The Print Marketing Renaissance

One topic we bring up from time to time, here, is the idea that print marketing is all about standing out from the pack. I know, it sounds ridiculous. But things have changed. The days of opening a mailbox to a flood of junk mail are over. Print marketing today is about risk. It’s about creativity, and it’s about trying something different. We’re not here to talk about junk mail, or sending out millions of generic postcards. It’s time to treat print as a non-traditional marketing source.

Business2Community has recently published an article showing 7 major events in marketing, and why they all point toward a return to the print medium. It’s a great article (which you may have seen on our Facebook page), but we’re going to go one step further. We’re going to give you a few ideas that may inspire you to take B2C’s list to heart.

Broad-Interest Publications are Leaving Print

Newsweek announced earlier this month that they would be ceasing all print publications. Dozens more general interest magazines are leaving print behind, and that means that a huge opportunity for marketers is opening up.

Does your business cater to a niche audience? Send out a brief magazine appealing to their interest. It doesn’t need to be a weekly, or even a quarterly, thing, but what could make you stand out from the crowd of catalogs better than this?

Changes in Consumer Usage Open the Door for Digital Integration

Digital integration is no longer an option for marketing – it’s a requirement. Today’s consumer demands more from marketing materials. More information, more detail, more interesting content, and more bells and whistles. For your next campaign, try including a print component that plays off of your digital efforts. Push consumers to your social media pages, or direct them to your other digital resources. Just don’t rely on QR codes to do the job for you. Innovate!

The Social Web is Crowded, Make Things Personal

Print has always been the most personal form of marketing communication. What do you think makes a better impression with a new client: A direct message on Twitter, or a hand-written ‘Thank You’ note?

Our print solutions can make all of these things possible, and print has not seen consumer interest like this in several years. Take advantage of the possibilities, and give us a call.

The Tray Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages. For information about the company and its successes, visit www.trayinc.com

Learning From Mistakes

In today’s digital world, all eyes are on you, all the time. The critical eye of the consumer never closes, and the world of social media has created a place where even the smallest branding faux pas is a recipe for complete financial disaster. There are cases of poor taste, such as this May advertisement for Belvedere Vodka. Even worse, there are times when brands can be persecuted for things they have absolutely no control of, or involvement in.

What can you do when your brand is thrust into the spotlight of consumer criticism? Can either of those examples serve as a template for escaping a PR nightmare?

The Skittles Strategy

When details about the tragic Trayvon Martin shooting went public, Skittles and Arizona Iced Tea became unintentional icons of lost innocence. The brands were spoken of almost as often as the investigation itself. Consumers, invested in the horrific details of the killing, began to accuse both brands of profiting off of the tragedy and media exposure. Neither brand had anything to do with Martin’s death, but both were being ripped to shreds on social media for failing to respond.

 Image from Ad Week

What did they do?

Skittles and Arizona Iced Tea were forced to act, and responded with letters of condolence to Martin’s family. They said it would be the last word on the matter, and both brands stuck to their guns, refusing to give in to the public outcry.

What went wrong?

Consumers were convinced that both brands were pulling in record profits from the media hype, and demanded financial recompense. It was a bizarre and unfounded complaint, born from a collective desire for closure that court proceedings was not providing. Arizona and Skittles did their best to avoid further scrutiny by keeping silent, and they ended up being seen as uncaring and cold.

The Belvedere Vodka Strategy

In early March, Belvedere began a commendable social media effort, relying on a strategy of casual humor, and easily shared jokes, each one a clever ad for their product. Unfortunately, the casual attitude went too far, and an ad that never should have made it past editing wound up on their public-facing Facebook page.

Image from Huffington Post

What did they do?

The ad was a clear misstep, and the backlash was fast and fierce. Belvedere pulled the ad once the blogosphere had gotten wind of it, and issued a series of apologies. They attempted to save face with a donation to an anti-sexual violence non-profit, but the move was seen as a shady PR stunt, and the brand has still not fully recovered.

What went wrong?

By the time Belvedere had responded to the complaints, any response they made would have been too little, too late. Unfortunately, once that ad was made public, there was nothing they could really do to make up for the damage it caused. Even though Belvedere went one step further than Skittles and Arizona, they were still seen as a corporation saving face, instead of an apologetic brand. They owned their mistake, but it wasn’t enough.

