OK, shameless plug alert – but at least it’s a shameless plug (mostly!) for a wonderful non-profit organization that I’m involved with!

The Aplastic Anemia and MDS International Foundation works to provide answers, support and hope to people (and their families!) who have dealing with bone marrow failure diseases.  The team also works to raise awareness within the medical community and the community at large around these serious, serious diseases.

They do (as so many great non-profit organizations also do) what they do well, and the work is vitally important.  If you have some time, please click here to read more about what they do.

Here are some pictures from their annual patient conference. It’s a pretty special event where patients and their families can come and learn about these diseases from leading experts, and perhaps more importantly, meet with others who are working through the same issues.

Shameless plug alert #2 – notice that the pictures are of some pretty nifty looking promotional products from the event(I love how they always go with their color – red)? Sorry, couldn’t help myself…

Always enjoy receiving pictures from customers that show the product they ordered from us in action.  Dick Kuettner of Washington and Lee University sent this photo of what he says are the ‘classiest ever’ t-shirts he ordered for their students to wear while they’re working on campus.  I agree -they’re great looking T’s! Really shows how the relatively humble t-shirt can be used well as a ‘uniform’ on campus,  or for outdoor events, festivals and fundraisers.

However, what I really enjoyed was learning more about Washington and Lee and the Tucker Multimedia Center.

Founded in 1749 (and located in Lexington, Virginia), Washington and Lee University is named for George Washington, whose endowment of $20,000 in 1796 helped the fledgling school survive, and Robert E. Lee, whose presidency and leadership brought the University into the national limelight.  The history is fascinating and is rich with American history and heritage.

Thanks for sharing this with us Dick…

The web team and the merchandising team here have been collaborating on a project to redefine all of our product categories on our site. The goal is to make the process of finding the right product (especially when there are thousands to choose from) much, much easier.  We’ve added more categories to help narrow the selection and we’re now in the process of really upgrading the filtering capabilities of the site as well (you can see an example of this here – try filtering by the color blue for example).

In addition, Becky from our marketing team has launched specific sites for our education, healthcare and government customers.

Watch this space – more good stuff to come!

OK, I’ll start by offering a ’shameless self promotion’ warning to this post, but I am actually pretty excited about a couple of new things we’ve put on our site that I thought I’d share:

We’re lucky to have a great web development team – just a really good group of creative, sharp people. They’ve been busy lately adding new pieces to our various web initiatives, many of which come straight from customer feedback. They’ve recently added ‘compare’ and ‘wishlist’ functionality, better filtering of search results and a host of other tweaks – with more on the way.

One of the new additions I think is very cool is our new ‘fit’ reviews for logo’d apparel items. We’ve had customer product reviews for ages and they’re very, very helpful. Nothing like getting feedback from people who have actually purchased the product! This new addition asks people who have ordered apparel an additional question as part of our post-order survey about ‘fit’ – do the garments run small or large? We’ll be adding more information (sizing charts, etc.), but I’m betting real customer feedback, plus the ability to receive a free sample products (just ask, we’re happy to oblige!) will be the most helpful of all.

Check out the new ‘fit’ functionality here (you’ll see it right below the ’stars’ from the customer reviews under the product photo – click on ‘read all customer fit comments’).

Yesterday I bought a new DSLR camera at the local camera shop here in town (great customer experience by the way – service from Tom was great!). Once I’d purchased my camera they bundled it and a few accessories in an imprinted tote like our new Dot Gift Bag (I know, if I had been thinking I would have taken a shot of it right then and there with the new camera – not very quick am I?!).

In this case it was imprinted with a Canon logo (I bought a new Canon to replace my old one). This was effective marketing for Canon as I really did appreciate having the bag to carry my purchase, the bag will get reused (it’s a nice size!) and the logo was easy-to-spot as I walked back through town (as it will be each time I reuse it!). Ideally, the local store would have had their logo on the opposite side of the bag or along side the Canon logo – would like to see the retailer get some mileage as well.

Regardless, these bags are a great marketing opportunity for all of the brands involved – manufacturer and distributor. I can tell you from my personal experience, it’s a great touch that left me feeling even better about a significant purchase.  I realize this is pretty basic stuff, but if you sell a product that needs to be carried home, or manufacture one that does, these bags are an  effective way to make a good impression at a very low cost. Promotional products work.

Every business day we give $500 in promotional products to charitable organizations as part of our one by one® program. I’m constantly amazed by the number of fantastic organizations out there trying to make the world a better place – it’s really quite amazing. What’s also amazing is how they choose to use promotional products to achieve their objectives.

If you’re part of a charitable organization, or know someone who is, please tell them about one by one®. To get a feel for what I’m talking about you can read a profile of two one by one grant recipients here.

Saw one of these scrolling full-color banners in action again over the weekend and was reminded (as I saw person after person check it out!) how effective they are at grabbing – and keeping – attention.

We just launched a new line of USB Flash Drives called ‘Palmero’ that our merchandising team designed from the ground up.

Couple of things that I think are pretty nifty about this custom USB drive as a promotional item.  It’s got a nice ‘retail’ look about it so it will have high perceived value for the recipient, it comes in great colors, the side thumb mechanism means no caps to lose and (best of all) the shape means it’s got a huge imprint area for your logo compared to most USB drives. And, it’s an exclusive which means you won’t see it everywhere – your logo will really stand out.

Custom imprinted flash drives are one of the hottest promotional items going. Great way to leave your presentation with a client, they’re a great student giveaway (USB drives are practically a student requirement these days!), a valued ‘thank you’ gift and they pass the ‘the best promotional products are those that get used again and again’ test with flying colors!

If you do several trade shows or community events over the course of a year this Rapid Change Retractable Banner is a great value.

Obviously you get the impact of great full-color graphics, but because the banner can be changed quickly, you can have different banners made up for different products, services, or events – or keep a spare of your original – and just swap them out as you need them. It’s really easy to do as Kristin demonstrates in these vids.

And now from the ‘wish we had this promotional product in the US’ department….

Our UK team sells this cool imprinted tin filled with little bars of Cadbury Dairy Milk (translation to US-English = really nice milk chocolate!)

Who wouldn’t love receiving that?

P.S. – There are some cool little boxes with chocolate eggs on Ireland site aren’t bad either…!