Promotional Bags and Gifts in Poetry

I’m off with my friend to a local Home Show

Whether we’ll buy something I really don’t know

One thing’s for certain we’ll get a Promotional Bag

Stuffed full of goodies making it sag

Once through the door we look for the stall

That gives away bags to hold our haul

Quickly we’re armed with the re-usable bag

Now we can wander collecting our swag

A pen from a lady selling fabrics for curtains

Nice one for lounge but not quite certain

But I’m armed with a sample to show to my Ben

I’ve got all her details clear there on my pen

We each get a keyring from a nice girl called Claire

She shows us her new range of relaxing arm chair

It can lift up your feet and lean back your head

We give it a try it’s just like being in bed

She gives us brochures which go in our bags

We notice a stall with nice rugs made of rags

Always keen to re-cycle we must take a look

Told they are made with old clothes and a hook

Given a pencil which we thought was quite good

With their details for contact on sustainable wood

The next gift we’re given is always my favourite of all

A promotional mug from a new cookware stall

My friend buys a cake tin from their expansive display

That along with her mug is packed safely away

We gather more gifts as we wander the around

Badges and stickers and bookmarks we’ve found

Our promotional bags are full to the brim

Time for home says my friend Kim

Over a cuppa I sift through my haul

Badges and stickers for Grandson Paul

A pen and leaflet for my lovely son Arthur

All the details of the kitchen he’s after

Just like to say to the businesses out there

Thank you for taking the trouble to spare

All these lovely gifts for me to share out

I’m sure to remember you without a doubt.

Maurice gets a Promotion for his Success with Promotional USBs

Following Maurice’s success with his message with promotional USBs in a bottle campaign and Gerald’s return from Tenerife a marketing meeting was called by Robert, the project manager.  Robert was a director of Global C.O.N.S. Ltd and had invited his American co directors, Richard and Edward, to attend the meeting.  Maurice had been invited to lunch with them prior to the meeting and since Gerald was en route from the airport to the office was not aware of events that had taken place in his absence.

Over lunch Maurice explained that he felt the company name was not really enhancing confidence in the product since timeshare was already in the headlines with a reputation for shady dealings and the letters C.O.N.S. realistically implanted the word Cons into the minds of prospective buyers which from a British point of view would mean they were about to be ripped off.  The Americans pointed out that Gerald had influenced them to use this name and Global Condominiums on Nice Sites Ltd was a bit of a mouthful  which is why it had been abbreviated.

Maurice then went on to say that Condominiums was an American word and it would be more likely that the British would relate to apartments.  However, he did feel that the company name should be changed because it was doing more harm than good.

The Americans commended Maurice on the success of his message in a bottle campaign not only because he had received such an enormous response from it but also because so many sales had since been converted.  The idea of using promotional USBs had been outstanding they said.

They then went on to ask who had been responsible for the Global Challenge drop card campaign and Maurice said that all direct mailing was handled by Gerald so he had probably overstepped the mark by sending out the promotional USBs in the bottles.  The overall response was that they Americans were all for people taking educated initiative and that he had done well.

As the meal progressed Maurice was asked about his family, his interests in general and his aspirations.  Maurice told them that he really enjoyed the challenges that each marketing campaign presented but felt that the company’s promotional gifts were really letting them down.  They were cheap, lacked quality and in many cases just weren’t appropriate to what the company was selling.  He would like to purchase his own promotional gifts and have his budget increased to do so.  He would also like to handle the direct mail since he was already handling most of the other marketing programs.  There wasn’t much feedback from the directors apart from the fact that they intended to discuss many of these aspects during the meeting.

After lunch they all made their way back to the office and as they entered the building, Gerald was standing in the foyer with his suitcases.  He seemed rather surprised that all the directors of the company were there and said that he would just freshen up and then he would join them in the conference room, asking if he could just have a quick word with Maurice before he went in.

Maurice followed Gerald into his office and Gerald told him to shut the door.  “Where have you been?” Gerald asked.

“I was invited out to lunch with the directors” Maurice responded

“And why exactly would they invite you out to lunch then?” sneered Gerald.

“Well, they were so impressed with the success of the mailing campaign that they just wanted to show their appreciation”, Maurice said.

