A Campaign With Juice

A pickle-flavored lip balm promotion is so spot-on that the end buyer adds the product to its line.


In a world of one-off product campaigns and here-today-gone-tomorrow promotions, it’s a nice surprise when a product promotion becomes a regular order on which you can rely.

Last summer, Van Holten’s, a Waterloo, Wisconsin-based pickle manufacturer whose pickles in a pouch are sold around the nation, was approached about developing a dill pickle-flavored lip balm. The company jumped at the offer and began handing out Big Papa Dill Pickle Lip Balms at tradeshows to help make people aware of the company and its products.

The product was such a hit with Van Holten’s customers that it decided to add the lip balm to its product line and sell it in stores. “It kind of evokes the same feeling as our pickles-in-a-pouch,” says Steve Byrnes, president of Van Holten’s. “It’s fun, it’s quirky and we got the same reaction from the lip balm, so we thought it was the perfect extension.”

Does dill-pickle flavored lip balm sound strange to you? “That’s the appeal,” Byrnes says. “It gets a reaction. It’s a novelty. It’s fun, and people who really like pickles are using it. And it’s a really good lip balm.”


Tamma Underwood

YouTube=MC2

Research suggests the future success of viral videos can be deduced using an algorithm.

An Australian researcher has posited a theory that suggests the success or failure of viral web videos can be determined by an algorithm that has roots in Darwin’s theory of evolution, i.e., survival of the fittest.

The algorithm is designed specifically for commercially produced viral movies that are linked to brands, says Dr. Brent Coker of his branded viral movie predictor, or BVMP, in a news release.

Coker, an internet psychologist for the University of Melbourne, claims there are four elements viral videos need to possess in order to have a chance of success. They are: congruency, emotive strength, network-involvement ratio and paired meme synergy. 

Congruency is simply keeping everything aligned with a brand’s existing identity and values. 

Emotive strength relates to the idea that humans process copious amounts of information in a day and that good videos evoke stronger responses than this other information. Stronger responses are brought out through emotion.

Network-involvement concerns whether or not the majority of people in a targeted group find the video relevant. A video that can only be found on YouTube, for example, can have millions of views or none, depending on whether viewers are motivated to find it.

None of these elements work, however, unless accompanied by paired meme synergy, in which certain meme combinations that have proven successful are used. Memes include nostalgia, surprise, anticipation, voyeurism and others. 

Unfortunately, Coker is saving the explanation for the 14 total memes and their optimal combinations for his new book, set to come out later this year. Still, this provides a primer for designing viral campaigns until the book debuts. Or, draw inspiration now from these highly viewed YouTube videos from PPAI members.


Upload Date March 30, 2011 Views 3,107
Los Angeles-based supplier Magic Cubes (UPIC: magicube) lets distributor Bob Levitt, vice president of Tangerine Promotions, do the talking in this product testimonial. 
Watch it.



Upload Date April 7, 2011 Views 30,483
Business service provider Cintas Corporation (UPIC: CINTP001), based in Mason, Ohio, explains what it does through melodically blending the sounds its employees make on the job.
Watch it.



Upload Date June 9, 2011 Views 712
Dallas, Texas-based The Odee Co. (UPIC: ODEE0001) uses stop-motion animation and energetic music to show how fun it is to wear the company’s latest t-shirt design.
Watch it. 



Upload Date September 6, 2011 Views 1,009
Lafayette, Colorado-based business services provider ZOOMCatalog (UPIC: Zoom-cat) teams up with marketing guru and PPAI Expo 2012 speaker Jason Sadler of IWearYourShirt.com to explain why choosing the right promotional product is so important.Watch it.




Tamma Underwood 

A Welcome Kit - Case Study

“Welcome Kit” of Promotional Products Helps Smooth Employee Transition During Office Move and Promotes New Eco-friendly Campaign for Prominent Law Firm, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP

Challenge: How to leverage promotional products to help employees feel at home quickly during a time of transition while also introducing new eco-sensitive policies.

With more than 900 lawyers in 13 offices from Abu Dhabi to London, and from Beijing to both coasts of the U.S., Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP is one of the largest law firms in the world.

