You’e probably heard the term “App Store,” and anyone who owns an iPhone can testify to the value of a great application (or “app,” as they are more commonly known). While most people have experimented with apps for their smart phones (mobile apps), few realize that there are literally thousands of apps designed specifically for use on social media platforms. Many of these apps are particularly useful for businesses interested in promoting their brands online, and here we list our 5 favorite Facebook apps for businesses.
One of our favorite suppliers, Leeds, has introduced a great way to tie charitable giving in with your next promotion. They will do this by donating 10% of the sales revenue from all items in their new “Hope Collection” to Habitat for Humanity, and all Hope Collection products will include tags containing information about how the sale of the item helped to fund the mission of Habitat for Humanity. There are a range of items to choose from in this collection, including journal books, ceramic tumblers, aluminum bottles, bookmarks, and totes.
Habitat for Humanity International seeks to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness from the world, and to make decent shelter a matter of conscience action. Habitat invites people from all walks of life to work together in partnership to help build houses with families in need. Since 1976, Habitat has built more than 350,000 houses around the world, providing 1.75 million people in more than 3,000 communities with safe, decent, affordable shelter.
This year, send clients, prospects or employees a meaningful message about giving back by putting your brand on an item from the Leeds Hope Collection!
Contact us today for pricing, lead times and design options for items in the Hope Collection!
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Lately, is seems the issue of ethics in marketing is popping up all over the place. We recently blogged about the Federal Trade Commission’s move to strengthen rules regarding marketers’ claims about green and eco-friendly products, and there is an ongoing debate about whether fast food companies should be able to include toys with children’s meals (with California’s Santa Clara County going so far as to ban them completely). In the realm of social marketing, bloggers are being encouraged to improve transparency by disclosing their relationships with companies and brands they endorse.
All of this raises the question about where marketers should draw the line between promoting a brand and making exagerated claims. We all know what ethics are, but how should we define ethics in marketing? Practicing ethics in marketing means deliberately applying standards of fairness, or moral rights and wrongs, to marketing decision making, behavior, and practice in the organization. If your organization does not have a marketing code of ethics, take a look at the American Marketing Association’s Statement of Ethics – it is a great template that companies can adapt for use in self-regulating.
Ethical marketing is good business. When an organization behaves ethically, customers develop more positive attitudes about the firm, its products, and its services.
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The weather is still warm and golf season is in full swing (pun intended!) – there is no better time than the present to order golf related promotions, but finding something unique can be a challenge. One of our favorites is the branded golf glove, a completely custom item available in both premium cabretta leather and superior grade Japanese synthetic leather. These are perfect for golf tournament giveaways, company stores, and co-branding or gift with purchase opportunities.
This item is new to the promotional industry, so you can be amongst the first to give them out at your event. Best of all, they have a quick lead time, low minimum order quantities, and factory-direct pricing. A variety of size ranges are available, and we can even include lefties with your order!
Contact us for more information on ordering your own custom branded golf gloves.
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We love products that are unique and beautiful, but also functional. The Around Clock from Lexon is an analog cylinder with numbers and markings that rotates to show the time as identified by the red wire. Simple, eye catching, and different … and you can put your brand on it!
This is a great promotion for associations working on membership campaigns (“time to renew your membership”), companies looking to lure potential customers away from the competition (“is it time for a change?”), or cause-related marketing campaigns (“it’s time to make a difference!”).
Contact us for more information on using the Lexon Around Clock in your promotional program.
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In an effort to protect consumers from exaggerated advertising claims, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is considering tightening regulations on how marketers use words like “recyclable,” biodegradable” and “carbon neutral.” The rules, also known as Green Guides, could affect more than 300 environmental seals of approval on current products, possibly making those environmentally-friendly claims in violation of government standards. Besides updating those standards, the rules would also more clearly define how companies can back up their claims of environmental sustainability.
The FTC’s Green Guides are designed to help marketers avoid making environmental claims that are unfair or deceptive under Section 5 of the FTC Act. The Green Guides outline general principles that apply to all environmental marketing claims and then provide guidance on specific green claims, such as biodegradable, compostable, recyclable, recycled content, and ozone safe. The FTC issued the Guides in 1992, and updated them in 1996 and 1998. The Commission currently is reviewing the Guides, as described below.
The updated regulations will continue a recent trend of more aggressive enforcement of eco-friendly-related advertising. During the past two years, the FTC has brought seven environmental advertising enforcement actions, compared to zero during the prior eight years. While the FTC cannot compel companies into adopting more eco-conscious policies, the agency is permitted by law to stop marketing fraud.
The FTC is specifically targeting greenwashing, the practice of making an unsubstantiated or misleading claim about the environmental benefits of a product in order to increase its sales. The most notable case of alleged greenwashing occurred last year when the FTC accused Kmart of listing paper plates as biodegradable. The plates, the government argued, would not typically decompose in solid waste facilities where most garbage is found. Kmart eventually agreed to alter its “biodegradable” claims in its marketing.
Before the FTC begins enforcing the new rules, the agency will first publish the Green Guides in the Federal Register and institute a comment period. The FTC is expected to announce the updated regulations within the next two weeks, likely issuing the most substantial change to Green Guides in more than a decade.
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I’m guilty…!
Social media gaming has become a huge success – at barely 3 years old, it has skyrocketed to the top of the online entertainment list! So, what is social gaming, and how does it differ from traditional gaming?
Social games are distributed via social networking sites. If you’re a Facebook user, you have probably heard of a few (FarmVille, Mafia Wars and Café World, just to name a couple). Social games are shared through invitations, news feed postings, and notifications between users.
