figures have shown that Apples profits have soared past sales expectations and actually doubled! It seems the slick stylish devices, notoriously known for their finely printed apple logos are being sold to thousands of Apple lovers, racking in a Net income of 4.6bn in the three months to 25th June. This involved a tremendous 20 million iPhones sold in the quarter and 9.25 million iPads. I’m feeling a little left out in all of this! The iPad has been on my ‘iWant’ list for quite some time now but I don’t think my...

Last Friday Britain’s Royal Mail announced the unveiling of 10 new stamps to mark the one-year countdown until the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The first class stamps, entitled ‘get ready for 2012’ will go on sale on July 27th, exactly one year before the official start of the games. On the stamps are depictions of classic sports such as, Athletics, Gymnastics and the Triathlon as well as Paralympic sports, Wheelchair Tennis and Wheelchair Rugby. The stamps are the last in a series of collections unveiled by the Royal Mail in a 3 year countdown until the Games, each stamp designed by...

In February of this year, the official emblem of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee was unveiled by Buckingham palace and the BBC Blue Peter programme. The chance to draw the Queen’s official Jubilee emblem was a competition launched by Blue Peter last year, 35,000 entries were sent in and the winner and runners up from each age category were able to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace at a special reception to show off their designs. This is only the second ever Diamond Jubilee and it is the first time an official emblem has been drawn by a child. The winner, Katherine Dewar, aged 10 from Chester created...

The stationery brand BiC has just recently launched a fresh new TV ad campaign with a strong strapline “quality inspires creativity”. This is the first campaign Bic has introduced since appointing Forever Beta to its ad account- and is rather charmingly witty in my opinion after viewing it earlier! The ad shows an innocent looking little girl searching around her house rooting for her felt tip pens, hidden under the sofas, in the kitchen and in her doll house. The ad finishes with the girl happily using her pens on some white fabric but is stopped by her horrified mum who walks in only to realise...

It’s day one of the Open at Royal St. Georges, all hopes are on Rory McElroy the young champion who won his first golf open in the US just a few short weeks ago. McElroy is bidding to become to youngest Open Champion since 1893, he is the likely favorite for the start of the competition. In his group teeing off at 9:09 BST are Ernie Els and rising American star Rickie Fowler in the first round of the 140th Open. Let’s hope the young Irish man can get another Open under his belt! If your company requires branded golf gear of any kind, ranging from golf balls & umbrellas all the way through...

This morning I heard the Queen popped in to one of Dublin’s most infamous Guinness breweries, but declined to sample an offered pint despite being urged to “Go on!” I guess the ‘black stuff’ isn’t to every ladies taste, particularly a lady of such grace and sophistication. The onlooker’s suggestion that it was too early in the morning for a tipple was probably the most sensible decision, although personally I think she could have at least agreed to a cheeky swig? Today we recognise Guinness for its miraculous award winning advertisement’s, driven by its iconic logo and distinctive...

If your organisation invests in promotional products, then there will soon be more opportunity to use them as product placement will be allowed in UK TV programmes from 28 February 2011. Sponsorship rules have also been relaxed, and paid-for references on the radio can be integrated into programmes from today, according to regulator Ofcom. To pave the way for paid-for references for products and services, as revealed by Media Week earlier this month, Ofcom has published new rules about what can and can’t be shown. Branded goods will be prohibited in all children’s and news programmes and in...

If you’re involved in the promotions industry, you may have come across the fascinating design insights that I’ve come across recently from Martin Lindstrom, author of ‘Buy•ology’.   Lindstrom, through a study of the human psyche, throws light on the subconscious mind and how that plays a major role in deciding what the buyer will buy. In doing so, Lindstrom breaks a number of existing myths related to advertising and promotion.   An interesting theory of his, is his idea of a “smashable” product. In 1915 the Coca-Cola company decided that it needed to do something about the design...