When you break a personal branding rule, one of two things happen. Either you get nervous and immediately fall back in line, or you keep pushing, blow past conventional wisdom, and find yourself all alone on the other side of the personal branding rainbow. But, don't worry, being all alone just means you don't have [...]

Best Practices for the Promotional Products Sales Force
Ask The Buyer
- Who is the intended audience? Will this item be distributed to children?
- How will the products be distributed?
- What’s the desired outcome?
- What kind of logo do you intend to use?
-  Do you typically keep items in stock for future use or do you distribute [...]

The Amusing Stats Of Amusement Parks

400+: Number of amusement parks in the U.S.
300 million: Number of amusement park visitors annually
1.7 billion: Number of amusement park rides
$11.5 billion: Revenue generated by amusement parks and attractions
28: Percent of Americans who visited an amusement park last year
50: Percent who plan an amusement park visit in the next 12 [...]

A Distributor Asks
I placed an order with a new supplier recently, but instead of sending a proof to me, it just shipped the printed products. Fortunately, everything looked okay. When I questioned the supplier, I was told that I must request a proof; otherwise they will go ahead and send the order. Isn’t a proof [...]

Summer is America’s favorite season, with nearly a third of the population (31 percent) choosing it as their very favorite time of year, according to Rasmussen Reports. Spring came in second place, followed by fall and winter, respectively.
Luckily for the sun-loving majority, there are 99 glorious days of summer stretching from Memorial Day to Labor [...]

Ask not what QR codes can do for you; ask what you can do for others using QR codes.

A UK-based creative company isn’t using custom-designed QR codes to sell products or promote its services. Instead, it’s using the scanable codes to gift others with music.
The company, called Stupid Creative, takes one-of-a-kind QR codes and prints [...]

The new social media site Pinterest may seem more like human interest than business interest, but marketing professionals are advising companies to take another look at this photography-driven site.
Pinterest is an invitation-only community that lets users pin images from the web onto virtual mood boards. Pinned images are automatically linked to the sites from which [...]

If you’ve been selling promotional products for a while, you’ll probably ace the brief quiz below:
1. Recipients of promotional products object to boldly imprinted items regardless of their perceived price. True/False
2. A buyer’s No. 1 consideration in selecting promotional products is the budget with which he or she has to work. True/False
3. In the minds [...]

It’s gossip, turf wars, water cooler talk, and the chronic complainer no one can stand. When you talk with people about the organizations they work for, it’s common to hear about the “Drama” plaguing their companies: the energy-draining behaviors that keep people from focusing on the creative projects and basic business practices that make the [...]

You may not realize the financial cost your business bears when your team members are unhappy. An effective leader knows how to check, maintain and, when necessary, improve staff morale. If you can monitor staff morale, you might be surprised at how easy it is to bring in improvements when it starts to dip. When [...]