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!”