They can be lumped into four different categories:
- Resource management systems
- Online gambling
- Care-taking
- Casual/arcade
Resource management games, like FarmVille, allow players to be responsible for managing their resources to achieve a specific goal. I (embarrassingly) admit to walking away from a conversation or two to harvest my strawberries before they had a chance to wilt.
Online gambling games allow players to bet digital dollars rather than hard currency. Players can accumulate points in hopes of winning prizes.
Care-taking games, like Tamagotchi, allow you to care for a virtual animal by feeding it, playing with it, and tending to its “emotional needs.”
Arcade games are simply updated versions of traditional games (Tetris, Scrabble, Bejeweled, etc.) that are played on social networking sites.
Don’t think that social gaming is solely for recreation. It has been said that social gaming can affect a company’s success. Zynga, the creator of FarmVille, has concluded that success is derived from three factors: ability to drive new users, the ability to construct an engagement loop, and a channel to access open communication. Considering that FarmVille has an estimated 82.4 million users and Zynga is making close to $500,000 a day, it seems as though they may be on to something…
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Two years ago, Polaroid stopped producing its iconic instant-print cameras due to a perceived lack of demand. The reaction from fans around the world has since convinced the company to bring back a modern take on its classic camera. The new Polaroid 300 has four lighting settings and an auto flash and produces business card sized instant photos.
Who doesn’t love the instant gratification of printing out a Polaroid photo, waving it around, and watching as the image reveals itself? We think the Polaroid 300 makes a great promotion. Give it to attendees at your next event and hold a contest to see who can snap the best instant photo, keep it on hand in your tradeshow booth and instantly display pics of booth visitors with your staff or products, or use it as part of a team building scavenger hunt for your staff.
Contact us today for pricing, lead times and design options for the Polaroid 300!
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Ever heard the saying “too many cooks spoil the broth”? Traditional wisdom holds that the more people that are involved in a task, the more likely it is that something will go wrong. The concept of crowdsourcing is turning this logic on its head by involving as many people as possible in efforts ranging from product design, to idea generation, to branding – kind of a “many hands make light work” approach.
What is crowdsourcing? First coined by Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired magazine article “The Rise of Crowdsourcing”, crowdsourcing is a distributed problem solving or production model. Or – put more simply – it is the act of outsourcing tasks that are typically performanced by a single employee or contractor to a large group of people or community through an open call.
Crowdsourcing is already being used by marketers in a variety of ways:
- T-shirt maker Threadless asked fans to nominate their favorite Twitter posts to be turned into t-shirts (for more on this, read our blog).
- Beverage brand Mountain Dew turned to consumers through its Dewmocracy campaign to design three new drinks, crowdsourcing everything from the flavors, to the names, the package designs, and the ad campaigns.
- Dorito’s invited fans to submit commercials to air during the Superbowl as part of its “Crash the Superbowl” contest.
The beauty of crowdsourcing is that it can be done for little to no cost and by companies large or small, and the internet – and social marketing platforms like Facebook – provides the perfect platform for reaching large audiences quickly.
As to how many cooks should make the broth? We say, “the more the merrier!”
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We know there are still a few people out there who are not yet on Facebook, but finding them is getting harder and harder. Recently, Facebook recorded its 500 millionth user, meaning that 22% of the internet users in the world are involved in the Facebook platform! Facebook’s value for marketers doesn’t just lie in the sheer size of the audience, but in what the folks at Facebook are doing to make Facebook a seemless platform for targeted marketing. Some of my favorite examples:
Active social networkers often split their time between multiple platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Saavy marketers are capitalizing on this by integrating their presence on these sites within their Facebook fan pages. To see an example, just check out the RSS/Blog, Twitter, and YouTube tabs on the Quintain Marketing fan page.- Because Facebook pages and profiles highlight who users are as people and what they like and dislike, Facebook allows you the marketer to pinpoint targeting of your ads. Evidence shows that Facebook ads work – their hit count is well over 100%, meaning that people keep coming back multiple times a day!
- Gone are the days of logging on to find out what your friends are up to. Facebook applications are now available on most smart phones, and Microsoft Outlook’s Social Connector enables users to integrate Facebook with their Outlook desktop interface.
If you’re not on Facebook and want an embarrassment-proof way to learn what you’re missing, check out the handy guide that the New York Times put together for Facebook (and Twitter, and LinkedIN) newbies.
If you haven’t already developed a social marketing strategy, now is the time to get online!
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Unless you’ve had your head in the sand, you’ve probably heard about Silly Bandz, the colorful rubber bands that, when unstretched, take the shape of everyday objects such as animals, musical instruments, food, etc. The big difference between Silly Bandz and regular rubber bands is that Silly Bandz are meant to be worn around the wrist as bracelets – and the more Bandz, the better. When removed, they snap right back to their original shapes, which is one reason they’ve caught on with kids. Not only are they a fun accessory, but they’re perfect for trading.
Believe it or not, the Silly Bandz craze is spreading to adults too! A recent New York Times article profiled this trend, describing how people have been found handing them out in bars or trading them on subways. Even celebrities such as Sarah Jessica Parker, Mary-Kate Olsen, and Kelly Ripa have been seen sporting Silly Bandz!
We think Silly Bandz make great promotions when packaged in custom-branded, zippered pouches. And they won’t break the bank – they cost between $1.35 and $1.55 for a pack of 12 (includes a one color imprint on the packaging) depending upon the quantity ordered – less than the retail price of $4.95 for a 24 pack of the original Silly Bandz!
Contact us today for pricing, lead times and design options for Silly Bandz!
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