Time for a Treat!

The key to any successful diet is moderation. How do I know this? On Oprah, Tobey Maquire said that when he had to lose weight from a previous role to bulk up for one of the Spiderman movies, the one thing he had to do was eat ice cream every Sunday. Alright, so my source isn't exactly the AMA (American Medical Association) or the NETA (National Exercise Trainers Association) or any other acronym. But he's right. A diet will never be successful unless you reward yourself with a treat once in a while. So after getting through a long hard week of salads, grilled chicken and fish, whole grains and more water than you thought you could consume in your life, sit down and have something yummy. Even Jesse, Motivators own gym/body building enthusiast, has Burger King on the weekends. Hopefully the few diet and exercise tips I've shelled out this week have helped. And just remember, promotional items are a great way to get people motivated!

It's Bowling Time!

It's hard to believe that Thursday has rolled around again. Just last Thursday everyone was spending times with their families and stuffing themselves with turkey. So after a week off, the games resume and the Motivators Bowling League takes to the lanes again! We started our league back in September and now there are only a few more nights left until we're done for the year. We've all had a great time and we've all really improved since we started. One of my first games I bowled the worst game of my life with a final score of 22. Since then I've gotten my average up to a 98, after breaking 100 with my last two games. Of course, there are several people that much better than I am, but our main goal is just to have some fun. The competition is pretty tight and everyone's team spirit is in full force. A couple of the teams put their team names on custom t-shirts. Others have bowling ball stress relievers sitting on their desks. Plus it's a great way of exercising since bowling burns about 211 calories per hour, a great fact I found over at Eddie on Everything. There's a complete list of all physical activities and how many calories you can burn from doing them for an hour.

Celestial Seasonings Takes a Shot at Starbucks

Keeping in line with my trend of dieting and weight loss this week, I found this print ad from Celestial Seasonings Tea over at AdRants. It's not specifically calling out Starbucks on their deliciously fatty beverages, but if I had to guess I'd say it's pretty clear who they're emulating.




Starbucks may be delicious but it's also crazy high in calories. I'm not going to list them, because I feel like sparing you all the trauma of reading things like that. It's like when Ruby Tuesdays put the calorie count of all their foods on the menu and you just whimpered an ordered a trip to the salad bar. As difficult as it is to hear Starbucks Baristas singing about Gingerbread and Egg Nog Lattes, it's worth it for your waist line to switch from your travel mugs to polycarbonate water bottles.

Sweating Out The Calories with a Custom Yoga Mat

A Yoga studio with an already established member base sought to increase the popularity of it's high temperature yoga class. According to Wikipedia, Bikram Yoga is practiced in a room heated to 105 degrees. The heat causes participants to sweat more and lose more weight. In order to increase inquiries about the class, members were given custom yoga mats. The firey design was eye-catching and there was a 25% increase in membership.

Oh it's that time again.

I found it only fitting to blog about this promotion for a gym after the Thanksgiving weekend. Everyone has probably consumed more than their fair share of delicious food this past weekend. From turkey with all the trimmings to pies with extra whipped cream and ice cream, now is the time when everyone feels like they need a Thanksgiving diet. This gym did a promotion by putting promotional decals of scales around malls to advertise their new location in the neighborhood. According to research, inquiries were up 25% after the first week. While I myself actually broke down and went to the gym this morning, I highly doubt that there were others who were so inclined.

World's Most Brilliant Invention!

It's a napkin jotter. Several people are prone to writing down ideas on whatever pieces of paper they can find. Personally, I enjoy my Sticky book. Of course now my desk is covered with Post-It notes, but that's to be expected. The napkin jotter is actually made of napkins! So you get that brilliant idea feeling everytime you write something down. I'm pretty sure I'm in love with this product. Now if only all promotional jotters could be this cool.

Hot, Hot, Hot!

I just can't seem to get away from bathroom promotions. The bathroom appliance guilty of being used for a promotional item? A hand dryer.The advertising geniuses behind Wolf's Hot Sauce created this poster of a man looking like his mouth is on fire. Right beneath his mouth? You guessed it. The jets of the hand dryer. Now I like spicy things as much as the next person, but the look on this man's face really makes me think twice about pouring this stuff on my tacos. Assuming that that's the point of the ad, yet another creative promotion! While I'm usually the first to offer the option of the chile pepper stress reliever, I'm not going to argue. This works.

Calling David Copperfield...

This interesting idea is courtesy of an ad agency in New Zealand. They needed to promote the 99% fat-free smoothies being sold by New Zealand Naturals, a smoothie shop that they represent. They hired a magician to make a girl float in mid-air while drinking the smoothie. They set up the "floater" in select shopping hubs that were frequented by health conscious people. The stunt made the local news and increased brand awareness by 62%. Interesting choice of a promotional product, but it worked. That's all that matters.

