Promotional products are sometimes-reviled cheap goods, sometimes occasion-related impulse generators, sometimes-original purchase incentives, sometimes-fascinating "long sellers". However, even today, it is impossible to imagine these colorful and multi-layered worlds of merchandise without print products.
Repeatedly, there are competitions and awards for special promotional products, such as the "
Promotional Gift Award" initiated by the Cologne-based publishing house
WA Media. The 2023 competition, which is being held for the 20
th time, attracted just over 100 entries. 84 applicants (suppliers, retailers, agencies and companies from the advertising industry) from twelve European countries put their products to the test this time. Among the 35 winners in seven categories (giveaway, communicative product, premium product, special design, best practice, merchandising, and finishing technology) are some interesting print applications using paper, cardboard and paperboard.
Flexible pop-up display
Proramillenote developed the adhesive notepads "Meet" and "Meet Box" along with a pop-up mechanism from a Post-it notepad. With one swing, a small display surprisingly pops up. The additional space provides room for branding, advertising or information about products and the box can be repurposed as a medicine or product package.
With the Pavel Nobilis paper "brand anchor", the office supplies specialist won a "Promotional Gift Award" in the
"Communicative Product" category. This promotional item is made of recycled paper with water-based adhesive, and everything is completely recyclable. Both the printing and the shape, size and number of sticky notes as well as the design can be flexibly customized.
Audio plus video plus print
Sand gently trickles through your fingers, a fresh island breeze blows around your nose, while the screen shows impressions of Ibiza. The "Videobox Hippiements Village" is designed to create vacation experiences and offer multi-sensory infotainment. Opening the box launches the image film of a real estate provider, which transports recipients to the luxurious vacation resort on Ibiza in line with the printed slogan "Dreams come true".
In addition, there are three glass vials embedded in the body of the box made of laminated chromo-sulfate cardboard – filled with sand, salt and island fragrance. The box, which is climate-neutrally produced in Germany by
Audio Logo, thus won a "Promotional Gift Award" in the
"custom-made" category for the combination of multisensory content with audio, video and print.
Color game from the chiller cabinet
Sports fans could literally show their colors for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Bartenbach and
Homann Feinkost "prepared" the refrigerated products of Homann's Nordsee brand with promotional fan make-up suitable for cold chains. This make-up, applied by screen-printing to a folding card, can be picked up with a moistened finger and used, for example, for flag designs on the face. However, neither the stiffness of the material nor the offset printing and screen-printing could be allowed to suffer from the temperatures and humidity in the cold store.
The right solution after several tests was a 170 g/m
2 image printing paper matt coated with a special dispersion soft matt coating. The advertising message could also be placed over a large area and remain with the consumer for a long time. This won a "Promotional Gift Award" in the "Best Practice" category.
Print mailing for dogs
Dogs and their owners are usually choosy about food brands. That's why
Josera petfood launched a food sampling campaign. Dog owners can order food samples along with a voucher via a dedicated landing page and try out the food free of charge. The mailing is individualized from the box to the cover letter to the voucher (dog breed and dog name are printed on the box) and even geo-individualized, so that exact directions to the nearest local retailer are included. Reportedly, more than 600,000 addressees have benefited from the campaign. Partners in the campaign are
Deutsche Post,
Iocr and
Grunewald. The campaign won a "Promotional Gift Award" in the "Best Practice" category.
What can be seen in these diverse promotional items – sometimes design and form combined with utility, sometimes a clever mix of different (communication) media, or the incomparable association of look and feel – often applies to many other printed products as well: Today, several marketing and communication channels have to be intelligently coordinated in order to generate attention with products and services and to really reach customers and consumers. Modern dialog marketing cannot do without print.
Your
Frank Baier,
Editor-in-Chief "Bindereport"