When Akin Gump’s New York City branch outgrew its space and moved to a bigger, better, greener office building (one of the greenest skyscrapers thus far), the Akin Gump HR team had three things in mind. First, they wanted to successfully bring together their 390 employees, who had been physically divided in the old building. Second, they wanted to make everyone feel at home in the new space. And third, the team also wanted to unveil a cool, new “Go Even Greener” campaign inspired by their new office home. That’s when the Akin Gump HR team reached out to a promotional product company  for help in creating a “welcome kit” worthy of accomplishing this multi-faceted feat.

Solution: Jumbo reusable shopping totes, microwaveable 15-ounce coffee mugs and branded LifeSavers candies.

The team’s choices for the kit certainly fit: jumbo reusable shopping tote bags, microwaveable coffee mugs and logoed rolls of LifeSavers candies. The hefty grocery totes, 100 percent recyclable and reusable, in the firm’s traditional blue, are both tear resistant and water repellant, encouraging years’ of use. The 15-ounce microwavable, dishwasher-safe mugs, also in Akin Gump blue, come with comfort-grip handles and rotating, locking signature lids that disassemble for easy cleaning.

Some assembly required. Anticipating the team’s need for help assembling the kits (and to minimize stress—things are busy enough just before a move!) the promotional product company also offered  fulfillment services. This way, the products from various vendors were delivered to the promotional products company warehouse, where their team put the kits together before shipping them to Akin Gump’s new office before the big day arrived.

Result: Less HR stress, happy employees despite a typically tumultuous time of transition—promotional success!

When the employees arrived at the new building on the first day, they were greeted with a breakfast and lunch event—and with their official Akin Gump Welcome Kits—complete with eco-friendly products. The HR team’s manager tells us the kits were a hit: he still sees employees using the bags and mugs everywhere—and when he does, he offers a comment of “Nice mug!” or “Nice bag!” Staff members report leaving the bags in their cars so they’re easily available for grocery shopping. And—a surprise to Akin Gump’s HR manager—employees loved the mugs most: they say that the lid stays cool even after microwaving so they can sip their coffee or soup without burning sensitive lips. Both products together make for a more eco-friendly Akin Gump, in the office and out. Most importantly, though, the promotional welcome kit helped employees quickly connect and settle into their new office home—another promotional success!

A Case Study:

Flavored Mints in Reusable, Private-Label Tins Garner Brand Awareness for Top Bridal Gown Source, JLM Couture

Challenge: Finding an Easy-to-Carry, Useful and Unique Promotional Product with Long Staying Power to Promote Brand Awareness to the Trade

Brand awareness (noun). A desirable condition 1) in which a target audience is readily cognizant of your firm’s promoted products and services and 2) you strive to create and maintain by leveraging promotional tactics and strategies. JLM Couture has achieved brand awareness: each year many thousands of brides, bridesmaids and flower girls eagerly dream of their walks down the aisle wearing bridal gowns, bridesmaid gowns, flower girl dresses, veils and other accessories from the company’s designer apparel lines, including Alvina Valenta, Jim Hjelm and Lazaro. To maintain that awareness, JLM Couture, which sells only to the trade, markets its bridal apparel to consumers through bridal magazines, trunk shows and catalogs, and presents its lines to retailers at the world’s top bridal tradeshows, such as the week-long Bridal Market Weeks held in Barcelona and New York. The reach provided by such shows is impressive: more than 1,500 retailers and media outlets from the U.S. and abroad attend the New York event; Barcelona boasts an attendance of more than 20,000.

It was with the upcoming U.S. Bridal week in mind that the JLM Couture team turned to a promotional product company in search of mints. Mints made good sense for their show room venue: they are 1) a unique promotional product not typically offered by other bridal show exhibitors; 2) small and compact, easy for retailer buyers to slip into pockets, purses and bags; 3) useful in the bridal week setting, where retailers and members of the press enjoy abundant opportunities for eating and up-close-and-personal speaking with peers, designers and clients; and 4) highly desirable to the week’s primarily female audience. But which mint? And which container would provide the right surface and color for branding? Which product would prove most effective overall in the US Bridal Week’s environment?

Solution: Starbucks®-Type Flavored Mints in a Branded, Reusable Tin

The JLM team had questions; the promotional product company had answers. They showed the team several promotional mints that could become their private-label stash, from which they selected the Starbucks®-type Mints in a durable tin. The tin was just what the team had hoped for, with a black color perfectly in tune with the deep, dark richness of the JLM logo and Website, and with a spacious lid with plenty of room for the JLM Couture imprint. Branding space was especially important to the team for this particular show as they had also recently launched the new JLMCouture.com website to establish JLM as the “go-to” location for all its represented brands; previously, each brand carried by JLM was marketed through its own website. Plus, recipients would be less likely to throw away the reusable tin, providing added reach and long-lasting promotional power—just what the team needed to help transfer brand awareness away from the individual brands and to JLM Couture.

