’tis the season for barbecues, company picnics, long-weekends, and all manner of summer outings. Next time you’re heading toward the water, pack these items along with your sunscreen for a perfect beach kit.

Stake out your spot and create home base with our Pix-Mix Outdoor Blanket. Blanket folds into a handled cover for grab-and-go ease.

If you’re going to the beach, you need a towel. This one rocks. ‘Nuff said.

Protect your sun-sensitive companions with with our UV protective Sun Shelter. Perfect for catching an out-of-the-sun snooze.

For your battery charging emergencies.

Hydrate responsibly.

Our all-in-one game-pack will keep the whole gang entertained.

Finally, a shout out to one of our campaigns.  Throw in this clip-on mosquito repellent from OFF!®  for protection you don’t have to apply to your skin.

It’s taken me a couple of days but I’ve almost recovered from our annual client party. All day this year, I kept comparing our event to a wedding. You spend months arranging details like food, guest lists, venue etc. and the day of the event comes and goes in such a whirlwind of activity that you look back on it and wonder if parts of it were a dream.

With a name like SWAG2.0, our use of product marketing should be top notch. Our goal this year was to infuse our entire event with promotional products and do it in such a way that we highlighted some of the many ways you can use swag well.

Say Hello
They say there’s no second chance to make a first impression and that’s why we like to hand out a nice gift as soon as guests arrive to our party. This year, we chose the chromo journal because they’re a quality piece of stationary and the chrome trim makes them a real eye-catcher.

Chromo Journals

In the early days of SWAG2.0 we went back and forth on the use of name tags; after all we know our clients! But, then we realized that our clients don’t necessarily know each other and name tags make introductions a lot easier. We still like to to keep the name tag thing kinda casual so we encourage guests to write their own and add a spark of creativity if they like.

Name Tags

Engage
One of my favorite things about product marketing is that you can use a normal product in a unique way and give it an entirely different life. Anyone remember when we used a post-it wall as our sign-in book? Well, this year, we took a unique product and made it even more special.

Animal Poppers

Our animal poppers have been a big hit as employee gifts as most people appreciate their ability to relieve stress and cause a few laughs. We decided to give our poppers even more of a personality by making them the focal point in a game we called “Popper Pong”. In addition to showing how our products can be given new life with a different application, Popper Pong was a great talking point, an ice breaker, and a way for our clients to engage with each other.

Playing Popper Pong

The idea of Popper Pong was to have fun, so we made sure that everyone got a prize for playing. Manufacturing a one-inch button on the spot if you scored was also a way to introduce an offline, viral component to the event. Seeing players proudly displaying their red, blue, or yellow pins was a great way to let word-of-mouth do our jobs and direct new players back to the game.

Interact
Swag2.0 is all about interaction and engagement.

We already had our ice-breaker with Popper Pong, but we wanted something else to drive interaction with our products and also put to good use our love of social media.

QR Coded Stress Toy

QR codes are a great way to link offline products with online activities so we decided to run a QR code contest. When guests scanned the QR codes on their free stress toy they were taken to one of two videos which indicated if they won or lost. Winners were then directed to the RIGHTSLEEVE booth to pick up either a Sigg waterbottle or a slap-watch as their prize.

RIGHTSLEEVE Branded Sigg Bottles & Slap Watches

I must admit that sending folks to our RIGHTSLEEVE booth to pick up their prize wasn’t on accident. We sent guests there to

• get the full tour of our event
• interact with some of our great staff
• showcase work we’ve done with other great companies

Leave ‘em with More
Okay, so the phrase is “leave them wanting more,” but in this case we wanted to send our clients on their way with a great swag bag of useful, eye-catching items. As guests departed the event, we handed them their final dose of product. We stuffed our sling and ella coolers with a variety of gear

1. a branded cookie to provide sustenance on the trip home
2. a torino tumbler to use for favorite summer beverages
3. a custom-shaped RIGHTSLEEVE keychain to remind everyone of their favorite swag event of the year!

SWAG Bags with our Torino Tumbler peeking out

We put on SWAG2.0 every year because we love our clients and want to show them a great time. Using swag to entertain and delight is just the icing on our proverbial wedding cake. If you came to the event we all hope you had a blast and that you learned a new thing or two about creative ways to use promotional products.

To see more pictures from the event, check out our Facebook album.