“But it wasn’t your mailing campaign, it was mine” Gerald shouted, “I hope you put them straight on that because I made it clear to you that you weren’t going to take any credit for the Global Challenge”. 

“Oh yes”, Maurice responded smiling, “I made it very clear that the whole idea was yours from start to finish and that I had nothing to do with it”.

The meeting commenced at 3:30 pm and Robert apologised to everyone for the short notice they had all received but he felt it was important to iron out some issues within the Marketing Department that couldn’t wait.  He also formally thanked Maurice for showing such great initiative on his mailing campaign.  Gerald immediately interrupted, glaring at Maurice, and said that Maurice had not been responsible for the mailing campaign.  The Global Challenge has been entirely his own idea and Maurice had nothing to do with it.

The other directors looked at Gerald as Robert told him that they weren’t referring to the Global Challenge which had possibly been the worst marketing campaign not only in the history of the company but in all the years of their combined experience together.  2 million drop cards delivered with only one response was an abysmal result by anybody’s standards they said.

“Then what are you referring to?” Gerald asked.

“So you don’t know what is going on in your own department?” Robert asked.

Blustering and confused, Gerald went red in the face and struggled to answer. Robert then went on to explain what Maurice had achieved with his message in a bottle campaign.  He said that the idea of using promotional USBs for the company presentation rather than printed materials was nothing short of genius and would save a lot of money on printing costs in the future.

Gerald was speechless but eventually joined with the directors in congratulating Maurice.  Robert said that the company had decided to reward Maurice with a new company car, 20% increase in salary and a promotion to Assistant Marketing Director.  He advised Gerald that it might be appropriate to hand over the management of direct mail campaigns to Maurice since clearly he had a flair for getting it right, adding that they were going to increase Maurice’s budget  so that he had sufficient money to purchase promotional gifts of his choice for each of his marketing campaigns.

Maurice was then asked to leave the meeting as the directors wanted to speak privately with Gerald so Maurice thanked them and left.  Maurice was obviously grateful for all the concessions and rewards he had received by he really felt that the promotion was going to cause difficulties.  He would still be working under Gerald and he didn’t see how this was going to be possible considering that Gerald was probably, yet again in trouble with the directors.

Two hours later, Gerald arrived in Maurice’s office and was clearly furious.  “How dare you take it upon yourself to run a direct mail campaign without my knowledge” he stormed, “that is a complete breach of company rules and could have easily led to your dismissal.  Never mind that it worked out all right in the end, what if it hadn’t?  Whose neck do you think would have been on the line? I can’t see why you should be rewarded for blatantly breaking the rules.  I’ll be watching you from now on and trust me, one wrong move and you’re out.”  With that Gerald strode out of the office slamming the door behind him.

Maurice smiled as he looked through the Zest Promotional website and made a list of promotional gifts that he would need for his existing and new campaigns.

Maurice the Marketing Manager’s Success with Promotional USBs

Having blown 20% of his marketing budget on a mail drop of plastic bottles containing promotional USBs without authorisation Maurice couldn’t sleep after they had been posted.  Although he had no real doubt that his “Message in a Bottle” campaign would produce good results, there is always a nagging doubt that something might go wrong for any marketing manager when embarking on something new and innovative.

The other thing that bothered Maurice was that if he got the response that he was hoping for, it would mean that the telesales department would be taking a high volume of calls and since Gerald had delivered all ofhis Global Challenge drop cards on the same day that the bottles had gone out,Gerald would most definitely be hovering around that department to measure the success of his own campaign.

The drop cards and the bottles with the promotional USBs inside had gone out on a Wednesday so there would be a time lapse because the bottles had been posted through the Post Office,whereas the drop cards had been manually posted through doors.  On Thursday morning Gerald had alerted the telesales team that they could expect a high volume of calls.  By midday no calls had been received and Gerald went out to lunch.  Maurice took this opportunity of calling a telesales team meeting, since the 200 strong team was his responsibility, and he told them that if they received any calls regarding a message in a bottle they would very likely be asked to book inspection trips by the callers.  Since the company presentation was on the USBs only people who were genuinely interested in what the company had to offer would call. The team should tell each caller that the USBs were theirs to keep as promotional gifts from the company. He also asked them to be discreet about it since it was a surprise new campaign that Gerald knew nothing about.  Loyal to Maurice, the team agreed because they weren’t too keen on Gerald anyway.

