The Savvy Marketplace

Oyster holders increase visibleness and also offer up full shock commercializing result for your society. They are perfect promotional items which provide an fresh and a price effective means of making trade name consciousness. These Oyster card holders are comfortably fit for any merchandising budget and can make a prosperous affect on many of your guests and clients. They provide a acceptable market set up for your business organisation and with your logo on top of them, you can really convert them into a strong selling tool. They will allow umteen opportunities to distribute your society message across a healthy sphere to target your worthy clients. These Card holders can likewise serve you to retain your clients and find a new marketplace for your ware.

1) Oyster card holders come with transparent interior pouches and room for credit cards. They grant an easy access to charge plates, and have a light travel card window. They are most commonly utilised by students on the move. These Oyster card holders will also aid you to mark your presence anyplace, anytime.

2) An Oyster wallet is beautifully hand made in the most functional PVC plastic. You can add initials of each recipient, or expertly stamp your company logotype on the top. It is created by using superior quality photographic prints and makes a great corporate present that lasts eternally. It is perfect for your freedom pass, rail tickets, or Driving Licence. This Oyster card holder allows plenty space for your unique design or society logo.

3) Oyster card holders come with light interior pouches and space for credit cards. They permit smooth accession to charge cards, and have a plain oyster card windowpane. They are most commonly utilised by students on the move. These Oyster holders will also aid you to mark your presence anyplace, anytime.

4) This item is also great for holding membership cards. It is a high quality ware and ordinarily comes with a cash back warrantee. It will aid to increase the profile and perception of your trade name in a unique and modern way. This item will genuinely aid you to present your society subject matters all year long.

5) They are elegant and cost effective objects, and are obtainable in a wide range of colors and sizings. Their rich colorings will make it favorable for you to find them in your handbag or brief case. They also have a logotype inflamed on the face. They are one of the most modern promotional products and allow for a great way of maximising your merchandising budget.

America’s renowned tax lady, Roni Lynn Deutch, had spent the earliest years of her life in Southern California. Born with a competitive nature and raised by an active family, Roni Deutch was able to develop a love and passion for sports at an early age.

At eleven years old, she became the first female to ever play little league in the entire baseball history of California. When she was 12 years old, Roni Lynn Deutch was selected as an all-star player. She was able to continue playing baseball until the age of 15. However, her love for sports had continued even after high school. In fact, she was able to help her fast pitch female softball team win a national championship.

However, aside from sports, Roni Lynn Deutch was also able to continue her studies at the University of California in Berkeley. While at the university, Roni Deutch became part of the women’s softball team by playing third base as a nationally ranked player. Eventually, she was able to obtain a double major in her Pre-Law and Ethnic studies.

After college, Roni Deutch decided to build her pre-law platform at the Western State University College of Law, where she was able to eventually obtain an advanced LL.M. degree.

Nowadays, Roni Lynn Deutch keeps herself busy by reaching out to those who are in need of help regarding their IRS concerns.

The stock market has been kind of like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride lately — full of sharp and unexpected upturns and downturns. As a result many people’s business views on the stock market have changed.

Take my mom’s stockbroker, for instance. He used to encourage her to invest in slightly more aggressive funds, and I’m sure he was doing some day trading with her brother’s and father’s accounts (she hasn’t been interested in that). Now, however, he is urging her into the most conservative possible funds — and even confessed to her that he was doing the same thing with his money.

Of course, most other experts on the stock market have been urging people not to pull their money out and put it into more conservative funds. The reason for this is that losses are only realized when you sell your stock — until that day, you haven’t technically “lost” anything. Furthermore, when you move your money into more conservative funds you not only realize your losses, you also miss the opportunity to earn it back when the market recovers.

I don’t know that there are any specialty products that would enable you to weather the wild ride or make money when the stock market is this unpredictable, so I guess we should all do what the experts say: Just sit tight and wait for the market to stabilize.

One of the simplest ways to build a strong brand is to make sure that every point of contact that prospects and customers have with your company reinforces the brand promise. Although relatively simple in theory, “touch-point alignment” often proves difficult in practice. Consistently reinforcing your brand requires discipline, focus and commitment.

When asked to identify a company’s brand touch points, most people point to the obvious, such as logos and advertisements. In fact, people often think of the logo as the brand and advertising as the primary way to build the brand. In reality, the concept of brand touch points encompasses far more than these basic visual cues. Every point of contact your prospects and customers have with your company and its products and services provides an opportunity to build your brand - or weaken it. How you manage those points of contact determines the relative strength or weakness of your brand.

Every company has an internal and external brand experience, and each plays an important role in developing your overall brand. Picture a massive iceberg floating in the Northern Atlantic. The visible portion poking its head above the ocean’s surface represents a small fraction of the iceberg’s full mass. Similarly, only a small portion of your company’s brand experience - the external part - is highly visible. Much more of your brand lies below the surface and is not as easily recognizable.

A Case in Point

To illustrate our point, let’s look at an extreme example - IBM. For much of its history, IBM had one of the strongest brands in corporate America, arguably in the entire world. By the early 1990s, however, the company’s branding and advertising systems had fallen into a state of chaos. When Lou Gerstener took over as CEO in 1993, he quickly realized that reviving and clarifying the IBM brand was one of his highest priorities.

At the time of Gerstener’s arrival, IBM had more than 70 different ad agencies representing the firm. Each worked with a different product manager, with no central coordination or oversight. A single issue of an industry trade magazine could have up to 18 different IBM ads with 18 different designs, messages, and even logos. The company had hundreds of product brochures, each different enough that it was virtually impossible to tell that they came from the same company. Gerstener likened the situation to “70 little trumpets all tooting simultaneously for attention.”

