Falling attendances, hotel bookings down, unhappy exhibitors, that is how the October trade shows in the Far East can be described. Many blame the current economic climate for this but the root of the problem is somewhere else.

Yes, there sure were people who canceled their travel plans in the last moment. But most trade show visitor plan and book their trips, flights and hotels way in advance. The major reason for the falling attendances were the stupid greed motivated decisions of Canton Fair organizers to stretch the bi-annual Chinese Export Import Fair to three sessions spanning from October 15 to November 6. It may be fine for the regular buyers but pretty much killed it for the people from the promotional products industry. Electronics products in Phase 1, Gifts in Phase 2, Stationery and Writing instruments in Phase 3. What session should BizGift people select ? Who can spare 3 weeks to stay in China ?

Then there is Kenfair, the organizer of October Mega Show in Hong Kong, another regular trade show for people from promotional products industry. In the normal days this show was placed in between the phase 1 and phase 2 of the Canton fair, allowing us to visit 3 trade shows within a period of about 10 days. Now the new arrangements resulted in many people not staying after phase 2 in Canton. Bad news for exhibitors - Kenfair was much worse attended than it used to be, the Phase 3 in Canton, especially in the stationery areas was almost empty. As one of the exhibitors told me, they could just sit down and play cards for 5 days …

This all however had some positives for the visitors. The exhibitors had much more time and patience and desire to talk .

Let’s see how long it will take for the Canton Fair organizers to admit that they were wrong with this new format …

The promotional products are sometimes funny and also well received by the public . Here is a video with advertisement for vitamins for children. The green man from Mars is the character that represents the brand.

The gift that came with purchase (and features at the end of the clip) is a voice changer that changes the voice into some kind of voice from Mars . Simple but effective.

Recently I read an interview on wired.com with the French designer Philippe Starck. Among other things he touched the question of using the recycled plastic and bioplastic.

Wired: Recently, you have begun to look at the environmental impact of your designs. How does a plastic chair fit in?

Starck: The stupidity of the ecological movement is that people kill trees for wood. It’s ridiculous. The best ecological strategy is to make products of a very high creative quality, so you can keep them for three generations. I prefer to make a very good chair in the best polycarbonate than make any shit in wood that will be in the trash one year later.

Wired: Why not use recycled plastic?

Starck: It’s a little joke of a material. You can do almost nothing with it. And I also refuse bioplastic, which comes from something that people can eat. Scientists agree that we have a real food problem, a famine approaching. It’s a crime against humanity to take something you can eat and make a chair — or use it as gas for your SUV.

These “green” items have recently became very trendy also in the promotional products and gifts and premiums industry. I have nothing against some environmental consciousness but feel that as it often happens the whole industry has jumped on the wagon without really thinking about the actual impacts these “green” products may have. The parallels with biofuels spring to mind. We can run cars on fuel made of corn or soy beans but at the same time as a result the global food prices keep rising threatening stability and lives of people in many parts of the world. One of the aims of biofuel use was reduction of the CO2 emissions. At the same time however huge areas of Amazon rain forest are disappearing so the land can be used for biofuel crops …

Of course those few million pieces of plastic pens made of corn are just a drop in the ocean if compared to the biofuel production. But do we really need to start turning food crops into plastic pens at exactly the time of increasing food prices ?

Is the motivation behind this “green” items craze really the concern about the environment or is this all simply because being considered green is cool these days, no matter what it takes to create that eco friendly appearance ?

One more note on the recycled plastic. Not sure if I would call it a joke of a material, there perhaps is some use for it. But products produced from the recycled plastic rarely can pass the safety lab tests in order to be allowed to enter developed markets.

I will elaborate further on BizGifts and environment in future posts.

I received few photos from a friend the other day.  Here is one of them. The sight of the porcini makes me hungry . But look at the knife just next to it. There are places in the world, especially in Europe, where wild mushrooms picking is a popular outdoor activity.  A special knife may be a practical and appreciated gift especially ahead of or during mushroom season.

Mushroom Knife

The knife comes with a slightly curved blade (to help cut the mushrooms easy from the ground) and a brush for brushing away the soil and dirt. And of course there is a safety lock to prevent injury by accidental closing of the blade.There is enough room for branding too. It can be laser engraved either on the blade or on the metal part of the handle.

One of the difficulties of our business is that the products we are asked to make are often brainchildren of marketing, advertising and design people with limited knowledge of production process. The fact that they may not understand what it takes to actually produce their idea is perfectly understandable. But what I can’t understand is why they do not want to listen when we try to explain or give suggestions ? And it does not stop there. When things go wrong, exactly as we warned them they would, we get blamed …

I have a fresh example. We were asked to produce a special packaging for a product for children. Rather simple item but with a bit complicated artwork. The item had two parts - body and the lid - and the image was to be printed over the entire product. This would also be OK if not for one thing. There were few important details on the design that we split up - part of it was still on the body part already on the lid.

The moment we received the artwork we could tell that this simply will not work. There was no way that the lid and the body can match that well. We told the client right away that the part of the detail on the lid will shift to the side (left or right) and will not match the part that is on the body. We also explained why. We recommended adjusting the artwork and print those important details on the body of the package only. We were told off and told to do what we are asked to do.

So we did just that. But knowing the result in advance we went the extra mile and without bothering the customer we did some adjustments and prepared an alternative sample as well. We simply wanted them to see how it could look. As our client refused to even think about adjusting the design themselves we did it for them, at our cost as a favour just to speed the whole thing up. The time was running and no one would consider moving Christmas to February. We had no idea what parts of the design can’t be touched and what parts can, so we did as we though would be fine. Our alternative sample was never meant to be a pre-production sample, only an example how it could be done if the original idea does not work.

