Booklets, M & M's, And The Right Moment

Tips booklets have long been recommended as promotional items, to be imprinted with a company's name and logo, and handed out at trade shows from their booth, among many other applications for these booklets.

Candy is also something that has frequently been seen as giveaways at trade show booths, sometimes imprinted with the company's name, often not.

Recently there were several advertisements from the company who makes the chocolate candy, M & M's, focused on imprinting a company's name on each round bit of their candy. There's several things worth pointing out about that, any of which could be a "so what" if not analyzed. Stop and smell the roses or, in this case, the chocolate:

• The company making M & M's has been in business a very long time, yet they are just now offering to imprint some other company logo or name than their own on their candy.

• The company has, in fact, been printing their own M & M logo on their candy all this time.

• There are at least two multi-floor stores (Las Vegas and New York City) that have the M & M logo on hundreds and hundreds of other products besides their candy.

Here's why this can all be useful to you. A company as big as and established as the one that makes M & M's didn't think about offering to print other company's logos on their candy until fairly recently apparently. In spite of their longevity and collective brainpower, this is only happening now.

• Lesson 1 - No one can think of everything.

• Lesson 2 - There are many models to follow once they are noticed.

• Lesson 3 - It need not be costly to expand your market or product line.

• Lesson 4 - Booklets more nutritionally promote your product, service, or cause than M & M’s do.

• Lesson 5 - There's always more to discover.

When you take all of this into consideration, it can bring a very different perspective to your own product line, promotional activities, and services you can offer your own clients and prospective clients. Take a moment or an afternoon or a day away from the “doing” of your business to look at what you’ve got and where you can go with it. Ask some people whose opinions you value to look at your business and your product and service line with you. They can be momentary or periodic advisors to you, as you can be to them. You can make some meaningful changes without it costing you a lot of time, money, or energy.

You may already have a whole series of “Top 10 Ways to…” tip sheets or article that could combine into a booklet or another product, something that could be both a marketing tool and revenue stream for both your own company and untold other companies. You just hadn’t seen it that way before. M and M’s already had something being printed on them. It just wasn’t the logo of a different company, a company that would pay for that.

Have fun looking through different colored glasses and see what you see at this new moment in your business.

© 2007, Paulette Ensign