Result: Mints Please Tradeshow Goers; JLM Expands Use of Mints to Additional Venues in the U.S. and Europe

The JLM Couture team reports that retailers and members of the press who stopped by their showroom during the event helped themselves to handfuls of mint tins, guaranteeing that they’d see the JLM name each time they reached for a mint and reminding recipients that JLM-represented designers are now available through the new JLM Website. The mints proved so successful that the team added them to gift bags given to bridal, beauty and fashion editors at top bridal publications during the fashion show that week, and also introduced them into the marketing mix for European events as well, changing flavors as needed to suit the variability of cultural tastes. For instance, the team selected fruity instead of minty flavored mints for their United Kingdom market, as people in the UK tend to favor fruity over spicy. To toast another successful promotion we raise our mints and say, “Bon appétit!”

Is Your Management Causing Employee Issues and Slow Business Growth?

Could your management team be creating unnecessary employee issues that are leading to:

• Low employee engagement
• Low employee morale
• Poor productivity
• Poor customer service
• The need for voluminous policy and procedure manuals to ensure that the manager follows the rules, and
• High turnover

While not so comfortable to ask, and even more challenging to be accountable for, here are seven key questions to help you determine if your management is causing the above common concerns:

1. Does every member of your management team know (internalize) the company's Mission/Purpose and Vision (ideal future state)?

2. Can every member of your management team describe the company Values, (that is, the key ways in which you go about your work, such as excellence in customer service, innovation, teamwork, respect...)? And, can every member of the management team give some examples of how the company values are demonstrated on a day-to-day basis?

3. Do you have a succession plan – that is, an approach for and/or development of high potential/successor candidates?

4. Do new people promoted to or hired for a management position clearly demonstrate the company values?

5. Do you have an effective way to transition new managers into their positions (or do you just assume the transition will happen)?

6. And, do you remove poor and ineffective managers quickly?

If you said 'NO' to any of the questions above then you likely have employee issues as a result of your management problems.

When Addressing Employee Issues, Ensure You Have Sound Management First

How can you improve your business when you have employee issues and conflicts getting in your way of running an effective, productive and efficient organization? First, change your approach and take a macro view.

That is, understand that often, employee issues are symptoms of inconsistent or failing management.Your strongest assets and your key resources are your employees. (Yes, even stronger than your brand. Brand creates awareness and a promise. But it's the employees that deliver on that promise.) And, while painful to acknowledge, it is the most talented employees that leave first.

If you want to improve your business, you must start with your managers.

These are the people who are the direct link to your front line employees.

These managers include:

• Department managers
• Assistant managers
• Shift supervisors
• Store managers
• Team leaders

Yet unfortunately, the role and impact of the direct supervisors are often overlooked when senior management or business owners contemplate improvement questions such as:

• How can we improve morale?
• What's a good compensation system?
• How can we recruit and retain better employees?
• How do we improve our customer service?

Simply stated, as long as you do not deal with supervisor/manager competency and impact, you cannot effectively deal with any of the questions raised above. It's like trying to come up with a model to explain how our solar system works using the earth as the center of the system. It just won't work, no matter how hard you try. Replace the earth with the sun and it works beautifully. Money spent to improve the effects of management is wasted unless it's spent to address poor management first.

Five Required Steps to Identifying and Addressing the Issue of Poor Management

1) First, get senior executives to function as an aligned team and to promote (by demonstration not lip service) the stated values of the business. Remember, employees watch their leadership team for cues on how to behave and how to manage. They look to managers to see what's acceptable and what is not!

2) Carefully select employees for management positions. This means you need to have a succession plan that incorporates a management development plan for high potential candidates.

3) Support the transition from employee to manager. Not all newly promoted managers will be ready for their new role. In fact, in many organizations, it's possible that most aren't yet ready for prime time but are needed there. (A good coach or mentor can be very valuable in these situations.)

4) Define the standard of performance required of all your managers. Provide needed support to help your managers understand your standards and meet them. If they don't (or won't) after suitable support and development, replace them. Understand that "what you permit you promote."

Tolerating poor managers and poor manager behavior is the same as condoning it. And that is the way employees will perceive it.