I've been shot. No, I've been stuck.

In an effort to find illegal handguns, Toronto Crime Stoppers decided to enlist the public's help. They placed promotional decals on glass doors, windows, and walls. The imprint of a bullet hole was placed on the decal to make it look as though the glass had been shot. In this case the purpose of the promotional product was to send a message to the general public. It was also to offer $500 to anyone who had any tips regarding illegal handguns.

Don't Drink and Fly

So even though Halloween was a few weeks ago, I just caught this great promotion that was done in Guatemala. Apparently, the last three months of the year are filled with celebrations and drinking. To help prevent drunk driving accidents around the time of Halloween, witches were attached to electrical posts to look like they had crashed their brooms into them. A promotional sign was placed over the "crashed witches" that read "This Halloween Don't Drink and Drive." And I thought the people who printed the Don't Drink and Fly napkins at party city were creative.

California Roll, Tuna Roll...Drum Roll?

If there's one thing that I love, it's Asian food. Fried won tons, beef lo mein, sushi...it's all delicious. So I had to talk about this fun promotion using chopsticks at an Asian restaurant. Chopsticks are seemingly easy to use, once you get the hang of them. I struggled for months when I first start and many a dumpling was lost in my trials and tribulations with these tricky utensils. A company that specialized in drum lessons realized something else: chopsticks look similar to drum sticks. So they created 1,000 custom packages with instructions on them. The instructions taught the user, not how to eat with the chopsticks, but rather how to play a decent beat on their plates. These are the kind of promotions that really are attention grabbers. They didn't use regular promotional items like stress relievers or promotional pens, but instead, they took something uncommonly associated with their product and made it work. Branding and marketing at it's finest if you ask me.

Holy Promotional Stickers Batman!

So I've had my morning eggnog latte (which was strangely light on the 'nog) and I've discussed last night's hysterical episode of Chuck with a few coworkers. I don't know if it's the lack of caffeine in my latte, or something else, but I'm pretty sure that this is the most brilliant promotion that I've seen in some time. The promotion was done by TV2 for Batman begins. They placed bat shaped stickers on lights in the ground, so that when they were turned on the Bat Signal illuminated the sky. That just proves that sometimes you don't even need promotional products to make a great promotion work if you've got a bright idea.

Promotional Products Highlighted in Z100's Morning Zoo Phone Tap!

This morning, I happened to catch the daily phone tap on Z100. Z100 is the number one Top 40 station here in NY, and every morning they pull a prank phone call on someone. This morning, the Zoo's own "Skeery" Jones called a woman and attempted to get her to donate money to a charity for war veterans. He played Mr. Michael Oppenheimer, a telemarketer who doesn't give up. In a monotone voice, he repeatedly asked her to donate money for a good cause. He did what many charities do, and explained that if she donated a certain amount of money, she would receive promotional products. If she was to donate $25, she would receive a promotional tote bag. For $100 she would get the tote bag, and a promotional umbrella. Finally for $150, she would get both those promotional products, as well as the dvd set of How the West Was Won. The woman hung up on Mr. Michael Oppenheimer several times, and finally he admitted that it was all a joke. Normally promotional productsare an excellent incentive to give out to those who donate money. However, when the intent is to drive someone nuts with a prank phone call, it's clear to see why the woman was not interested!

Reduce Carbon Emissions with...Chocolate?

To celebrate Organic Harvest Month (yet another month, I haven't heard of), a company callede Seeds of Change gave away free pedicab rides. In addition to that passengers got to sample some yummy organic chocolate. Food always works as a great promotional giveaway, no matter what time of year it is. People love getting a tasty treat, especially if it's a promotional gift.

Promoting Prison Hospitality

This luxury hotel in Boston hosts all the amenities one wants in a luxury hotel. It's boasts an elegant design, a $5,500 a night Presidential suite and a gourmet Italian restaurant. Oh, and it used to be a prison.

Architects went to great lengths to preserve the stone intricacies and the original design of the former prison. Wrought iron railings bring decadence to the former catwalks where guards used to patrol, making sure that no inmates escaped.

It's a beautiful, luxury design but one wonders if it's guests will be able to get past the fact that their swanky dwellings once housed some of Boston's most notorious criminals.

Because the hotel is so luxurious, I can't imagine it being promoted with simple promotional products or corporate gifts. Maybe the property managers could pick up some ideas from a hospitality trade show, but in all honesty I think that the story of "the luxury hotel that used to be a prison" will peak enough interest, no promotional merchandise necessary.

