My friend Fred has an office right next to ours. He was driving his sports car one beautiful spring day a few years ago. He had the top down, the windows down, and the radio up. He had his new cell phone on the dash of his car so he could reach it if he needed it. Can you see this coming? He made a turn, but the phone kept going – right out the window. Something about Newton’s law or inertia – I don’t know. Fred was not happy. At this point I think he reverted to Italian, complete with hand gestures and high volume. When he calmed down he resolved to find a solution. He worked with lots of existing materials and decided it was going to take a new material that would grip but not be sticky. He came up with a way to make it, and patented it. He calls them egrips® and sells them in various sizes and colors. It turns out you can print on them: color, graphics, text, bar-codes, anything. Now he gets emails from people who were given one at a trade show telling him how his product saved their phone. In December a lady sat her phone on top of her car while she loaded packages in the back seat. Two miles later she realized what she had done and stopped. There it was on top of the car. She tracked him down to say “thanks.”

When I was a kid we had one phone in the house. It was in the kitchen. We had refrigerator magnets with phone numbers for plumbers and insurance agents and that way had their phone numbers handy – since the phone and the refrigerator were in the same room of the house. These days, phones are everywhere. I have a phone in my pocket. I do not have a refrigerator there. I take out the phone several times a day. People see me talk on my phone. With an egrips® ad specialty item you can brand folk’s cell phone to advertise for you. Does the pizza place near a college campus need to give out egrips® with the number to order pizza? I think so. Do you know somebody at that pizza shop? Send them to me.

Do your customers use cell phones? Can you justify spending money on branding? Maybe you need to be giving out egrips® with your message on them. You can get your custom egrips® on a postcard size handout with your message on it or on a pre-printed generic card as an easy way to hand out egrips® when you are there to deliver your message personally. These are very popular items at trade shows – they draw a lot of attention and increase traffic at the booth. That is, by the way, usually a goal at trade shows.

I will say a little about direct mail here, but it will get an article of its own soon. I like direct mail for “high dollar” products/services, but not for small ticket items because it takes too many sales to break even. I have done letters and postcards and I like the postcards best because I got a better response and they were cheaper. I think people didn’t open the envelopes, but they at least glance at the postcards on the way to the trash.

If you can include an ad specialty item that will stay in front of them, that is a good thing to do in the middle of the campaign, not at the beginning. If you make cold calls in your business, the middle of the campaign is a great time to just show up at a prospect, with an ad specialty item to give to them. If getting out to 1,000 locations is a problem, you can include it with your 4th mailing. If you put it in an envelope or small box, be sure the outside screams something about the free gift inside so they won’t throw it away unopened. Better yet, if your ad specialty item is egrips®, it can be delivered ON the postcard. Just point out what it is and how useful it is along with your central message – an action item for the prospect to take.

Here is my call to action. When you visit http://www.AdSpecialtyItem.com get a 5% Web discount to use an egrips® ad specialty item to make your message stick.

Tags: ad specialty items, Branding, egrips, marketing, promotional products