Three Great Promotional Travel Gifts

Three Great Promotional Travel Gifts

Posted in Promo News 

Around this time of year, many of your employees or coworkers are probably taking off for a nice vacation. With your luck, you’re probably stuck just traveling for business. Either way, promotional travel products work great as gifts. Try giving nice custom travel items to employees heading on a business trip as a way of thanking them for their hard work. Here are three items our Promotional Specialists recommend.

1. Promotional Travel Alarm Clock

A must have for the avid traveler. Anyone who travels a lot for business knows how valuable these things are. Trying to figure out hotel room clocks are a pain, and there’s nothing worse than scheduling a wakeup call that never comes! Put the company’s name on this clock and give it to you best traveling sales people.

2. Custom Duffel Bag

Airports used to be a fun and exciting experience. Now they’re just a pain in the neck. There’s no way to avoid a TSA worker’s unfriendly pat down, but you can make your life a little easier by avoiding checking luggage and sticking with a carryon. This custom duffel is sure to stay with you on your New York to Los Angeles flight while everyone else’s checked bags end up in Cleveland.

3. Promotional Travel Manicure Set

This is a great promotional product that anyone can use. A simple set that contains nail clippers, scissors, tweezers, and a file is something both men and women will carry around. When you give this promotional gift to employees, remind them to put it in their checked bags and not a carryon. You don’t want your staff to miss an important meeting because they were detained by airport security for a couple hours!

In the Press: Business Point or the art of corporate gift

At the end of each year or every event that marks the life of a company, it seeks to offer gifts. This is where Business Point intervenes.

Business Point is a young Mauritian company specialized in corporate gifts and promotional products. It was founded in 2010. Its goal is to customize all kinds of objects on which you can print a logo. This can be a simple cap, a T-shirt or a pen to file on a desk.

Marketing the products to be distributed in a communications campaign aimed at advertising for the company whose logo appears on the gift. At seminars or conferences, Business Point also provides briefcase or notebook with the name printed on the organizer.

Business Point is responsible for all phases of the order to delivery. "We first meet the client to determine their needs. We do not just sell our products, we also consider what they are looking for based on a budget, the type of products desired and then analyzes the request", said Irfaan Coowar, Director of Business Point.

Negotiable Price

As explained by the latter, Business Point is not only the sale of products, the new company also offers advice to its customers. This is especially true when a company wants to give presents to its directors or its best customers. M. Coowar's team is then ready to find the gem like a luxury pen in a wooden box.

Once the order is entered, Business Point is responsible for finding the objects in question. If available in Mauritius, for practical, economical and to encourage local businesses, the production is done locally. However, if products are not available locally, the Business Point team will look to foreign suppliers. Most of these companies are located in different Asian countries.

The customer must then pay a deposit of 50% of the total bill. However, for good business purposes, loyal customers can pay on delivery. Irfaan Coowar says that at Business Point, there is no fixed price but they are negotiated depending on quantity ordered.

Business Point oversees production. Sometimes the products are manufactured abroad like plastic pens, and the client company logo is printed in Mauritius as the young Company Director believes that companies specialized in this operation perform very well in Mauritius. "For the posters and calendars, for example, we work with local businesses that are very competitive," says the latter.

Business Point has three employees in addition to its Director. They are a manager, a graphic designer and a customer service advisor. Soon the young company will employ a project coordinator. Until last July, the company was based at the home of the Company Director and Founder. Since then, Business Point has set up its new quarters in a showroom in Beau-Bassin.

Already on a Facebook page and a blog, the company plans to create a complete website to present and promote its products but more importantly start to e-commerce. The aim of Irfaan Coowar is to export its products in countries of the region and the world. The young company is aiming for an annual turnover of Rs 1 million and will not stop in such a good way.

Irfaan Coowar, ambitious young entrepreneur

Irfaan Coowar studied finance in Malaysia for three years. Back in Mauritius in 2010, he wanted to invest in a company. He became interested in the franchise concept. Nevertheless he realises fast that the amount required is too high. He then concentrates on the "Business to Business (B2B)."

"In 2010 I found out in Mauritius that there was a lot of scope in marketing. However the number of advertising agencies was already significant and, in the area of the visual, they all work on traditional media such as billboards and newspapers. So I wanted something different but no less professional", he said.

That's when the idea about advertising on corporate gifts came. The latter then returned to Malaysia and met business people experienced in this area. He worked on his business plan and launched a market study. Business Point was born a few months later.

Original Article [French] posted in Le Defi - Economie : http://bit.ly/ocSJdp
Interview by Patrice Donzelot, Mauritius, September 2011

The Surprising Power of Promotional Products

By MP MUELLER | NY TIMES BLOG (Extract)

When my grandparents moved into a retirement center, I helped with the garage sale. My cousin Claire and I were joking about how best to display the odds and ends from their 60 years together when I stumbled upon a gift from the gods of high kitsch. It was a letter opener, but this was not your typical letter opener.

In the clear acrylic handle floated a mini uterus with two pills strategically placed where ovaries normally reside, alongside the drug’s name, Hormonin. This promotional product was a gift from a drug company representative to my granddad, a doctor in Laredo, Tex. I tried to imagine how this token must have been received by the taciturn Dr. Puig. He probably focused on its utility and kept it right there on his desktop, which is probably what the drug company’s marketing department was counting on.

