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Friday
September 3, 2010

Top 10 Sexiest Celebrity Marketers

Filed under: Uncategorized

In this month’s issue of Successful Promotions, our editors want to know: Who are the 10 sexiest celebrity marketers out there today? So without further ado, I present the Top 10 list of the Sexiest Celebrity Marketers:

Jennifer Aniston. The former Friends star is promoting her new scent, Lolavie, and appearing in Smart Water campaigns.

Jennifer Aniston


Patrick Dempsey. “Dr. McDreamy” is the spokesman for Versace and appears in ads for Serengeti eyewear and Unscripted, a line of colognes for Avon.

Patrick Dempsey


Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino. The ab-fabulous Jersey Shore star charges $7,500 and up for an event appearance sure to attract the paparazzi.

Mike The Situation Sorrentino


Lady Gaga. The Twitterific pop sensation is now creative director of Polaroid, and has lent her name and image to Virgin Mobile, Monster Cable and Viva Glam by MAC Cosmetics.

Lady Gaga


Cristiano Ronaldo. The Portuguese soccer stud is the official worldwide spokesmodel for Emporio Armani underwear and Armani Jeans.

Cristiano Ronaldo


Megan Fox: The star of the blockbuster Transformers is the face of luxury brand Armani.

Megan Fox


Isaiah Mustafa: Portrayed as “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” the former NFL player helped Old Spice cologne become the number-one all-time most-viewed sponsored channel on YouTube.

Isaiah Mustafa


Sandra Bullock: The Oscar winner is the face of Artistry Crème LuXury, an Amway company that hopes its connection to the A-lister will elevate its brand status.

Sandra Bullock


Scarlett Johansson: The starlet evokes Marilyn Monroe in Dolce & Gabbana perfume and makeup ads, and is the new face of Moët & Chandon champagne.

Scarlett Johansson


Paris Hilton: The hotel heiress lent her mug to campaigns for Guess and restaurant chain Carl’s Jr. and reportedly gets up to $500,000 for appearances.

Paris Hilton

Though I don’t agree with most of the women on this list, I do think one is ULTRA sexy, but I’m not gonna say who! (The men? Yeah, I guess they’re OK, but I don’t really care, y’know.)

What do you think? Post comments below.

–Vin “The Situation” Deez

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Wednesday
September 1, 2010

Wearables Best Dressed

Filed under: General

One of this month’s Wearables magazine feature stories focuses on those that not only sell fashion apparel, but also look the part. Introducing images of the 10 most stylish people in the industry!

David Frank
National Manager of Promotional Sales and Marketing, BuiltNY (asi/42422)

David Frank

 


Bo Hwang
Account Executive, Boxercraft (asi/41325)

 

Bo Hwang

 

 

Rob Watson
President, Media Tree (asi/70303)

Rob Watson

 

 

Peggy Peugh
Sales Representative Halo/Lee Wayne (asi/356000)

Peggy Peugh

 

 

Melissa Cantor
Sales and Marketing, Poly-Pak (asi/81350)

Melissa Cantor

 

 

Cindy Jorgenson
Salesperson/Interaction Specialist, Brown & Bigelow (asi/148500)

Cindy Jorgensen

 

 

Jim Sheets
President, Jimco Promotional Products (asi/234900)

Jim Sheets

 

 

Paul Kory
Director of Sales, Vantage Apparel (asi/93390)

Paul Kory

 


Kris Robinson
Executive Vice President, PromoShop (asi/300446)

 

Kris Robinson

 


Laura Holt
Vice President of the West Region, Geiger (asi/202900)

 

Read the entire article in this month’s Wearables mag.

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Wednesday
September 1, 2010

Nominate the Supplier Global Resource Sales Rep of the Year!

Filed under: Uncategorized

Guest blog from Supplier Global Resource Editor Michele Bell …

Supplier Global Resource, the industry’s only magazine dedicated to ad specialty suppliers, is holding its inaugural Supplier Sales Rep of the Year contest to recognize outstanding performance, exemplary service and top-notch professionalism.

Do you work with a supplier sales rep who’s gone above and beyond for you this year? Do you have a supplier partner who always puts you and your customers’ needs first and has a “do whatever it takes” attitude to make you shine?

