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The Synergen Way
Persistent Media - Delivering Results over Time.
Persistent Media - an underutilized media channel:
Persistent media, sometimes called promotional products, is a physical medium. It is something you can touch and use over and over again.
Persistent media present TWO communication channels:
The promotional item itself speaks to the recipient at many different levels. The simplest level is the physical item itself, i.e. a good flashlight is a handy thing to have when you're in the dark.
However, a properly designed promotional campaign speaks on other levels as well. You can use the physical medium as a metaphor for your key benefits. Fur example, taking the same flashlight above...
Same product (flashlight), three different conceptual messages.
This added dimension is often overlooked when people think of promotional media. A properly designed and executed promotional campaign leverages the medium and the message to drive home your underlying concept in a powerful way.
Mass Media - a quick overview:
To provide a basis for comparison, here's a very brief overview of other common media channels:
Common mass media broadcast channels, such as TV, cable and radio are transitory and highly perishable - they exist for a brief period of time and then they are gone. Ad lifetime is measured in seconds or minutes.
Print advertising is a little better. You can hold a magazine or newspaper in your hand, but these publications are often thrown out or recycled in a relatively short period of time. Ad lifetime is measured in hours or days for most publications. Media such as the yellow pages obviously have a longer shelf life.
It is traditionally difficult to measure mass media channels to really understand ad campaign effectiveness and tie back ad expenditures directly to sales. Measures like 'rating points' and 'impressions' are imprecise (at best).
Worst of all, people are bombarded by a blizzard of media messages every day. Cutting through the clutter is getting harder and harder to do while the people you're trying to reach are getting more adept at ignoring you. Obviously, this is not good.
A Word about Product Quality:
By its very nature, the products used in any persistent media campaign are supposed to perform over time. There is one very simple truth about persistent media to remember:
The longer a product delivers value to the recipient,
the more cost effective the program is for you.
Therefore, you want to use products that are:
Nothing is more expensive than using cheap, inferior quality products
that are perceived as 'junk' by your clients/prospects!!!
When you give out 'junk', instead of building positive goodwill for your brand, people use 'transference' to assume your products and services are also inferior. And what is the last thing they see when the product hits the trash can? Your name. Ouch!
Key Question to Ask: Whose Interest is being Served?
Does this sound familiar?
"Coffee mugs are on special this week, so you should use mugs for your trade show."
"You're attending an event with 10,000 people, so you need 10,000 items to hand out."
"Here's a catalog - let me know what you like."
If so, grab your wallet and run for the hills! These are all great examples of how and why not to buy promotional products.
Starting with the product first is completely backwards. This is like buying airline tickets to New York before deciding where you want to go in the first place.
Effective promotional marketing requires an analysis of your goals and objectives.
At Synergen, we start with questions. Lots of them. We invest the time to understand your business needs and then we propose solutions. That's just the Synergen Way