5) Then, insure your managers/supervisors are responsible for performance management and instilling employee accountability using these four fundamentals with their employees:

1. Clarifying expectations of their role individually and within context to the larger organization
2. Providing adequate training and development for them to do their job (identify and address skills, knowledge and resource gaps)
3. Provide consistent feedback on their performance, expressly positive/ recognition based, and of course, addressing concerns or deficiencies (in which case you start over at A, though focusing on the concern/issue and what is needed/expected...)
4. And, be consistent with upholding consequences. Similar to tolerating poor managers, unwilling or persistent underperforming employees will quickly compromise your overall results.

Service excellence, cost-effective performance and innovation start with engaged employees. And employees leave their organizations most often because of a bad boss and a poor working relationship. If you believe that your employees are not engaged to the extent you want them to be, don't start with employee remediation efforts. Start first with the leaders and the managers. If employees don't have a good boss and working experience with them, save your money; as nothing else will work, at least for very long. It may be the most difficult place to start, but it will be the most effective for long-term ROI.

By Sara LaForest & Tony Kubica

7 Steps to Resolve Personality Conflicts in the Workplace

Personality conflicts are the most commonly reported problems in the workplace. Too often these conflicts go unresolved because people concentrate on the personalities rather than focusing on the issues. When they escalate they create a TOXIC work environment. In any relationship, both people influence the other's behavior. In personality conflicts both parties bear some responsibility for where "things are at."

Conflicts can rip teams apart, destroy moral and their quality of life.

We can't control or change the personality of the other person but we certainly can control our own emotions and change the way we react to the other person. Use these 7 steps to help de-escalate or resolve conflict:

1. Avoid discussing the issue with other colleagues. Many people who are involved in personality conflicts recruit allies among their co-workers.

This can create polarization among co-workers and it escalates the situation. While you are passionately upset about this, others are not and most often co-workers are uncomfortable and sometimes frightened over the situation. This behavior is disruptive to the organization and makes it more difficult to fix the situation. FOCUS on what you can do to make things better!

2. Never respond immediately to the person who is irking you. They know how to push your buttons and they have done so over a period of time. By not responding immediately you give yourself some time to think through your response and this pause may cause the other person to think that you are backing down and they will begin to de-escalate.

3. Look in the mirror! How are you contributing to this situation? What role are you playing in the escalation of things? The key is to focus on what you can do differently! What can you do to make things better? If you can figure out your role in the dynamic you'll learn something important about yourself and you will be able to de-escalate the conflict.

4. Reframe the situation. For instance, the individual you are dealing with is screaming and yelling and wanting to be right! Instead of becoming annoyed and irritated at their unprofessional behavior, picture them as a child wearing a diaper and throwing a temper tantrum. This allows you to take a step back and not engage.

5. Focus on the other persons strengths. Remind yourself of the contributions that the other person brings to your company or your team.

When things are going badly, we have a tendency to focus on what doesn't work and all of the negatives. Focusing on the positive helps us to at least get back to a neutral space and look at things a little more objectively.

6. Use cooperative communication such as "I've noticed that we seem to have differences. I have some ideas about how we might be able to work together more effectively and I would like to hear your thoughts." Invite them to be a part of the solution and really listen to their ideas. If you are unable to communicate either because you are too angry or the other person is, then walk away gracefully rather than standing your ground and allowing things to escalate.

7. Document all interactions in a neutral manner. It is important to keep track of the confrontations. If you are not able to de-escalate the conflict early on, take the issue to your immediate supervisor or someone in your HR department and have a neutral party mediate the situation.

Conflicts should never be swept under the rug. If you are the supervisor or manager and have employees that are involved in a personality conflict, coach them to resolve their own situation and if that doesn't work step in! You have a responsibility to the other employees to get control of this situation.

by Carol Fredrickson

What Really Motivates Employees

Each week I travel the country speaking to groups of leaders at meeting and conferences. No matter where I go I’m asked the same question time and again by leaders ranging from frontline managers to CEOs , “How can I motivate my employees?” I’ve heard this question repeated thousands of times. However, what the person asking usually means is “How can I manipulate my employees to do what I want them to do?”