On Friday there were still no calls and although he didn’t show it, Maurice was sure that Gerald must be worried.  Gerald was going to Tenerife that weekend so Maurice agreed to come in to monitor what was happening in the telesales department and keep him posted by email. Giving up his weekend didn’t matter to Maurice because he was positive that by Saturday or Sunday calls would be coming in for his own campaign.

On Saturday at 11 am the phones began to ring and they continued to ring throughout Sunday.  The callers were impressed by the bottles and the presentation on the promotional USBs and wanted to know more about “holiday ownership”.  The fact that they were allowed to keep the USBs as promotional gifts to use as they pleased further impressed them. Over that weekend more than 1,000 calls were handled and 400 inspection trips booked.

 Late on Sunday evening one call came in from someone who had received one of Gerald’s dropcards.  They wanted to know what timeshare was.  When it was explained, the caller very politely said that he lived in a council house and was unemployed hence he would never have enough money to purchase timeshare no matter how much he might want to.  Maurice couldn’t believe that Gerald had not chosen his drop areas more intelligently.

Gerald decided to spend a week in Tenerife and Maurice’s stress level went down.  Apparently there was a problem with the OPCs (Offsite Property Consultants) that needed sorting out.  The OPC team would trawl the beaches and busy areas of the resort handing out promotional gifts and vouchers for the water park if couples agreed to sit through 2 hours of timeshare presentation.  They were complaining that the promotional gifts were “rubbish” and they needed some higher quality giveaways such as promotional umbrellas that would act as parasols or possibly some promotional beach bags or towels.

At the end of the week 3,500 calls had been taken in response to the Message in a Bottle campaign. Even Maurice’s marketing agency friend was surprised that he had got a7% response from what effectively was a direct mail drop and that he had converted 40% of the calls into inspection trips.  The Global Challenge drop cards had one call in response, just one and that was only to ask what timeshare was.

The American Project Manager, Robert, had been in the office all week and was astounded by the sheer volume of calls and bookings and thought that it had been in response to Gerald’s campaign.  Maurice felt it was time to own up and he sat down with the project manager and told him that he was very sorry for having risked so much on the campaign without authorisation but he knew that Gerald would never agree to it.  He explained that he felt that his creativity was being stifled by not having control of the mail programs and in a moment of madness he had followed through with a novel idea albeit that it was well thought out.

Robert was a friendly kind of guy and told Maurice not to worry.  If sales were converted from the inspection trips that were booked he could rely on a new company car, a bonus and an increase in salary, not to mention promotion.

“But what about Gerald” Maurice asked “after all he is my boss and I shouldn’t really be speaking directly to you?”

“Leave that with me” Robert said, patting Maurice on the back.

Find out what happens next week when Gerald returns………….

Maurice Fights Back with Promotional USBs

As followers of last week’s Maurice the Marketing Manager’s story will know the Marketing Director of Global C.O.N.S. Ltd, Gerald Lightfinger dropped a massive clanger when he released thousands of promotional, helium filled balloons into the air over Royston in Hertfordshire hoping that he could entice people to purchase timeshare by offering them a 4 day break in exchange for the promotional key rings that were attached to the balloons.

Promotional Key Rings Exchange Fiasco

A few weeks after the promotional key rings exchange fiasco Gerald came sauntering into Maurice’s office, seemingly without a care in the world.  Considering that Maurice knew that Gerald had been hauled over the coals by his American project manager boss for losing the company thousands of pounds in bulk purchased airline tickets, Maurice was somewhat surprised to see him in such a buoyant mood.

“I’ve got a brilliant idea” Gerald said.  Inwardly groaning Maurice braced himself for more idiocy.  “You know what a mess we made of the balloon thing?” Gerald continued and Maurice wondered where the “we” figured into it, “Well what we need to do is stop being ashamed of what we sell”.

“How do you mean?” responded Maurice.