So, what can you do differently?

Any brand of reasonable age and size is in danger of falling into an inescapable faux pas like those above. It’s an unfortunate – but unavoidable – aspect of business. The solution lies in relying on the expertise of a branding agency, and using all of the available tools you have to protect your investment. If the worst happens, you need to be able to rely on a team that is flexible enough, fast enough, and smart enough, to turn the situation around.

The Tray PML Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages. For information about the company and its successes, visit www.traypml.com

The Tray Way: Attaining Brand Love (and what you can learn from Indiana Jones)

Brand Love. Marketers drool at the idea of attaining it because for all intents and purposes, it is the holy grail of the industry. But, how do you get it? This is the ongoing debate happening in brainstorm sessions and conference calls in agencies and creative departments across the world right now. No one has truly come up with the answer, but many have come up with some interesting ideas.

For example, the American Marketing Association created an impressive analysis of the idea of brand love from an academic perspective (To read the Executive Summary, click HERE). Models were compiled based on source data, which led to the creation of a theory on what differentiates brand “love” from brand “let/s just be friends”, as well as how this love can be fostered. According to their research, they found:

Brand love, as consumers experience it, is best represented as a higher-order prototype that includes, but goes beyond, brand attachment and self–brand connections. Using survey data, they then develop a valid and parsimonious structural equation model of brand love based on this prototype.

The study is an intriguing idea, and offering ideas from an analytical perspective on a creative process can be an intelligent way to organize a strategy to achieve potential success. But, any marketing person will tell you there is no perfect formula. So what can be done? That is tough to answer because, as we all know, the public has a funny way of determining what they love and don’t love at any given moment, which is why brand love should be a goal, not an expectation (similar to how a viral video isn’t created. A video is created and it potentially goes viral).

So, if there is no answer, how do you move towards an answer? Well, aside from hiring us, it is a matter of being flexible and attentive. We mentioned the holy grail earlier, which made us think about one of the film heroes that found the holy grail: Indiana Jones. In each of his movies, he achieved his goals through research, perseverance and a little luck. Add to that an understanding and the willingness to fail, combined with the ability to learn from your mistakes, and you at least have the building blocks creatively to attaining Brand Love.

Do you have any tips or best practices? Share them with us.

The Tray PML Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages. For information about the company and its successes, visit www.traypml.com

The Tray Way: What it Means to Create an Award-Winning Best Practice

It is hard for us to be disappointed with how our 2012 started.

Last week, the Print on Demand Initiative (PODi) announced that our organization won their Best Practices Award for digital printing, in the category of Marketing Resource Center for the DOT 2.0 project we did with DoubleTree by Hilton™.

We are extremely proud about the finished product, which was judged based on measured results, value proposition, functionality, scalability, relevance, creativity, and innovation. However, to get to the level of being a "Best Practice", it takes something extra, specifically a client / vendor collaboration that has a common goal of creating something that has the capability of being special.

The team of companies that worked on the "DOT 2.0" project had it in their mind to revolutionize a basic process for DoubleTree that many companies take for granted: Building a comprehensive, single-source, web-to-print toolkit for their international brand. In less than four months, the project team streamlined the collateral printing process of the entire company by creating a toolkit for each hotel property to utilize to develop their own specific promotional materials (e.g. door hangers, menus, key cards, conservation cards, stationery, vehicle signage, etc.). This process allows DoubleTree branding to stay uniform, but also allows for individual franchises to use unique add their unique information when necessary. Additionally, instead of two weeks for delivery, the printing and mailing takes closer to two days.

The goal, which we achieved, was for GMs and Directors of Sales to Directors of F&B and Front Desk Managers (or any hotel employee with the proper access) to order the items he or she needs – and any employee at all can reorder an item that was placed previously. This is especially important in an industry with a high employee turnover rate where the person who created a piece of custom collateral may no
longer be with the organization.

In all, to be recognized with an award for the development of a product that we worked hard on - and came out so successfully - is wonderful. However, beyond the outcome, it was the collaboration with the the client, and the fact that they were as pleased with the outcome as us that truly resonates, and in our mind, makes us a best practice.





The Tray PML Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages.
information about the company and its successes, visit www.traypml.com