Want Tradeshow Traffic? Get a Giant Tiger

So with tradeshow season just around the corner, it's time to start thinking about how to draw tradeshow traffic to your booth. I was talking in a forum the other day about the best tradeshow giveaways and everyone had different opinions. Some people thought that promotional noisemakers were the best bet, while others thought that they were obnoxious and annoying. There's always the cheap trade show giveaways, but people know they're cheap and there's a chance that they will not respond to something like a simple promotional pen.



The Ad Tech NY tradeshow recently had a booth that received plenty of attention. The reason: a guy dressed as a giant tiger was recruiting passers-by. Tiger shaped promotional stressballs would make great tradeshow promotional items.

NBC goes Green!!!

While watching my new Monday night lineup last night, I couldn't help but notice that NBC is really pushing the "Go Green" phenomenon. Each TV show had it's cast featured in a segment about how to be environmentally conservation. Heroes had a segment where the cast was in NYC to plant trees. I missed Journeyman's segment, only because I don't watch that show, but my favorite was the cast of Chuck. Joshua Gomez (in character as Morgan Grimes) talked about how he works to save the planet, while Adam Baldwin (in character as Casey) put him down. The funniest part of the whole segment had to be this.

Morgan: Well, I drive a hybrid.
Casey: It's not a hybrid, it's a bike. You ride a bike.

In addition to these segments, it appears that the whole Thursday night lineup will have it's episodes dedicated to environmental issues. Al Gore will be gues starring on 30 Rock, and in classic Janitor fashion, Neil Flynn's character on Scrubs has a great line. "Give a hoot. Don't litter."

Personally, I enjoy the push for the earth friendly cause. It's much better than the major push they did last week for Jerry Seinfeld in Bee Movie. Really, that was useless.

So with NBC pushing as hard as they are, I'm hoping to see a peak in environmentally friendly promotional products. There are some great "green" promotional products, including organic promotional products, as well as many recycled promotional products.

If the major networks are going green, everyone has to follow suit, right? I'm much more apt to "go green" rather than I was during the Bee Movie push. That just made me want to get a can of Raid.

Great Ad for Seatbelt Safety

I've been unfortunate enough to have been in two particularly bad car accidents in my lifetime. I remember, years ago, when I was taking Driver's Ed our teacher asked if we all wore our seatbelts all the time. Most people answered they wore it in the front seat, but not in the back. The three of us who answered that regardless of where we were sitting we were buckled anyway, all shared a common trait. We had each been in a car accident and a seatbelt had saved our lives. So when I saw this ad that had been done to promote seatbelt safety, I knew I had to share it. The designers painted a luggage conveyer belt to look like a road, and added the message "Don't Let the Road Claim Your Life. Belt Up." Pretty powerful statement if you ask me. Granted, this isn't the type of ad that you could easily attach a promotional product to, but we've got some great ones that would work with this. There's the Promotional Accident Investigation Kit or the Auto Emergency Kit.

Custom Puzzles Make an Impact

Here's a great ad done in the form of a custom puzzle. It's the type of puzzle that requires a piece to be missing in order for it to be completed. The ad agency decided to use that and creates a very powerful message. The text on the back talks about the message, but the front of this custom game really says it all.

Office Halloween Parties!

So yesterday evening my house was absolutely bombarded by trick-or-treaters. I wish. The grand total of doorbell rings was 2 and I was left with 3 massive bags of candy, which is not exactly what I needed. What I do have however, are some excellent pictures of the Motivators Halloween Extravaganza. It was a great time that everyone enjoyed. Believe it or not, we got plenty of work done regardless of all the fun events going on.

Here's our first place costume winner, Theresa! She came as a birthday gift and in return she won a gift card to Target! She was also a winner in one of our raffles and she won a set of promotional candles.



Here's first place winner Theresa and our second place winner, Joann. At first, I was positive she was a tree but I was mistaken. She was, in fact, a leaf blower. Her prize was a promotional mug filled with candy, and a usb lava lamp.



And finally, in third place, was Bill who came dressed as Dwight from the hit TV shoiw, The Office. Again, this was another one I guessed wrong, as I thought he was playing the "stapler guy" from Office Space. He also won a promotional mug.


In addition to the costume contest, we had a Trick or Treat mystery raffle! Staff members were asked to put their name in a cauldron in front of Mystery Box 1 or Mystery Box 2. The winner of the treat box, which was filled with all sorts of yummy snacks and candy was our receptionist Jeanette! The winner of the trick box, was Sabrina in accounting. She won a whole box of promotional products imprinted with our logo.