Promotional Gifts for Holiday Ownership

Gerald then began to explain how in all the Global C.O.N.S. publicity, advertising and literature timeshare was referred to as “holiday ownership”.  There was a very good reason for this, as Maurice was acutely aware.  Over the past few months more and more cowboys were jumping on the bandwagon of what originally was a very good investment.  Global’s timeshare resorts were in fact luxury units and well-built but when the cowboys had realised the sheer volume of money that could be made from it, the problems began.  Sub-standard units were being sold at anything between £4,000 and £13,000 per week for 51 weeks of the year.  The price varied usually on the season but in Tenerife since there was no winter, one apartment could conceivably sell for £555,000.   Building costs were around £25,000 so it didn’t take a genius to work out that if you had a resort with 200 apartments on it you were going to become multi-millionaires very quickly.  With high pressure sales tactics the cowboys launched themselves into selling poorly constructed apartments and the annual maintenance fees that owners were expected to pay became extortionate.  Hence the timeshare industry attracted the attention of the media and the ensuing bad press led a number of companies to drop the word “timeshare” from all their promotional gifts and literature.

“What we need to do”, said Gerald “is to have a drop card printed with a gauntlet on it, you know like the ones knights in armour used to wear.”  Maurice nodded hanging on his every word but not with enthusiasm.  “Then we’ll ask punters to take the Global Timeshare Challenge and sit through a timeshare demonstration, after which we’ll get their bums on the plane seats which will make up for last month’s little problem.”  As Maurice recalled the problem hadn’t been so little in that it had cost the company over £175,000 in lost airline tickets not to mention the cost of releasing all those balloons.

“So are you suggesting that we print the word “timeshare” on these drop cards?” Maurice asked.

“Yeah, that’s the whole point of it” Gerald replied slapping his hand down hard on Maurice’s desk.  “We’ve got a good product, we’re not cowboys and we shouldn’t be ashamed of what we sell to the extent that we can’t even mention its name.”

“With respect, I really don’t think this is going to work especially with so much bad press flying around at the moment.”

“That’s your problem Maurice; you are always so bloody negative.  That’s why I am the marketing director and you are only the manager”, Gerald sneered “let’s face it what do you know about direct mail and drop cards anyway?”  More than an ex Butlins redcoat Maurice thought.  “I’m off to the printers and when this is the roaring success that I know it will be, don’t think you will be taking any credit for it.  I’m going to get some promotional gifts sorted out too with the Global Timeshare Challenge printed on them.  Mark my words we’ll have a whole theme going here that will last for years.”

As Gerald strutted out of his office Maurice thanked God that he did not have responsibility for the direct mail and drop cards campaigns.  Although he’d grumbled about it in the past he knew that this latest crazy idea of Gerald’s would cause heads to roll and luckily on this one Maurice’s head was safe.  However, Maurice had been toying with an idea of his own over recent weeks that he felt had every chance of being successful.

Promotional USBs to get the Message Across

Maurice’s budget was £1 million pounds that had to stretch across all of his 14 marketing campaigns that included exhibitions which were always expensive, so although it sounded a lot of money in reality it wasn’t considering what he had to expend.  He’d always thought that posting a message in a bottle through people’s doors, with one of the range of promotional gifts inside the bottle, would work.   With a nice label of a beach and palm trees overlooking the sea he really believed that the bottles would be opened after they were delivered but because he didn’t handle direct mail, it wasn’t possibly to do.

Maurice looked at his budget and then decided to do something that might easily get him fired.  He juggled some figures around to free up some money and then he called a printer friend of his to get some quotes for small screw cap plastic bottles, of a size that would easily fit through a letterbox when encased in a cardboard tube.  Promotional USB Memory Sticks & Flash Drives had only just come on the market then and were quite expensive but he talked to another mate about that and arranged to have 50,000 promotional USBs printed with the message in a bottle theme and the company presentation loaded onto the flash drives.

On the day that Gerald had his 2 million drop cards delivered all over the North West of England, Maurice posted 50,000 plastic bottles in cardboard tubes, all containing promotional USBs to certain areas of Wales.  He had blown 20% of his budget.

Find out what happened next week.

