Every man and his dog is doing or has done notepads. A long standing promotional product, that continues to grow. Year on year the notepad holds a top 10 position in the most popular promotional products. People still love stationery; despite being constantly tied to our phones. The great thing about the notepad is that you can make it work for your brand and your customer. It comes down to the type of notepad, the accessories you team it up with (e.g. pen or pencil), and the design. How and where you position your logo. What message do you want to convey to the audience? Is it a message that inspires and motivations? A message that people want to Instagram?The target market is wide, so it’s just about finding the right style.
This is to help you with your event planning for the year, whether it’s within your business or with your customers. Go low key or go all out. If you need any ideas around for promotional products, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Australia Day: 26th January
Back to school: 30th January
Valentine’s Day: 14th February
Chinese New Year: 16th February
Australian Women’s History month: 1-31st March
Worldwide Wildlife Day: 3rd March
Start of Rugby season 8th March
International Women’s Day: 8th March
St Patrick’s Day: 17th March
Australasian Promotional Products Association Tradeshow: 21st March
Earth Hour 8:30pm: 24th March
Easter: 30th March – 2nd April
Harmony Day: 21st March
National Youth Week: 31st March-9th April
Administrative Professionals Day – 4th May
Mother’s Day:13th May
Word Refugee Day: 20th June
End of Financial Year: 30th June
International Youth Day 12th August
World Humanitarian Day: 19th August
Australasian Promotional Products Association Tradeshow: 22nd August
Australia Day falls on a Friday in 2018. Making for a long weekend … just how we like it!
If you are looking for ideas to celebrate with your staff, clients, business partners, please get in touch with us before Christmas so we can get your order underway, so you don’t miss out.
In 2018, Chinese New Year will be celebrated on Friday, February 16.
With a growing Chinese community in the past few years, Chinese New Year is becoming a more and more prevalent celebration of culture and tradition in Australia. Families gather and festivities are held in the Asian communities to welcome the new year in.
With the upcoming Year of the Dog, which signifies fortune, career, health, and love prospects, this is what we can expect to see as we have seen in the past few decades.
Lots of red.
Street festivals and markets are bustling with people and noise and displays of food, art and entertainment.
The exchange of well wishes and chattering can be heard above the beating of the drums and the cymbals clashing for the lion dances.
Occasional firecrackers exploding in the distance.
A trade of red pockets/envelopes (which also happens in both a physical and digital environment) and blessings occur between the elders and the young at home
A delicious feast is prepared and eaten before families visit the temples to pray for a prosperous future.
So why not join in the celebration by participating or gifting? To the Chinese, gifting is seen as a nice gesture and effort made that shows your level of involvement. And the key thing to know here is that the Chinese LOVE their red. Anything red will capture their eye and will be kept as a symbol of luck. At Turnkey this is one our favourite times of the year, so we are more than happy to help you with this.
Whether you work on a financial year or calendar year, the start of a new year brings a new vitality and refreshed mindset. It’s a good time to review both current and future performance in respect to activity, results and investment/spend.
Healthy marketing practices to bring in the new year:
Where did you enjoy your best results? How can you not just replicate, but do this better? The wheel doesn’t always need to be reinvented. A slight change on a good performer – whether it’s a product or campaign can be very effective.
Reach out to your finance team. Have a bit of healthy sparring session with them. They thinking differently to the marketing team and the collaboration of thinking can bring new ways of managing your marketing dollars.
If things are a little tight, and you didn’t achieve the results you were after, instead of cost cutting as being your first point of call, shift the thinking to what would we do if we doubled our expenditure expenditure budget. What this does is change your mindset to think a lot wider and deeper, beyond where you currently are. This helps prompt more strategic solutions that can deliver higher returns.
Think quality over quantity. What content is resonating, impacting, cutting through with your audience? Keep doing this. The content that is not having any impact, ask yourself if it’s worth continuing?
Evaluate the correlation between marketing projects and business goals. Are they aligned? Have conversations with other departments. Are you all aligned on the business direction. How can you work even better together in 2018?