For some great ideas on product marketing you don’t have to wait until next year, give us a call (1.877.975.3383) or subscribe to the SWAG2.0 blog.

We leave you with one cookie to rule them all.

Cookie photo courtesy Carolyn Van.

Every industry has jargon. When used well it makes communication clearer and quicker. When compiled into flashcards, it makes for a fun office game.

But, jargon can also be a barrier. It can make communicating across departments difficult in large organizations. When computer-troubleshooting with my parents, jargon can make everyone want to chuck the computer out the window and go back to carrier pigeons. At RIGHTSLEEVE, we work with a variety of industries that have their own forms of jargon, so it can be confusing when we’re using the same words but with different meaning.

Here are five jargon hotspots that often flare up into misunderstandings.  Hopefully reading how RIGHTSLEEVE uses these terms might help bridge some communication barriers of your own.

Purchase Orders  (aka POs) at RIGHTSLEEVE are used to communicate with vendors outside of our offices. They tie together an exterior supply chain rather than an interior spend. However, in large companies, POs are usually internal documents that are sent between various departments and their finance team.  They are often used to approve large spends. Once approved, the PO number must be placed on all bills so finance knows to tie it back to the initial approval.

Samples fall into three main categories.

• Blank samples are an undecorated product that is pulled and shipped so a client may examine the construction and function of an item.
• Decorated samples are usally decorated with another company’s logo. Often these are pulled from over-runs and used so that customers can see the decoration quality of an object.
• Pre-production samples are a “first off the press” item usually pulled from the full stock of a confirmed order and produced before the large run is placed on the line.  Pre-pro samples are done so a customer can see how the products in their order will look and feel. Depending on the amount of time and cost pre-pros can be done via photo and approved immediately or shipped for review and approval after receipt.   Pre-pros that are shipped to a customer for approval usually take longer and may have a higher cost associated with them because machines have to be set-up an extra time.

Proofs are often confused with samples. A proof is a graphical representaion of a logo on the item being purchased. The item can be a line-drawing with the logo added or a picture with the logo super-imposed (sometimes also called virtual proofs). Proofs are generally used to ensure proper placement and logo use. They are often sent as pdfs and viewed on computers. To allow for color display differences on monitors, many proofs will be done in black and white renderings with color noted as the appropriate pantone color.

Color and color theory are topics with a level of complexity beyond my comprehension and one of the biggest misunderstandings between our designers and our customers.  A customer might come to us thinking the logo to the left is a two-color logo – blue and red. At first glance I see a 5 color logo – 3 different blues, red, and white. My designer would probably see five colors plus several gradients. Differences this big afffect not only how this logo can reproduce on the variety of products that we offer, but can also change the costing in a big way.

Digital Artwork is akin to color theory in its ability to confuse.  Put plainly, artwork needs to be vector to re-size and reproduce well on the majority of our products. To really understand vector, take your favorite graphic artist out for a coffee and an coax the details out of them. For an abbreviated version from a non-graphic person (that’s me!) read on. 

Vector Artwork  is an image created in a vector-based software such as Adobe Illustrator (.ai file extension).  The canvas for creating vector artwork is a grid. The lines of the image are defined by their relationship to points on that grid. Because vector graphics are created on this grid-like system,  you can make the grid larger or smaller and the relationship between items stays the same with no loss of quality.  By comparison,  a .jpg file is not a vector image and therefore becomes pixelated or “muddy” when the size is adjusted.

People often say the same thing in different words,  now I also keep an ear out for people saying different things with the same words.  Hopefully that will help to keep the tower of jargon from collapsing around us.

This week I attended the PPAI Expo, the largest and longest running promotional products show in the world.

I was invited to present on how my experiences with social media have allowed RIGHTSLEEVE to grow and differentiate within this industry. I’d be reluctant to ever brand myself a “social media expert” (I am skeptical of the term), rather I like to think of myself of an industry entrepreneur that has dabbled in social media over the past 5 years and has learned a lot along the way, my trail scattered with a mix of failures and successes.

I have drawn inspiration from a number of people whose works I reference in this presentation. The links to their books  can be found here:

Chris Anderson The Long Tail

Clay Shirky Here Comes Everybody

Tara Hunt The Whuffie Factor

Joel Comm Twitter Power

Mitch Joel Six Pixels of Separation