Maurice the Marketing Manager’s Problem with cheap Promotional Pens

Responsible for 14 out of the 21 marketing initiatives that his company was running simultaneously Maurice the Marketing Manager sat in his office twiddling with one of the promotional pens that someone in the buying department has ordered.  Maurice knew that the company he worked for, which dealt in co-ownership, freehold and holiday ownership property in various countries of the world expected great things from its marketing department. 

Certain resentment had been insinuating its way into Maurice’s mind over the past few months.  He was expected to make his 14 marketing programs work yet he had no control over the purchasing of tools to do the job.  When he’d brought this up in the last marketing meeting, stating that at the very minimum the company should be using good quality promotional pens, he was told that “a bad workman always blames his tools.”  He’d even demonstrated how easy it was for the cheap promotional pens they were using to break by gripping one in his hand and using his thumb to snap it.  The response to that was that no one would hold a pen in that way and in any event they had been really cheap so hadn’t cut into the marketing budget too much.  “Exactly my point”, Maurice grumbled heading back to his office.

The Marketing Director of Global C.O.N.S. Ltd, Gerald Lightfinger, had once been a Butlins Redcoat.  Maurice had no idea how Gerald had met the American owners of the company but he’d joined Global as a sales manager and then, due to his outstanding sales abilities, had been promoted to Marketing Director.  On the day that promotion took effect the company lost an excellent head of sales and created a poor Marketing Director but Gerald managed to overcome his inadequacies by making sure that the blame for anything that went wrong fell firmly and squarely on the shoulders of Maurice, his marketing manager.

The name of the company had been Gerald’s idea too, convincing the Americans that British people would associate C.O.N.S. with its non abbreviated name of Condominiums on Nice Sites.  Before Maurice had been employed Gerald had tried one or two things to create particular interest in the company’s timeshare developments. 

Marketing Campaign 1 had been an unmitigated disaster although had Gerald been an experienced marketer it could have succeeded.  He released thousands of helium filled balloons in the company colours of blue and yellow into the air over Royston in Hertfordshire.  Attached to the ribbons on the balloons were promotional key rings with the company details printed on them and plastic keys attached.  At the same time a radio campaign was running describing how these balloons were going to be released on a certain day and that if one of them landed in your garden you should bring the key ring with key into the company head office in Royston and you would be given a prize.

What Gerald hadn’t thought about was that these balloons would not just land in Royston, indeed they landed in all sorts of places including gardens nationwide, some fell in the sea and caused the company all sorts of problems with conservationists and some rose so high that air traffic control went bananas as the balloons got tangled on plane wings and on one occasions narrowly missed being sucked into an aircraft engine.

The company’s switchboard was jammed with callers all wanting to trade in their promotional key rings for prizes, not to mention complaints from electricity and telephone service providers about the balloons being entangled on their wires.  You’d be surprised what can happen when you release 250,000 balloons into the sky.  Several attached themselves to the flagpole at Buckingham Palace which didn’t go down to well.

Gerald couldn’t believe the amount of callers and apparently strutting around the office dismissed the complaints and concentrated on his enormous success in getting people to call in to claim the prizes. 

The prizes were all the same - 4 days inspection trip to Tenerife in the company’s flagship timeshare development in Las Americas.  However, many of the callers wanted to know what the prize was before making a trip to Royston to trade in their promotional key rings.  One in particular, from France was insistent on knowing.  Gerald advised all the telesales staff to tell them that they had won a 4 day break in Tenerife and he then set about buying bulk tickets from airlines.

Having purchased thousands of tickets, people started to arrive for the trade in.  Some had made appointments and others just arrived randomly.  In true Butlins Redcoat style Gerald herded them into a room for the 2 hour “holiday ownership” sales pitch.  In a 3 month period he only managed to book 100 people out to Tenerife and lost the company thousands of pounds as his bulk airline ticket deal expired.  There were some pretty angry people too, who had travelled all sorts of distances to get to Royston and left the office with one of the company’s cheap promotional pens instead of a 4 day break in Tenerife.  When they found out they were expected to purchase timeshare they just didn’t want to go.

Join us next week for the next thrilling instalment with more blunders from Gerald and Maurice’s determination to be recognised for his achievements.