Promotional products are, some say, the oldest form of advertising. American businesses spend $20 billion a year giving away stuff with logos, according to Jerry McLaughlin, president of Branders, one of the largest sellers of promotional products online. Which is pretty good evidence that it works. Mr. McLaughlin credits the effectiveness of promotional products to centuries old cultural norms around the rule of reciprocity. “If you give something, the recipient is honour-bound to give something back,” he said. “In every language and culture, research has found there are really pejorative words for people who get and don’t give back. We humans are hard wired to respond if we get something.”

Are we really that easy? I visited with Dr. Robert Cialdini, professor emeritus of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University. Dr. Cialdini, who has written a book on the topic, “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion,” became interested in studying the rule of reciprocity out of self-defense. “All my life I’ve been a sucker,” he said.

Dr. Cialdini observed Hare Krishna Society members in airports, watching them foist paper flowers upon travellers. As soon as travellers accepted the flowers, they became more likely to reach into their pocketbooks and reciprocate with a donation. Sociologists and anthropologists have found that there is not a single society in the world that doesn’t train its people from childhood to this rule. “Marketers take advantage of this all the time,” he said. “Tupperware parties — one of the things that happen very early on — they play games so everyone at the party wins a prize from the Tupperware representative. And they feel very obligated to give something back in return.”

A well-known veterans’ non-profit group, the Disabled American Veterans, is a case in point. When the group sends a mailing for contributions, Dr. Cialdini said, it gets an 18-percent response rate. When the same letter is sent with personalized address labels, which cost about eight cents, the response rate goes up to 35 percent. “For the cost of the address labels they get almost a doubling of return,” he said. “It’s very powerful rule and very small things can trigger it.”

How do companies find the right promotional item? Here are four suggestions:

• Give items that members of your target audience will use in the environment where they make decisions about using your product or service. If you go after executives in corporations, give them something they will use in their offices, around their desktop so your company can be top of mind when they make decisions. Golf-related items are exceptions because lots of business happens on the golf course.

• Have it underscore your marketing message and differentiate your company. Mr. McLaughlin recounts a computer software client who makes antivirus software. The client put its logo on boxes of condoms and sent them to information technology types with the message, “Protect yourself, protect your computers.” Results? “Most I.T. people are male,” said Mr. McLaughlin, “and don’t really have girlfriends so that’s particularly titillating. They believe they got pretty good results.” A bit edgy for most companies, but you get the idea.

• Personalize them. While we are fond of our company logos, customers really like to use items that have their names on them. “People like seeing their own name above all else, said Mike Linderman, president of Express Pens, and former chairman of the Promotional Products Association International. His company makes pens in small quantities that can be imprinted with both your company’s logo and your client’s name.

• Skip the logoed water bottles and other items that will be quickly used and tossed. Make your promotional products investment something that will have a shelf life.

Some of the most popular promotional items these days are thumb drives, aluminium sports bottles, reusable grocery bags, and anything green. But will this stuff really replace the calendars with alluring young women? “I don’t know who the folks were who figured out that men would look at pretty girls and if you put your tools, software or cars next to it, they will look at it. I don’t think that trend is going away,” Mr. McLaughin said.

Did receiving the uterus-enhanced letter opener prompt my granddad to write more Hormonin scripts for menopausal patients? I cannot say, but this promotional product made it 40 years without seeing a trash bin. And it now has in a prominent place on my desk, right next to a Charlie the Tuna desk lamp.

Event Giveaways

Event Giveaways (c) 2011

There are many events which happen every day in Mauritius and all over of the world. Whatever type of event it is; make sure the attendees have something to take home with them. 

The Business Point specialises in finding the right event marketing giveaways that maximises the promotional impact of any event. There are plenty of opportunities to showcase a logo, but there's no better way to do so than adding it to some event giveaways. By choosing to use imprinted corporate event gifts, attendees are given something tangible that they can use as an excellent way to remember your brand or event.

Members of AIESEC, which is the world's largest student‐run organisation providing student leadership development, got it right. For their third National Conference in Mauritius held at Le Grand Bleu Hotel, The Business Point was chosen to advise, design and provide a selected package of giveaways that satisfies a given budget. 

The top left picture in this article shows the final outcome: a pen, notepad, bag and sticker for each delegate. The carefully selected package was approved and matched perfectly the needs of the organising committee.

If just like this event, you are organising something too, give us a call or drop us an email so that we can  take care of all your promotional product needs. 

We deliver fast and we do not require a strict minimum.

Mauritian Gifts and Souvenirs

Mauritius celebrated its 43rd Independence Day on 12th March 2011. This is usually a day Mauritians take pride in singing the national anthem while hoisting the national flag. Businesses, schools and individuals alike decorated their premises with colours of the national flag which is Red, Blue, Yellow and Green. To mark this occasion and in an idea to promote a sense of patriotism, we came up with a range of products including:

• Desk flags,

• Hand flags,

• Car flags,

• Fridge magnets,

• Banners,

• Key chains,

• Pin badges,

• Tie clips,

• Stickers, etc.

This initiative was very much appreciated and well received in private schools and colleges around the country and we were glad to work with several of them. 

We plan to introduce more Mauritian Gifts and Souvenirs during the year and other products for Independence Day next year. We invite interested parties to drop us a mail or just sign up for our newsletter in order to stay updated.

We take pride in delivering a quality service to all our customers.