Do you have a company picnic or special event coming up? Are you looking for something a little different to give to your employees or guests? How about a portable grill? Compact grills are great because they are easy to move, which makes them ideal for tailgating, camping, grilling on terraces, or on the beach. Your gift will be used all summer long and well into fall tailgating season.
One of our favorite portable grills this year is the FYRKAT Charcoal Picnic Grill by Bodum. It features a 13.4” diameter, perfect for grilling whole fish, steaks, burgers and vegetables. Made of enamel-coated steel with chrome-plated steel legs, it has a heat-resistant silicone handle with silicone lid clips for easy carrying. The FYRKAT Grill is available in an array of fun colors - choose from black, blue, orange, white, yellow, or lime. Best of all? We can have your logo printed directly on the lid of each grill!
If you really want to take your gift to the next level, don’t just buy the grill. Kick it up a few notches and add the Grill Master Caddy Set from Gemline, along with meat from Omaha Steaks. Call us today - we’ll put together the right grilling package for your event!
Taking a significant step toward enacting the strongest legislation of its kind in the U.S., The California Assembly has voted to prohibit grocery, liquor, convenience and drug stores from offering customers plastic bags. The bill, which passed the Assembly in a 41-27 vote, still requires approval by the state’s Senate, however California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has already said he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.
In addition to banning plastic bags, the California bill also requires customers to be charged for using store-provided paper bags. The legislation is considered even more sweeping than an ordinance passed in San Francisco in 2007, which requires supermarkets and large drug stores to offer customers bags made only of recyclable paper, cloth or plastic that can be turned into compost.
If approved by the California Senate, the plastic bag ban could go into effect as early as January 2012. California would become the first state in the country to enact such a law.
Regardless of where you stand on the issue of plastic bag bans, this bill is important from a marketing standpoint because it further underscores the value of incoroporating custom-branded non-woven or laminated totes into your promotional strategies. Some of our favorite reusable totes (including the one pictured above) come from Leeds, which offers a full range of tote products made from materials including organic cotton, 100% recycled PET, recycled poly, and more. Give us a call at 866-788-3226 and we’ll help you choose the right reusable tote for your promotion!
Graffiti has always fascinated me – its incredible how this particular form of painting is considered vandalism in some cases and fine art in others – so I was especially interested to learn how “Reverse Graffiti” is literally cleaning up graffiti’s reputation. Reverse graffiti uses stencils and power washers to create “clean” designs that stand out from the surrounding grime. Street artists have been using this technique for decades, and now the marketing world is waking up and discovering the many ways reverse graffiti can be used for promotions.
Reverse graffiti is gaining in popularity around the world. Here in the United States, marketing pioneers like Starbucks, MTV, and Domino’s Pizza are incorporating it into their broader marketing strategies. According to the New York Times, Domino’s invested less than $20,000 on its campaign, which included 210 street impressions, spread across New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Passersby were invited to send in photographs of themselves with the street images for a chance to win Domino’s gift cards. Domino’s estimates that the campaign brought it about $1 million worth of publicity – thats a 50 to 1 return on investment!
While reverse graffiti has been used successfully by a number of large businesses, there is no reason that small businesses can’t do the same. For example, what if adjacent businesses joined forces to reverse graffiti a themed “path” on their collective sidewalk? By sharing the cost, they could each get plenty of bang for their buck.
In addition to being a relatively low cost form of advertising, reverse graffiti is also kind to the environment. No paints, sprays or chemicals are applied in the process, and the image wears away naturally over time leaving no waste or biproducts behind.
To see a reverse graffiti artist in action, check out what English reverse graffiti expert Moose has done in San Francisco’s Broadway Tunnel as part of The Reverse Graffiti Project.
In conjunction with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), McDonald’s announced this morning that it is recalling 12 million promotional glasses that have been sold in stores since May 21. The glasses were promoting the new movie “Shrek Forever After,” but were found to have cadmium in the designs painted onto the items.
The CPSC stated in the recall notice that “long-term exposure to cadmium can cause adverse health effects.” Both McDonald’s and the CPSC said that the potential danger in the glasses now being recalled would be long-term exposure to low levels of cadmium, which could leach from the paint onto a child’s hand, then enter the body if the child puts that unwashed hand to his or her mouth. “A very small amount of cadmium can come to the surface of the glass, and in order to be as protective as possible of children, CPSC and McDonald’s worked together on this recall,” said CPSC spokesman Scott Wolfson.