If you know a perfect contender, e-mail the nominee’s name and details regarding what makes him or her award-worthy to Michele Bell, editor of Supplier Global Resource (mbell@asicentral.com), by September 15, 2010. The winner will be profiled in ASI’s magazines, receive an array of awesome prizes and get to bask in his or her own fabulousness for the year!

Best of luck!
Michele Bell, editor
Supplier Global Resource

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Wednesday
September 1, 2010

California Bill to Ban Plastic Bags Fails

Filed under: Uncategorized

If you’ve been paying attention to environmental news lately, you know that a bill that passed the state Assembly in California in June was up for approval by the state Senate yesterday. The bill, which — had it become a law — would have banned plastic bags from grocery stores, was voted down yesterday by a 21-14 margin late Tuesday night.

Had it passed, the Governator even said he would’ve signed it into law, thus making California the first state to ban single-use bags from grocery stores.

Read the entire story here.

Here at ASICentral, we want to know what you think? Take our poll, below, or simply post a comment to this post.


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Tuesday
August 31, 2010

Tip of the Day - 10 Ways to Increase Email Open Rates

Filed under: Tip of the Day

Here are 10 insider tips for crafting e-mails that will increase your open rate – and get customers and prospects really interested in you.

  1. Choose your subject wisely. Your e-mail recipient sees two key details before determining whether to open and read your e-mail: your name as the sender and the e-mail’s subject line.
  2. Grab your reader’s attention quickly with a clear and concise message. The first line of your e-mail should be consistent with your subject. Otherwise, your readers may think the subject was just a red herring or get impatient and move on from your e-mail almost immediately. You basically have 15 to 20 seconds of your readers’ attention.
  3. Know your readers. Include content that your readers want to read. If you repeatedly send them things they didn’t ask for, you risk having them unsubscribe from your list, and then you’ve lost them forever.
  4. Use strategic formatting: boldface, bullet points and subheads. Various studies have shown that most people scan words online, rather than read them. Use boldface to stress key ideas or subheads to draw the reader into a longer e-mail. Bullet points and numbered lists can delineate multiple ideas in a scan-friendly fashion. For more information on how people read things online, check out respected online consultant Jakob Nielsen’s work at www.useit.com.
  5. Include a call to action and response device. Why are you e-mailing the recipient? Is it to get them to buy something? Do you want them to learn more about a product?
  6. Choose the right day to send your e-mails. Mid-week is often the best time to ensure your e-mails get read. On Mondays, people are returning after the weekend to find their inboxes full of messages from the weekend. They’re also busy figuring out what their schedule for the week looks like, which further decreases the likelihood that an optional e-mail will get read.
  7. Write like you speak. People want to feel like they’re hearing from a real, live person. Considering you are in fact a real, live person, write the way you normally speak. Use your natural voice. Avoid corporate-sounding words. Don’t be a slave to grammar: If you’d normally start a sentence with “and” or “but,” do it. All that matters is that you communicate your message in such a way that your recipients absorb it and consider acting upon it.
  8. Consider e-mail marketing software. Companies such as Constant Contact (www.constantcontact.com), iContact (www.icontact.com) and MailChimp (www.mailchimp.com) provide numerous features to support your e-mail marketing campaign, such as managing your e-mail lists, tracking who’s opening and reading your e-mails, and integrating them with social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook. Some services charge a monthly fee, but others offer a sliding scale based on the number of your e-mail recipients. MailChimp offers the software for free to anyone with 500 or fewer subscribers, with a sending limit of 3,000 total recipients per month.
  9. Track who’s reading your e-mails. Sites such as www.didtheyreadit.com or other e-mail marketing managers offer you the ability to track who is and isn’t opening your e-mails, as well as how long the e-mails sat in their in-boxes before getting opened. Some include the capability to measure whether people are clicking links within the e-mail or forwarding the messages to others. “If you’re going to send all these e-mails out, you don’t want to just send them,” Watson says. “You want to track them.”
  10. P.S. Don’t forget a postscript! For those people who skim e-mails rather than read them, the e-mail’s last line usually stands out because it marks the end of what they’re skimming. Use a postscript (P.S.) to reiterate the main offer in your e-mail. If recipients skimmed past it to begin with, this is your second chance to catch their attention. If the recipient actually read the whole e-mail, then it’s a short reinforcement of your core message.

