Hey everyone! I'm glad to be back and cranking out ideas for my clients...I'll be posting to the blog regularly, keeping everyone up to date on new products and techniques for promotional merchandise. Big show next week in A.C., NJ, so stay tuned.
A funny thing happened to me last winter up in snowy VT, thought I would share it with you. I head up for an early spring boy's weekend every year, and we invariably hit a few of the famous micro-breweries for...lunch. Yeah. Anyway, we were hanging in one of them and the crew headed over to the brewery merchandise store. Lots of very cool items, I mustl admit. Bike jerseys, tees, bottle openers, ballcaps, etc. I happened to be wearing that week's swag selection (oh yeah, we style it every year), a bottle opener ballcap. Invented and perfected by some good friends out in CA, I've been a big fan of this item since its inception. That said, it only works as a promotional piece if you can get around the not-so-subtle "alcohol" connection. So here we are in a BREWERY that sells SWAG promoting their brand all day long. The perfect client??
I made the perfect pitch to the store manager (it wasn't hard, we were all wearing the unique checkerboard patterned caps). "You sell caps. You sell bottle openers. You could be selling caps WITH bottle openers...CHECK THIS OUT!!"
Now, I was looking for a big reaction but didn't get it. But she didn't kick us out, either. Not yet. She picked up the phone, punched up the CEO (sitting around in his Birkenstock's, I'm sure) and gave him the skinny. "You have to see this, boss." I'm thinking, "Slam dunk". He's thinking..."we don't want to promote drinking". I know that for a fact, because that's what he TOLD THE MANAGER.
My buddy Bill said it was the first time he had seen me rendered speechless. I mean, how do you come back to THAT?