To wrest control of IBM’s messaging from his country managers, Gerstener brought 35 of them to a conference center in Palisades, New York. He plastered the walls with IBM’s widely disparate advertising, packaging and marketing collateral, creating a veritable train wreck of brand and product positioning. At the end of his presentation, Gerstener posed one question: “Does anyone doubt we can do this better?” Unanimously, the team decided to consolidate IBM’s 70+ advertising relationships into a single global agency. From that point forward, all of IBM’s marketing reinforced one basic positioning message: IBM as global, world-class integrator. The rest is history.

A Question to Ponder and an Exercise

What if you conducted an exercise at your company similar to Gerstener’s branding exercise at IBM? What if you took every one of your company’s brand touch points and spread them across your conference room? Use the following list of touch points to start the process:

Internal Branding (Employees):

• Recruitment

• Advertising

• Website

• Employee Handbook

• Screening Process

• Goals and Objectives

• Review Process

• Compensation Structure

• Internal Communications

• Recognition Programs

• Training and Development

• Promotion Criteria

Retention Branding (Customers):

• Policies and Procedures

• Logo

• Identity

• Website

• Email Marketing

• On Hold

• Receptionist

• Brochures

• Datasheets

• Press Releases

• Advertisements

• Direct Mail

• Catalogs

• Packaging

• Pricing

• Strategic Alliances

• Correspondence

• Announcements

Acquisition Branding (Prospects):

• Customer Service

• Technical Support

• Logistics / Delivery

• Corporate

• Headquarters

• Branch Offices

• Tradeshow Booth

• Business Processes

Financial Branding (Financial Community):

• Press Releases

• Annual Report

• Quarterly Reports

• Analyst Briefings

• Investor Presentation

Every business is different, but chances are good that most, if not all, of these will apply to your business. As you review your various touch points, keep in mind that one of the simplest ways to build a strong brand is to make sure that every point of contact that prospects and customers have with your company reinforces your brand promise. Then ask the following questions:

• Is a singular message reinforced or are there a cacophony of messages?

• Is there a similar look and feel to the messages or do they look like they are from different companies?

• Is the visual imagery the same or is the graphic look (including the pictures) different?

It’s easy to conclude that a logo is a brand or that advertising is the primary strategy to build brand (even though it is extremely expensive, even for the largest companies). However, the reality is that a brand consists of a lot more than a logo, and there are many ways to build a brand. The key is to identify the touch points of your brand and make sure they are aligned with your brand promise. The more consistency you have across your various touch points, the stronger your brand will be.

Get your free whitepaper: The 10 Biggest Technology Marketing Mistakes… and How to Avoid Them

Rod Whitson serves Townsend as President and Chief Brand Strategist. Townsend is expert at helping organizations with innovative products and services develop differentiated, compelling value propositions. Townsend is the largest integrated marketing agency in Southern California. Rod has personally led recent branding engagements with Intel, BAE Systems, Merck, DowPharma, Marsh & McLennan, and the University of California system. He has also worked with a host of successful and not so successful early stage technology and life sciences companies. Since Townsend’s founding in 1993, it has helped clients create market valuation in excess of $80 billion.

Visit Rod’s blog, Branding the Complex

© 2006 Rod Whitson - All Rights Reserved Worldwide

Everywhere around logos, designs and art shows up and comes out of the woodwork using a modernized version of an older technology. Screen printing is a helpful way to expose a company name and/or logo to the public. Screen printing originally started out using silk as a medium but has since moved on to using stretched porous, finely woven nylon or polyester fabrics, with carefully stenciled designs, and delightful creations take form and come to life. From many of Andy Warhol’s famous works to such commonly used items as T-shirts and hats the practice of stretching a fabric and laying out a non-permeable material to cover areas of the fabric to be unaffected by dyes has created influential and marketable works of art. This inexpensive form of advertising creates a wide range of possibilities for a company to establish itself in the market, or for an already established company to gain great recognition.

With a great flexibility and range of uses across different platforms and materials, screen printing has become a widely accepted form of pseudo-media. With uses varying from textiles, ceramics, metal, wood, paper, glass, and plastic, there is not much screen printing cannot accomplish. It remains apparent that screen printing is evident in all walks of life. It is impossible to walk down the street and not see hundreds of screen printed items on a daily basis. Everything from soda bottles, to T-shirts, to coffee cups, and cars are all screen printed. With such a wide array of uses, screen printing also has many different techniques for being accomplished.

The most common for of screen printing is known as photographic emulsion. Simply put, photographic emulsion is a process whereby a photosensitive substance is hardened and subjected to ultraviolet light, using the desired stenciled design, the monochromatic design is transferred onto the vehicle such as the ones listed above (textiles, ceramics, metal, wood, paper, glass, and plastic).The process is completed by rinsing away the excess emulsion that was not hardened by the light in either water, or solvent. In the end, it leaves only the desired screen printed image on the medium. Screen printing has grown into great popularity to brand our everyday household items, and familiarize us with famous commercial brands as well.

Every time we put on a T-shirt or use a coffee mug, we are using a product of screen printing, which has brought artwork and advertising to the masses. Banners, logos, graphics, and art have all been created and replicated countless times as a result of this revised technology. Since the development of screen printing and the evolution away from silk, the technology has improved to include photographic printing processes to create works of art, namely those of Andy Warhol (mentioned above). This technology continues to bring familiar household names into our lives and beautiful works of art into our hearts. Although using a harsh and abrasive chemical process, the end result is one to warm the hearts and minds of past generations and futures generations of innovators.

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