Cadmium can be used to create reds and yellows in paint, and McDonald’s USA spokesman Bill Whitman said a pigment in paint on the glasses contained low levels of cadmium. McDonald’s reported that about 7 million of the glasses had already been sold, and it would be posting a notice on its website next week about refunds for those glasses. The glasses were manufactured and sold to McDonald’s by ARC International, an unlisted manufacturer based in Millville, NJ.
This recall highlights the dangers of sourcing promotional products from companies that are not affiliated with major industry organizations such as the Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI) or the Promotional Products Association International (PPAI), both of which are actively engaged in educating and informing their members about compliance with product safety requirements.
Quintain Marketing is a Member of both ASI and PPAI. We are taking a proactive stance on product safety and have voluntarily subscribed to the Promotional Products Association International’s (PPAI) Code of Conduct. The Code is a comprehensive document that voluntarily commits PPAI members to operating in a responsible manner. It addresses such workplace issues as conditions, environment, labor, hours and wages, and product safety. The PPAI Code of Conduct has helped us to spell out the policies and procedures we have put in place to ensure that both we and our clients comply with the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act and California’s Proposition 65.
For more information or to view our Code of Conduct, please click here.
Can you believe that Memorial Day, the unofficial start to summer has already come and gone for 2010!? If you haven’t been in the pool or at the beach yet, I know you are headed there soon. What’s the one thing you can’t go to the pool or beach without? A beach towel! Check out my favorite 3 towels for this summer.
30” x 60” 100% Cotton Heavy Weight Beach Towel
This is the perfect size towel for lying out on the beach. It’s not too big or too small. These towels are available in bright, fun colors choose from pink, lemon yellow, royal blue, black, red, navy blue, apple, sky blue, and tangerine. Screen print or embroider your logo on each towel.
15” x 18” 100% Cotton Digital Printed Sport/Stadium Towel
The digital printed sport towel is a great promotional item for any sporting event. We can have any full color image or artwork printed on white towels. This digital printing process usually has to be done overseas but our supplier can print domestically, which cuts production time down from 30-60 days to 10-15 or less!
85” x 65” The Beach Towel for your beach towel, “Beach Bottoms”
Beach Bottoms are the solution for anyone who hates getting sand on their towel. Stake the Beach Bottom in the sand then tuck your beach towel in the designated towel straps. They are made from a durable, lightweight, stretchy fabric and have 8 imprint areas that expand from edge to edge giving your brand maximum exposure. Beach Bottoms make fabulous giveaways for corporate events or hotel promotions.
Did you know there are over 130 billion text messages sent/received every month in the US alone? Text message marketing is becoming the hottest trend in interactive marketing to date. When a customer sees your ad, message, or call-to-action they can reply and get the information back on their cell phone in just seconds.
Here’s how mobile marketing works: We help you choose a key word for customers to text to a short code. When the customer texts to the short code (example TEXT Quintain to 12345) they receive a custom crafted message from you. Your message can be informational (Follow Quintain on Twitter for promotional marketing news). Alerts (25% off all new merchandise). Mobile Coupons (Mention this text message and receive 1 free appetizer). Contests & Promotions (You have been entered to win a new car. Winners will be called). After the customer texts the key word, their phone number is stored and you have the option to continue to market to them with new text messages or alerts.
Give us a call today and we’ll design the right text marketing campaign for your company.
Branded gift cards – including network-branded cards from Visa, Masterard, and American Express – are some of the many thousands of branded products that we at Quintain Marketing provide for our clients. They make a great reward for employees or loyal customers and have a high perceived value. Sounds great – until the recipient calls you to complain that after a year of sitting in their desk, the gift card that was once valued at $25 is now worthless because of the hidden fees associated with it.
The good news is that the United States Federal Reserve has issued new rules relating to gift cards that will take place on August 22 of this year. These rules will ban gift card issuers from charging fees for dormancy or inactivity, as well as service fees within the first year of purchase of a gift card. After the first year, companies can’t charge more than one fee per month.
Although gift card issuers will face tougher rules regarding the disclosure of fees, we suggest that if you are planning on giving gift cards as a promotion, you consider including your own note letting the recipient know when fees will be levied and how they will impact the value of the card over time. Your extra efforts will be much appreciated!
Have you been on LinkedIN lately? If not, you may be surprised to learn that the professional networking platform is starting to look a lot more like Facebook, Twitter and some of the other major social marketing platforms. LinkedIN is evolving and its new format presents a number of opportunities for building your personal or business brand. Here are some of the biggest changes and thoughts on what they mean for you:
Share Feature: When you log on to LinkedIN, you will immediately see that your homepage now features a sharing field much like Facebook’s status updates. This allows you to post a quick note about what you are working on, the latest news about your business, or thoughts about the market segment in which you operate. These updates will appear on the homepages of anyone you are connected to as well as in the status update emails that your connections receive, thus keeping you fresh in their mind. LinkedIN also gives you the option of syndicating your update to your Twitter feed or Facebook page, thereby reaching a broader audience of friends and followers and cross promoting your presence on multiple social networking sites. Similarly, if you are already Tweeting, you can set up a feed so that your Tweets are syndicated to your LinkedIN profile. This is a great way to get the most of your social marketing time!