What happened ? Well, of course the sample made according to the original design was rejected as unacceptable. Client decided to go ahead according to the sample we made up for them but … Of course there was a “but”. It had to be redesigned because we did not do the adjustments correctly in line with their manual (that we have never seen) …. This of course took extra time and delayed the production. And it is all our fault …

Can’t complain our business is boring .

This is not a typical post for this blog but there is a connection. Not the freshest of news probably, but I do not read the entertainment pages of magazines that often. But yesterday when I opened the Time Magazine I spotted a familiar face on the contents page. A face of a guy who used to rock live music bars in Hong Kong not that long ago. Me, my friends and lots of my overseas customers use to go Edge and later to Cavern for some entertainment. I remember a friend of mine saying one day, when the band played some U2 song, that if he did not know he is listening to a cover band, he would have thought it is real Bono singing. Well, that was a part of the semi drunk highly intellectual beer debate, but anyway . And then I see the face this cover band singer in Time Magazine. His name is Arnel Pineda, and it looks like he made it big. No wonder he hasn’t showed up in Cavern for a while.

Here is a YoutTube video from CBS show, that pretty much tells his story (although a bit too dramatically for my taste):

The green fever spreads in our industry. Here is one product marketed as green - the water calculator. Well I am not sure if I would call it green. It does not use any recycled material, it is not even packed in a box made of recycled paper. The only thing that can be considered green is the fact that it does not have to use a battery. How is this going to save the environment .

But while I think the “green product” label attached to this product is just a misleading marketing trick it still is a fun item. Kind of cool promotional product for a drink company.

You run promo for soda - print “Runs on Soda” on the box, you run promo for coffee - print “Runs on Coffee” on the box, you run promo for water - print “Runs on Water” on the box.

The best product to promote with this calculator would however be some energy drink

I was doing small research on evolution of some big brand logos. OK, not really a research. I needed to see how some big guys polish and revive their brands so I spent about 15 minutes on Google and looked around. I found this article on the Starbucks logo. I had no idea they recently started to use some retro logo design. Over here all we get is still the “classic” green one. But after reading the article I thought this is exactly what I was looking for - some example of return to the roots. And I thought this is quite well done.

The article I mentioned says that the marketing objective in bringing back this version of the original logo was to compliment the campaign slogan “Roasting coffee since 1971. The best cup then. The best cup now”. I think the logo does it nicely. It also gives a different feeling to the Starbucks merchandise - including the mugs.

But then I checked few other links pointing to the new Starbucks logo articles and I realized that some people actually have some issues with it. Serious issues. The problem seems to be the way the siren (mermaid) in the logo is pictured - “naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute”.

Here is one nice article on this. I am quite sure that making people calling them “Slutbucks” was not the idea behind the old logo revival . But it got people talking and gave the retro image quite some publicity. At the end the very people who find the the logo slutty are doing the new old logo the best service. Marketing by controversy in its best .

Time for some coffee . Slutbucks perhaps .

A while ago I wrote about how I discovered lanyards. When after several years the only lanyard innovations come in a guise of different widths, printing technologies or all sorts of fancy clips and attachments I began to think the lanyard evolution is over. Well, I was wrong. Here is something new:

It looks like this is a lanyard designed to carry something heavy on the neck. At least that is what the padding would suggest. While that may be one of the unintentional benefits of this product, it does not seem to be the point. When you look closer, you see a zipper. When you open the zipper, you can pull out a hood … Who’s idea was this I would like to know .

As a gimmick, this is quite funny. As a promotional product - well, it may not be that bad for the advertiser. The large hood provides quite some area for imprint. But, how often will that large imprint area actually get some exposure ? I would say only if it rains. But now, frankly, will anyone pack this thing as a precaution in case of rain into the back, or carry it on the neck when going out ? I very much doubt so … I would say unless it rains at some outdoor event where these hood lanyards are distributed, the hoods will never be exposed to the public. So all the printable area that actually matters is what is seen on the first picture in this post. Even less than what an ordinary lanyard provides for much lower cost.

So what is wrong with this lanyard ?

It costs more than usual lanyards without any hoods, most of the printable area it offers will never be seen. It offers pretty much zero rain protection. Unfortunately as it is the case with many promotional products and BizGifts these days, this is just a gimmick, and a useless one. If you want to produce a gift item that protects people from wet weather, you better stay with umbrella or if on lower budget with cheap rain poncho.

If on the other hand you want to get peoples’ attention by giving them something silly they will ridicule and talk about, this may be one of those things .

A while ago I made a post It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over and the last thing I expected was that the particular project that inspired me for writing that post will turn it to be a major screw up. Well, almost, lucky me. But well, it ain’t over yet, so I better wait with the standing ovations for myself.

So what has happened ? Well, this time, surprise surprise, the mess up did not come from our supplier but from our customer’s client.

Imagine this:

• You spend several months developing a product

• You receive sort of conditional approval and go ahead

• You reject that conditional approval and ask for either a firm approval

• Client asks you how more time and money would further development cost

• You provide the figures

• Client decides to go ahead with the products as it is and gives you the firm approval and signs the contract

• You go ahead

• When first (big) lot is ready to load into containers and ready to ship you send a batch of samples to client for their promotions preparation work

• And then bang … Client say stop everything, we do not want this “rubbish”, no matter that that “rubbish” is exactly what they have approved and the best the money they are willing to spend can buy

The problem as we found out was that the bosses of the person who gave the approval did not like what they saw. Unfortunately, they only saw the product for the first time after big part of the production was already completed or semi ready …

Very scary situation. Luckily a solution workable to both parties has been found and the project has been re-started without major wounds. Thanks to all the parties involved willing to work it out and go the extra mile.

It ain’t over yet, but at least I can sleep better now.