The release date isn’t until March, but talk of The Hunger Games is heating up. The citizens of District RIGHTSLEEVE took four lessons from the series and voted for our favourite crossover products.

The victors will speak for themselves.

Gear Up	Fan the Flames
Enough storage for everything short of a bow and arrow. Hang the bag on your side for quick access to tools then adjust the shoulder strap and sling it when you need to make an escape up the nearest tree.	Like Katniss’ stunning debut at the opening ceremonies, this hand crafted piece of art makes your tribute pop.

Strength of Symbol	Channel Your Inner Scout
Go viral or go home. The spirit of your District will fuel the movement.	Use it to stock the Cornucopia or as a sponsor gift. Don’t have the training of a Career Tribute? Don’t sweat it. It comes with a Natural Disaster Guide.

Wise words from Seth Godin on Christmas morning.

A reminder to marketers that delighting customers is so much more than just meeting the spec.

Merry Christmas!

We feel that the best promotional products are those that are actually used (vs being tossed in the trash bin at a trade show). In the spirit of highlighting fun and engaging promotional items, we present to you the Animal Popper.

Cool promotional products are part of the zeitgeist at RIGHTSLEEVE so we decided to shoot a little video to show why we love this piece so much. But, we need help with an ending. If you can think of a good way to end this, please post your comments below.

We’ve teamed up with our friends at iwearyourshirt.com today. Jason (above) and his crew will be wearing our soft and supple Next Level shirts today so sit back and enjoy the entertainment throughout the day.

I met Jason at a conference a few weeks ago and was really intrigued by his approach to advertising and community engagement using the web and social media. Given our love of all things design, web and social media at RIGHTSLEEVE, I thought it would be a lot of fun to work with them.

We have a 15% off Next Level Tshirt promotion on at the moment so be sure to hop on over to our Facebook page to learn more. “Like” us and you are on your way.

Don’t these guys look sharp?

I had the pleasure of speaking at the ASI Chicago show last week to a number of advertising specialty professionals. My focus was on marketing best practices and the connections between brand leaders like Google, Zappos & Apple and the promotional products industry. This is a topic near and dear to my heart as I have always believed that business success is largely defined by the emotional connection a company has with their customers. Google, Zappos & Apple have inspired me with their approaches to marketing, branding and customer loyalty.

Many of their best practices have shown up over the years in RIGHTSLEEVE‘s approach to branding and I wanted to share some of these with you here.

My second presentation was on budget friendly marketing tips for people in the promotional products industry. If you have any additional marketing tips you wish to add, please comment below or let me know on Twitter or Google Plus.

It’s an exciting day here at RIGHTSLEEVE as we woke up to a story on our office space in The Globe & Mail.

This is part of their Amazing Space series where they feature interesting office spaces across the country. When we spoke to the Globe, we felt it was very important to highlight how our brand, company philosophy and approach to working with clients (and each other) is inextricably linked to the design of the office.

Colour, Collaboration and Cubicle-less.

Thank you to Della Rollins and Katherine Scarrow for the great photography and reporting on this story.

When we took over the office space in 2008, things looked a little different before we started construction.

On May 12, we hosted our 4th annual product launch, Swag 2.0

Why do we call it Swag 2.0? We have always believed that we’re on a mission to change the way people view promotional products. We also believe in the emotional connection people have with promotional merchandise, especially when it’s done right (ie., well designed, geared for the right target audience, and focused on delivering on a tangible marketing objective).

Swag 2.0 also reflects our personal philosophy of bringing together a community of like-minded clients (offline & online), each united in their desire to have fun and embrace the emotional connection people have with good quality branded merchandise.

Here are some pictures from the event

Thanks also to Jon Bunning for his great photographs of the event

Thanks also to our friends that took the time to blog about Swag 2.0

Camaraderie

Casie Stewart

Keriblog.com

… and the pictures too

http://twitpic.com/4wu4lf

http://yfrog.com/h7r6vssj

http://yfrog.com/h7oxzgaj

http://yfrog.com/gygcdclj

http://instagr.am/p/EM2c9/

http://twitpic.com/4x27pc

http://lockerz.com/s/101286426

http://ow.ly/i/bw6j

We have had it with those pesky bag clips.

We’ve all been there. After opening up the new bag of hamburger buns you attempt to clasp the bag shut and the supplied quicklock clip breaks.  Without a twist tie to save the day, you’re left to come up with some way to tie the bag shut. 50% of the time, they break on the first closure and we can’t remember the last time one ever made it in tact after multiple openings and closures. There has to be a better way.

Well, we have finally found a solution.  Here’s why we love these clips:

1. They don’t break nearly as easily as their cheap brethren

2. They are easy to use

3. They are an extremely cost effective advertising vehicle (and think how happy people will be to see your logo each time they easily clasp their bread bag shut).

It is our personal mission to free the world of these cheap bag quicklock clasps. Thank you for joining the fight.

ps. these bag clips also help people who get equally frustrated with the flimsy strips of tape also found on bread bags.

Tomorrow evening at Tattoo Rock Parlour, there is a fundraiser event for the relief efforts of the Japanese citizens displaced by the Tsunami. JapanQuakeTO is a one night event and we are happy to be involved in helping raise awareness by donating a RIGHTSLEEVE prize pack.
• BUILT lunch bag – unbranded
• RIGHTSLEEVE metal water bottle
• RIGHTSLEEVE leather notebook
• RIGHTSLEEVE 1 color/1 location Men’s Medium Tee
• RIGHTSLEEVE military cap

Approximate value of gift pack is $75.00 retail

It’s a great opportunity to do some good as well as connect and network with local social media and start up peeps. There will be entertainment and lots of amazing raffle prizes.
For more details, please visit http://japanquaketo.ca/
Tickets are on sale online until 3 pm and then there will be some limited tickets sold at the door.

We’re excited to be supporting TwestivalTO again this year. For the uninitiated, Twestival is the world’s largest grassroots social media fundraising initiative. We’re involved in the Toronto event as that’s our home turf.

We will producing 100 limited edition T-shirts for this year’s event on March 24 at The Fifth. If you are one of the lucky first 100 people through the door, you will be the proud owner of one of these shirts.

To make these shirts really special, we need your help. We are asking that you tweet @RIGHTSLEEVE what #TwestivalTO means to you and we’ll take the best and print your handle and tweet on the back of the shirts. You will be part of history

Interested? We need your tweet by March 18 at 10am so we have enough time to design and print the shirts.

Here’s a little video to get you in the mood.

ps. in order to get your hands on one of these limited edition beauties, you actually need to be one of the first 100 people in the door at TwestivalTO (whether you tweeted at us or not).