If your organization promotes to anyone that is likely to use prescription medication, this is a handy giveaway to consider. Great imprint area, and very, very handy!

And handy promotional products are very, very effective.

If you’re looking for effective giveaways, the best advice is to offer something that’s going to get used – something that has real practical value.  If your target audience is involved in cooking at home (which in this economy is something that’s grown in popularity) these new palm peelers/graters are the perfect example of a promotional item that does exactly that.

Quick props for two promotional items that fall into the ‘it’s always nice to have your logo associated with coming to the rescue’ category.

The Scotch Brand Lint Sheets Pocket Pack and our Stain Pen make great giveaways because they’ll get used, and when they get used the ‘wow, I’m really glad (insert your company name here) gave me this item’ is worth WAY more than these items cost.

Plus you’re doing your part to keep people looking good and living lint free!

I’ve mentioned how popular reusable shopping totes are right now – you see them everywhere and they are super-harndy. We’ve put up a couple new videos to tell you about them. If you’re looking for a well-received, effective promotion, these promotional totes are a winner.

Looking for a popular trade show bag? Here’s a photo of our own John Lord holding our Hobo Tote. We’ve given away 800 of these about 7 hours at the SHRM show. Huge hit – maybe too huge…we ran out and are having reinforcements flown in for tomorrow! 

The SHRM Annual Conference and Expo is THE event in Human Resource Management – it’s the world’s largest exposition dedicated to the HR profession.

It’s a huge show – but to me its size is proportional to the importance of human resource management to every business. 

My first exposure to this show was last year when we were named one of the Best Small & Medium Companies to Work for in America (7th on the 25 medium sized companies) – honestly one of the most thrilling days ever – an honor for our team and an honor to represent them. It was wonderful to meet and be surrounded by so many people who truly recognize that people make the difference, and therefore professional, thoughtful and strategic human resource management is a fundamental building block of success.

This year, not only do we have folks from 4imprint attending the show as part of their professional development in HR, we’re also displaying at the expo for the first time as promotional products work in a variety of HR applications – recruitment, recognition programs, wellness programs, safety programs, corporate events and community outreach and much more. We got the booth set up yesterday (which always takes longer than you think it should!) with plenty of samples to look at and many more to giveaway (if you’re going to the show we’re at booth 3346-3348). I’ll be there when the expo opens this afternoon, and will be there tomorrow as well. Mary (our HR leader!), will be there from time to time (when she’s not at a seminar or checking out other booths) and John and Guenevere will be there throughout (thanks guys!).

I’ll be posting any additional thoughts (not only on the HR side of things, but also the trade show marketing side as well) while I’m here . The show atmosphere has also inspired me to pull together all of the HR/People/Culture papers we’ve published in one nice, handy post. We’ll get that out a bit later. 

I’ll get updates out via twitter as well if you’re interested. You can follow me @4imprintklt 

Don’t know if it’s the publicity around Drew taking over for Bob on ‘The Price Is Right’ that’s causing folks to think about this game more, but we’ve certainly seen an increase in the number of requests for this classic – Plinko!

Games are an excellent way to get trade show visitors to interact with you and your team – and they’re just plain fun. You can use these games around the office as part of fun incentive programs as well.

Games like Plinko up the 'fun-factor' and increase the interactivity at your booth

We’ve been making plans for our booth at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) show later this month. Part of that process includes the questions  ’what logo’d apparel should the team wear’ and ‘what color combination should we use for the embroidery of our logo’?

Given that some of the team will be there for a few days, we have a couple of different combinations of colors and designs.  One of my favorites in the mix is ‘tone-on-tone’. That’s where the embroidery is the same tone/color as the shirt.  I know, seems a bit counter-intuitive, but it looks very polished and works well on custom polos, promotional dress shirts and even heavyweight T’s or sweats.

Tone-on-tone stands out by not ’standing out’ – know what I mean?

Tone-on-tone embroidery for a polished look.

Leveling the Playing Field
En-Vision America

For the blind or visually impaired, it’s common to use rubber bands or small, textured objects as prescription medication differentiators.

Or, it was.

Fortunately, those days may be over thanks to Normal, Ill.-based En-Vision America. For more than 12 years, the family-owned company has provided product barcoding services to the blind and visually impaired population.

Its next feat? The prescription drug market.

“After pharmacies place an RFID encoded label on the prescription, a multi-language handheld reader can voice the label information, warnings, side effects and overdose information to its user,” detailed Anna McClure, sales representative for En-Vision America. “The ScripTalk Station reader literally provides ‘help, at the touch of a button!’”

En-Vision America’s talking bar code scanner product database is the largest of its kind, housing more than 2 million unique items. From DVDs, to groceries and hardware tools, the company’s revolutionary service assists more than 20,000 customers in the United States, Canada, England and Australia.

“We’ve grown so much due to the blind community itself. They’re an action group in that, when someone finds something great, they tell other people about it right away. Word of mouth has been huge in delivering success through the years,” said McClure.

Another increasingly important part of the company’s growth lies in the use of promotional products to increase awareness . and, to have fun, of course!

“At one of our national product shows, we ran a game where participants had to use the I.D. Mate OMNI reader to sort through items. If they beat the clock, they received a logo’d T-shirt or water bottle. Everyone had a blast while witnessing the product’s potential at the same time,” said McClure.

En-Vision America keeps customer service at the forefront as well, consistently ensuring its users are comfortable with their product choices. In fact, a group of the company’s employees recently took a detour while en route to a conference to assist a gentleman in using his purchase correctly.

Now that’s going the extra mile to serve the customer.

“Being a family-owned business, we always realize how important it is to serve the needs of family, friends and those close to you,” said McClure. “If that means forming that personal connection or going above and beyond, we’re going to do it.”