Groups: If you are not already a member of LinkedIN Groups, you are missing a major opportunity to network and connect with like-minded professionals. LinkedIN boasts thousands of groups covering just about every professional field and area of interest. You can join a group that already exists or create one to meet your needs. Groups are a great way to learn more about your area of expertise and stay connected within your profession. For example, we are members of the Advertising Specialty and Promotional Products Industry group, as well as others such as the Brand Activation group. Through our involvement in these, we receive industry news, participate in discussion boards, and see job postings.
Answers: One of the most interesting new features of LinkedIN is the Answers section. Located under the “More” tab along the menu bar at the top of your LinkedIN homepage, Answers is a forum where anyone can ask a question about anything and have it presented to the entire LinkedIN membership. While the Answers function is an interesting way to gather information about topics of interest to you, we think its real value lies not in the questions, but in the answers themselves. By becoming actively involved in answering others’ questions, you can position yourself as an expert on a given topic and gain exposure to audiences that reach far beyond your personal connections. When you post a question or an answer, it appears in your profile, on the homepages of your connections, and on the Answers tab which can be viewed by anyone using LinkedIN.
Events: LinkedIN now offers a great channel through which to promote events or your participation in them. The Events section of LinkedIN is located under the “More” tab and allows you to post events or search events by location, date or keyword. The Events feature is a great way to let your connections know about conferences you are attending, find out about what others in your industry are doing, and learn about opportunities of which you otherwise would not be aware. If you are interesting in promoting your own event, you can create it on LinkedIN, track who is attending, and even integrate your event posting with LinkedIN’s new Direct Ads function so that it is advertised to targeted segements of LinkedIN’s audience.
Applications: When you are ready to get the most out of LinkedIN, venture over to the Applications page (also located under the “More” tab). Here you will find a laundry list of fantastic plug-ins that will expand the potential of your LinkedIN presence dramatically. For example, you can use TripIt to let your network know where and when you will be traveling and take advantage of opportunities to connect – in person – with members of your otherwise virtual network. Google Presentation allows you to post PowerPoint presentations to your profile – a great way to share the results of your research, summarize a new product offering, or even present your resume in a new format. Huddle Workspaces allow you to create private, online work environments in which you can share and edit documents, exchange ideas, track tasks, and run virtual meetings with a select group of your contacts. I could go on and on about these and other applications, but you’ve really got to check them out for yourselves!
The five features listed above are really the tip of the iceberg. LinkedIN has so many new features and functions that make it easily customizable to your business objectives. With over 65 million members in 200 countries, the potential reach of LinkedIN is incredible. Add the LinkedIN for Blackberry, iPhone, or Palm application to your PDA or Smart Phone, and you can manage your network 24/7 from any location!
Pencils are amongst the most ubiquitous of promotional products. As a result, it can be challenging to create a pencil promotion that stands out from the very crowded field. Enter the new “Renew” recycled tire pencil from Dixon Ticonderoga. Made from a specially formulated rubber compound created from recycled tires, the Renew pencil is PMA certified non-toxic and features a latex free eraser. And best of all, the core is made of the same high quality, black, #2 graphite that is required for test taking and by schools everywhere.
Every Renew pencil features a “Made from Recycled Tires” imprint, and you can add your own brand or message as well. The pencil itself is only available in black, but you can choose from a black, green or white eraser, and a black, silver, or brass ferrule. At as little as $0.28 per piece, the Renew pencil is an affordable promotion that sends an important message.
Dixon Ticonderoga is considered the world’s best pencil and its therefore not surprising that it is the best selling one. With its sleek black, recycled casing, this pencil is both good looking and good for the environment. Globally, one tire is discarded per person, per year, and there are currently over 2 billion scrapped tires in U.S. stockpiles. What a great way to make use of refuse!
It features a 13.4” diameter, perfect for grilling whole fish, steaks, burgers and vegetables. Made of enamel-coated steel with chrome-plated steel legs, it has a heat-resistant silicone handle with silicone lid clips for easy carrying. The FYRKAT Grill is available in an array of fun colors - choose from black, blue, orange, white, yellow, or lime. Best of all? We can have your logo printed directly on the lid of each grill!