Read the entire Stitches article here.

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Friday
August 27, 2010

The Squirrel vs. The Nut

Filed under: General

Here at ASI, Joe Haley is known for lots of things, least of all his ability to keep his opinions to himself.

Not only is he a managing editor at ASI and the dapper star of The Joe Show, but he’s also one of the most outspoken personalities of the weekly ASI Radio Show. So outspoken, in fact, he’s got his very own segment each week — Joe’s Rant — dedicated especially to those things in life that simply stick in Joe’s craw. (And there’s certainly no lack of ‘em, that’s for sure.)

From Larry “The Perv” King and Al “Global Warming” Gore, to inconsiderate airline passengers and rude drivers who don’t use signals, nothing is sacred to Joe and he’ll rant about anything.

Including squirrels.

If you missed this week’s segment, you missed Joe throwing down the gauntlet and declaring war against the squirrels of his neighborhood because, as he says, not only are they destroying his property, but they’re now apparently taunting him by eating his tomatoes and dodging his traps.

Listen to the segment here.

This story has become so well known at ASI that there’s even a running count as to who’s winning the war. Latest count: Squirrels 4, Joe 0.

Also, one of our designers (Steve Hawk!) decided to take a few moments to create an image of Joe vs. the Squirrel or, as it’s become known internally, The Squirrel vs. The Nut. Enjoy!

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Thursday
August 26, 2010

Tip of the Day - Secrets to Efficient Time Management

Filed under: Tip of the Day

An economy mired in recession forces business owners to do more with fewer resources. To do that, they need to determine how best to manage their resources – and most importantly, their time.

When businesses ask Jan Yager, a Connecticut-based consultant, for time-management help, he lays out a series of simple, straightforward strategies that include delegating tasks (not relationships) and grouping similar tasks together. “If you have a skill that’s unique and your strength, that’s what you’re doing,” says Yager, author of several books, including Creative Time Management for the New Millennium.

Translation: Play to your strengths and delegate your weaknesses or the tasks that don’t require you to personally perform them. In addition, on the subject of relationships, Yager says they typically can’t be given to someone else to maintain in the same way that you built them, because trust is a person-to-person enterprise. “You want to be the one who’s creating and managing those relationships,” he says. Tasks, on the other hand, can be done in different ways by different people; if they’re qualified, they’ll still get the job done. If someone proves good at a task, give them similar ones. They may prove good at those, too.

Mark Ellwood says setting goals clearly is important. His Toronto-based firm, Pace Productivity, has advised Fortune 1000 companies in numerous countries, and his book, A Complete Waste of Time, includes all sorts of humorous anecdotes geared toward helping people avoid wasting time. That starts with clarity in addressing goals. “Managers tend to not be as clear as they would like in quantifying their goals,” Ellwood says.

Ellwood uses the word “smart” as the catch point, with each letter of the word representing a key aspect of the goals:

  • “S” is for specific, selective and substantial. Pick one good, big goal that will move your business forward.
  • “M” is for measurable. An objective outsider should be able to measure whether you and your staff achieved your goal.
  • “A” is for appropriate. The goal must be appropriate to you and your staff and must clearly benefit you.
  • “R” is for realistic. The goal must be attainable with your current resources and skill sets.
  • “T” is for timely. Create a reasonable timeline to achieve your goals, and hit your deadlines. “If you can start out with a clear goal to go toward, that will determine what you do,” Ellwood says. “Planning makes a difference.”

So too does eliminating minor administrative tasks and time wasted on e-mail. Ellwood is a fan of administrative assistants, who can ease the burden on business owners and other management-level individuals. He’s not so much a fan of e-mail, which can sap tons of time. In his eyes, there’s not enough return on the time investment, which is in part why his second book is titled Cut the Glut of E-Mail. Bottom line: The boss (or you, as the business owner) doesn’t need to be included on every e-mail. “Bosses will inevitably tell you they’re overwhelmed by e-mails, but they don’t want to cut that out because they’re afraid to,” Ellwood says.

Finally, take a vacation. Rest matters, because it improves the creativity that drives innovation in business. Don’t chastise your people for taking a break. Make it happen, so that the hours they put in for you have a higher quality of productivity. “Time management has really become a crisis issue in America, especially because people are less willing to take vacations because of concern they’ll be replaced,” Yager says. “Vacations are important, even if it’s a “staycation.’ Children grow up fast. Vacations are the cement of the relationship. It’s a chance to get to know each other. You come back replenished.”