Is there an opportunity to enrich your marketing activity – both in respect to content depth and results by collaborating with new partners? Who do you share a similar audience with? Can you mutually benefit from working together through adding value to them?
Spend some time with your current business partners. What are they doing in 2018 to improve their business. What do they think you should be doing in 2018 to improve your? An opportunity for reflection and authentic relationship building.
How, as a marketing team, can you bring an elevated energy level to 2018? More enthusiasm, leads to better ideas, working relationships and results.
Include the key actions from the list above to your weekly marketing meetings, so they don’t become a ‘conversation I remember once having’, but they lead to actionable outcomes that drive marketing and business improvement.
Who knew we could change the way we relax at a beach? The rectangle beach towel seems only made for one person use. And then here comes the Round Beach Towel. What’s so good about a beach towel being round? Why has it become a envied beach accessory?
More beach coverage – which is good when you find yourself at a packed beach.
One towel can suffice two people
Enough space to manage fish and chips, computer, bag, beach ball
Visibility – for your brand.
It’s the ideal promotional product of the season especially when the Australian Summer means that we have plenty of opportunity to soak up some rays in this heat. On top of that, it is highly Instagrammable when the design aesthetic is captivating and therefore more likely to be included in that beach photo where others can see and will want one for themselves.
A nice alignment with a brand that speaks summer time – fresh, summer, beach, family & friends, enjoyment, carefree.
A great all year round promotional product, hands down. And anyone and everyone loves a coffee mug.
Whilst there’s nothing wrong with a coffee mug with your logo proudly displayed, there are other creative ways you can decorate your mug, ensuring the user will love it.
Coffee mugs can come to life that your customers/clients/staff will love with a little bit of creativity. Things to consider:
Size and weight of the mug
Texture – shiny matte
Material – ceramic, porcelain, china
Number of colours to be printed
Design
Message
Brand presence
Print quality
Price
Delivery Date
How will you deliver it to the receiver?
Can you personalise it?
Quantity and lead-time, with larger quantities custom designs can be produced offshore
Decoration position, consider a lip imprint, decoration on the base or on the inside to reveal your message
Also think about the packaging. How will the gift be received? A bit part of opening anything is the anticipation. Also when working with breakables, plan for the rough handling, so you protect the product as much as possible.
With the increase in digital decoration, there are more options to print coffee mugs with full colour and personalisation … your staff will always be able to find their mug in the staff kitchen cupboard and who doesn’t love receiving a gift with their name on it!
Branding Appears Magically
A thermochromic coffee mug with a unique thermochromic coating, allowing the dishwasher safe wrap, around branding to appear ‘magically’ when hot liquid is added, and then disappear again as it cools. A bit of fun. And it is nicely presented in a black gift box.
Interestingly, the list doesn’t change much from year to year. The innovation comes through on the application…. adding a twist on an old idea works well!
A number of large companies love to celebrate back to school, so there is a lot of noise around this time, which makes it even more important to be creative and stand out from the crowd if you want to cut-through. Your products and services may not be specifically targeted to school age students, however, imagine the exposure of your logo to mums, dads, teachers and the future generation. Consider the following questions and perhaps you too could run your own back to school campaign.
Who is your customer – Mums, Dads, Children, Teachers, School Suppliers?
Why would they want to hear from you?
How can your product make their life better?
What is your message?
What channel would you use to get your message across?
How can you reach them?
Who would you close the loop, so they continue their engagement with you?
What will the customer feel about your brand after this experience?
A promotional product is a great way to get your message out there, especially if you do it in
a way that’s unique to your brand and is purposeful for the user.
Tote bags are a dime a dozen. If your brand doesn’t have a tote bag, there’s a good chance you have had discussions about it, or it’s on the to do list. And for good reason – it stops us using plastic bags. Good for the shopping, good for carrying your laptop in, good for the beach, good to take to events.
A good idea made better when the design or the intended usage matches up well with your brand positioning.
What we are liking are clear tote bags. A nice opportunity for brands that want to target people at events, as clear bags have become mandatory at a lot of big venues for security reasons.
So why not tap into this opportunity and leverage your brand engagement in a meaningful and useful way for your audience.