Managers and companies from every walk of life waste billions of dollars on manipulation disguised as incentives in an attempt to change employee behavior. Sometimes they get short-term results, but manipulation never works over the long haul. Because motivating people is such a mystery for leaders a $30 billion industry has been built around helping companies motivate their people. There is certainly nothing wrong with providing valuable incentives to employees who do a good job, but what these programs don’t do is teach leaders how to tap into what really motivates employees.

Take Steve, a regional account executive for a huge business services company. In a management shake-up his company hired a new vice president of sales. The new VP came in full of ideas. One of those ideas was to build a national incentive program. In doing so, he took the local budgets away from his sales managers and insisted that any recognition be in compliance and under auspices of the corporate office and the national sales incentive program. He established a process, rules for recognizing the salespeople, hired a staff to administer the program, and proudly announced the new and improved program to his field sales team of over 1,000 people.

Steve was a consistent top performer for the company, so it wasn’t a surprise when he sold more than anyone else on his team the quarter after the program was announced. “About a month after the end of the quarter, UPS dropped a box off on my front porch. Inside was a plaque with my name on it, a catalogue, and a form letter congratulating me on my achievement that explained what I could order from the catalogue.” Steve shook his head in disgust as he told me his story. “It meant nothing to me. I threw the plaque back in the box and handed the catalogue to my wife. No one, not even my manager, called to say anything about the award. At least before the program, we would all go out to dinner at the end of the quarter and my sales manager would toast all the top performers.”

He went on to tell me about the other plaques he’d been awarded that were still gathering dust in his closet. “This was truly the dumbest recognition program in the history of sales. It did not motivate me in the least. But what really pissed me off was when I found out that they were deducting taxes from my paycheck for the value of the prizes in the catalog they sent me. I finally went to my manager to ask that they not send me anymore catalogues. I was making plenty of money, and all I really wanted was a pat on the back in front of the other salespeople on my team.” Steve eventually was recruited away and said he is very happy at his new company.

If you are shaking your head, believe me—this is not the worst story I’ve heard. Unfortunately, far too many leaders have no idea what actually motivates people. They wrongly assume that there is a complex motivation formula, and the gurus and companies in the employee-incentive trade encourage this false notion.

What Really Motivates People

The reality is that motivating people is extremely simple. Psychologists and social scientists have proven time and again that the most powerful motivators of people are achievement and the recognition of that achievement. It is important to note that these two elements cannot be separated. Achievement in the absence of recognition is rarely rewarding, and recognition in absence of achievement is empty.

However, when people are given the opportunity to achieve (win) and those achievements are recognized by leaders, amazing things happen. People who are being consistently recognized for their achievements report higher job satisfaction and perform at higher levels than those who are not. In virtually any organization, leaders who consistently find ways to recognize the achievement of their employees through positive emotional experiences deliver superior results.

Recognition, to be effective, must be directed at achievement, big and small. Most leaders find it easy to recognize the big achievements. However, where the top leaders excel is in consistently recognizing the many small achievements required for big things to happen.

One of the easiest ways to motivate people for small achievements is to catch them doing something right and recognize them for it. The secret is paying attention. Recognizing small, everyday achievements is difficult for leaders who are under pressure to produce results because they are often so focused on delivering on plans, tasks, or fixing a problem that it is easy to forget to take time to pat people on the back.

One leader who is highly regarded by her team admitted to me that although she knew it was important to consistently recognize small achievements she found it difficult to remember to give those pats on the back. So she devised a simple trick. Each morning she put a handful of chocolates in her pocket. Each time she recognized an employee for doing something right, she ate a chocolate. “It worked for me because I love chocolate and I rewarded myself for doing the right thing for my people.”

Another manager we interviewed explained that with the unrelenting demands of his workday, which often included back-to-back meetings, it was often impossible to recognize achievements in real time. “I found that on many days I would be working late after all my people had gone home. One night after a particularly hard week where my team had gone above and beyond, I wrote personalized thank-yous on sticky pads and stuck them on everyone’s computer screens. The reaction the next morning was amazing. People were coming into my office to thank me! It meant so much to them. After that I made it a regular part of my day to recognize outstanding performance with after-hours sticky notes.”

When it comes to motivation, thoughtful recognition of achievement in real time will take you to the next level as a leader. Certainly big experiences, like national sales meetings, president’s clubs, special recognition dinners, contests, trips, and so on are appropriate opportunities to recognize and appreciate employees for big achievements. However, in most cases small gestures carry far more meaning than big ones.

By Jeb Blount, Author of People Follow You: The Real Secret to What Matters Most in Leadership