It’s official, Warnie will grace the living rooms of cricket lovers across the nation this summer for VB, taking off where Boony and Beefy ended. Being a little fussy about where he sits though, Warnie has decided to bring his own VB couch from where he will interact with the TV broadcast of the One Day International Series and give you his take on things. “Bowl Warnie!!”

There’s a lot more to come but for now you can register your interest at the VB Warnie website. Stay tuned or check after the jump for more launch images.

We’re known to brand a few products from time to time, but this got me thinking that perhaps its gone too far. Then I noticed it was an idea branded by atypyk - They have some cool stuff. Supposedly this puzzle is meant to be a collection of the world’s most important brands, well most important American brands maybe. So if you wanted to give your little ones a head start in the promotional products industry, this might be just the tool you’re looking for. Otherwise at 36 Euros, it’s what the Americans would call an expensive promotional schwag!

I can’t really argue with Coke, Apple, Macca’s and Nike but I’m not so sure about Playboy and the hanging Pine tree car freshener??

Here is another unconventional article on promotional schwag that looks at the greatest moments in promotional product history. It’s a Wired article so it’s a little US-ish.

via swissmiss

For those of you who may have read The Age or Sydney Morning Herald on Friday just gone may have noticed a little paragraph or two about the upcoming promotion this summer. It was tucked in at the end of an article on the last sports pages. It’s true, Mr Warne will be replacing Boony and Beefy as the VB ambassador for this summer’s cricket season. We’re sad to see Boony (and Beefy) go but all good things must end at some point. Keep it locked here for more…

We attended the APPA Pyramid Awards 2007 last night at the rather impressive Palace Ball Room at the Regent Theater on Collins Street. I think everyone here missed the note about a ‘blue theme’, it seemed we were the only table in the entire room that didn’t have blue on. We did make up for it today though, some people around here look a little blue in the face! Must have been all that red water they kept serving us.

Anyway, the awards were handed out very briskly this year. We took out 2 pyramids again only this time there was no platinum. Boony and Beefy were out done by some red nosed wombats. Come to think of it, there weren’t many awards handed out that didn’t end up in wombat paws.

Well done guys! You know who you are.

Well done to the guys here as well for our 2007 pyramids:

Bronze - HP ‘Back To Work’
Gold - VB ‘Boonanza - Battle of the Tashes’

Here’s an interesting idea from the designer who gave us Flashbag. If pushing numbered buttons on an ugly plastic brick is not your thing, then perhaps flicking through a chain of glowing orbs will take your fancy - Meet Remobeads - remote control beads..

We’re told switching channels is effortless with Remobeads simply press lightly over the glowing beads and you’re right there pondering how much longer they can possibly keep Big Brother running. Kind of like what you’re doing now I hear you say? Well does your remote control play mantras as you channel surf? Yeah that’s right:

“As an option you can add a sound - enjoy listening to your favourite mantras while switching the channels.”

Now before you go clicking off to order one, this doesn’t appear to be on the market yet, no information as to prototypes etc. but there’s a patent pending.

Great design and the option of programming TV Network logos straight into the orbs could be appealing but why stop there? I’d like to see a graphic for upcoming shows pop up in the orbs in real time, a live TV guide if you like.

Apologies for the silence lately, but we’ve been extremely busy working away on a number of projects but hopefully we’re back on track with some regular posts.

Inspired by a term that’s being thrown around with it’s fair share of negative light in the promotional products industry and an upcoming self promotion campaign, we thought we’d do something. We set up brandslappers.com. And by set up we mean that we’ve registered the domain name, uploaded an image, set up a basic inbox and written this post. We still don’t know what the hell we’re going to do with it. The term brandslapper has a good ring to it though, maybe we should change our whole company name to brandslappers. If you have any ideas, we’d love to hear them or read them…

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 received this letter from APPA today. Has Boony done it again? Guess we’ll have to wait until Spetember to find out.

We’re about causing reactions in our line of work so I was intrigued with Reactee and their text T-shirts.

Here’s the rundown: Pick your personalised slogan and keyword, they’ll print it on a T-shirt and ship it to you. You can then engage the world by wearing it. People are enticed to text your custom keyword to 41411 (I believe it’s only US at the moment). A message you’ve carefully crafted will be automatically sent out by Reactee. The messages returned to others can be updated at any time, so you can change this message to reflect the latest news.

Interesting concept. Another example of ambient intimacy perhaps? Link via swissmiss

A recent discussion with a client about the direction of the promotional marketing and promotional products industry got me thinking about likely trends in our space. We usually post about the current rumblings of the promo world but today I’m going to change the tune a little and post my top trend prediction for promotional marketing. A big call I know! but hey, it’s the blogosphere afterall. Read more »