There was a time when creating promotional invites or any sort of card required the services of a design, print or promotional firm. In this era of generation ‘C’ though, all you need is a little imagination, a good piece of technology and you’re away.

I’ve always been a fan of this Moo thing and I can’t have been happier with the quality of the cards I printed early this year but I didn’t give much thought to how a service like this could be taken beyond D.I.Y business cards and thank you notes and put to genuine use in a promotional or trade show environment where perhaps the need for individually coded cards is greater. I guess being in the industry though, we’ve always had the benefit of local expertise here that could fill our requirements just as well whether for ourselves or a client. But if you’re not in the industry and have some time, you could give it a shot yourself.

This might seem a little self-cannibalistic of us but it really is a relatively easy process and one worth sharing. Addega.com have managed to create their own uniquely coded invites for their social wine discovery project. If you have a similar requirement or an event that requires serial numbered cards, read their post - How to make unique Moo invite cards.

We’ve been on a website and blog refinement journey as you may have noticed. We decided to redesign our website to add a bit more information while keeping it simple, clean and easy to navigate. Hopefully, we’ve achieved this. We adopted the same line of thought for Carpark - simple clean lines and big fonts to bring some consistency to our two platforms. I must admit though, the site still uses Flash and requires at least some knowledge of code to build. Now we’re not trying to take anything away from Leon here (good job Leon!), but this morning I was captivated by one of the most unique and basic websites I’ve come across. Read more »

The April edition of the Marketing Mag explores the changing face of the promotional product industry in Australia. In a feature article by Sam McConnell titled “A lasting reminder” a number of agencies (including us) were asked to provide an industry perspective on the state of affairs. Read more »

Another fairy died today because someone or some entity decided that being brilliant was not absolutely essential - they didn’t say ‘no’ to being average. There is little context in this post to anyone outside our walls, but I’m sure the teams here can find relevance. Read more »

Its still early in the year but this promotional campaign must be leading the way for a high impact promotional giveaway. The New York City Condom giveaway is a fine example of how to integrate promotional products into the broader marketing mix and drive home CAUSE realted message. NYC already distribute free condoms at a rate of about 1.5 million monthly but this is how they got their latest exposure. Read more »

When everybody zigs, zag. This is what Marty Neumeier had to say about brands in his short, manifesto-like book “ZAG - The #1 Strategy of High Performance Brands”. Sound interesting? I haven’t read it yet but judging by whats on Zagbook, I’m eager to get a copy. Read more »

The value of links was not something that would have featured in many marketing plans only just a few years ago, but the landscape is definately changing. Here’s an interesting little tool we discovered via Dipping into the Blogpond that allows us to see our blog in terms of $$. Read more »

Supposedly, these two little words have a magical effect on people. So in an attempt to turn you one-time readers into longterm subscribers and sneezers, we would like to thankyou for taking the time to read this blog. Of course, we won’t know whether this will work for a while at least, but its a great excuse for me to post a list. I’m told lists are also a winner in blog posts next to pictures of kittens. Read more »

FOCUS:

When to implement promotions?
What challenges face designing profitable promotions that contribute to brand equity?
What enables maximum promotion value? Read more »

I know its a bit late, but here’s some link love back to the enlightened one. This is by no means new, but having gone through it again, we thought it’d be a good idea to share it with our readers. If you are reading this blog, you would probably appreciate the way the blogosphere is changing what we see as marketing - This would only go to cement your knowledge. If you don’t know what the hell we’re talking about, then reading carpark is a good start and this book will give you even more of an understanding.

It was about this time last year, Seth Godin release his free ebook on blogs and marketing titled “who’s There”. The book provides a good introduction into the world of using blogging as an effective marketing tool. This was a follow up to his previous work on how to make websites do what they should - “Knock Knock”.

At about 45 pages long, this is a good and easy read.

Download whos_there.pdf