From Embroidery Business Insights, vol. 125

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Wednesday
August 25, 2010

Tip of the Day - Smile Your Way to Sales

Filed under: Tip of the Day

The human brain prefers happy faces. So says Carol Kinsey Goman, Ph.D., president of Kinsey Consulting Services and author of The Nonverbal Advantage. When you smile at someone, they almost always smile in return. And, because facial expressions trigger corresponding feelings, the smile you get back actually changes that person’s emotional state in a positive way. Here are three reasons smiling can get you more sales, all backed up by in-depth research.

  1. You’ll be unforgettable. Research from Duke University proves that we like and remember those who smile at us – and shows why we find them more memorable. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the Duke researchers found that the orbitofrontal cortices (a “reward center” in the brain) were more active when subjects were learning and recalling the names of smiling individuals. 
  2. You’ll encourage collaboration. According to a report by the British Psychological Society, positive and negative emotional responses systematically alter the use of language. Speak to a positive listener and people will likely use more abstractions and subjective impressions. But if people talk to a negative listener, they’ll probably stick to the relative security of objective facts and concrete details. Researchers speculate that this is because the smiles and nods of a positive listener are interpreted as a sign of agreement and understanding, encouraging the speaker to provide more of their own opinions and speculations. By contrast, negative listeners provoke speakers to adopt a more hesitant and cautious thinking style. 
  3. You’ll improve your productivity. Charles Garfield, author of Peak Performance, once coached the Russian Olympic weight-lifting team. Garfield noticed that when team members lifted to exhaustion, they would invariably grimace at the painful effort. In an experiment, he encouraged the athletes to smile when they got to that point of exhaustion. This seemingly minor difference enabled them to add two to three more reps to their performance. No matter the task, when you grimace or frown while doing it, you are sending your brain the message, “This is really difficult. I should stop.” The brain then responds by sending stress chemicals into your bloodstream. And this creates a vicious circle: the more stressed you are, the more difficult the task becomes. When you smile, your brain gets the message, “It’s not so bad. I can do this!”

From Advantages magazine.

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Tuesday
August 24, 2010

Tip of the Day - Five Trend-Tracking Tips

Filed under: Tip of the Day

  1. Know why you’re tracking trends. Experts at trendwatching.com urge trend watchers to establish a goal. For promotional planners, the goal could be a better understanding of a target audience; keeping up with hot products to better motivate incentive program participants; or to find inspiration for spot-on campaigns and events. 
  2. Have a point of view. Context matters. Are you interested in trends affecting a specific market, demographic or timeline? Also keep a broad perspective. Trendwatching.com reminds trend-watchers that “you are not your own customers.” There might also be a trend worthy of note in an industry outside your specialization. For example, a luxury trend within the hotel industry can easily spill over by setting expectations of travelling consumers in a broader way. Therefore, consider pamper-intensive promotions for cruises, airlines, travel agents, etc. 
  3. Weave your web of resources. Trend alerts are everywhere in the virtual and bricks-and-mortar world. Follow blogs. Sign up for RSS feeds from resources related to areas of interest. Subscribe to magazines or newsletters that follow trends within the industries you service. Stay observant on the streets, at the mall and when travelling. Every day you’re presented with clues as to what the next big “thing” will be. 
  4. Fine-tune your trend framework. Keep a journal or log of every time you see a potential trend, then categorize your findings. Put it in context. For example, is there a specific age group or gender embracing the trend? Where is it happening? Is this a local or regional phenomenon? Does it relate to a specific event that’s transitory? 
  5. Embed and apply. Experts at trendwatching.com encourage companies to leverage their trend-spotting through active product innovation and services. You too can “embed and apply” by explaining to clients key trends you think can positively affect their promotions. Rather than simply recommending a 1980s neon-bright T-shirt for an upcoming promotion at college campuses, explain why neon colors are popular right now and that the youthful demographic has embraced the trend as fashionable. Therefore, they’ll be more likely to wear the shirt and, in the process, showcase your client’s logo. 

Source: www.trendwatching.com.

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Monday
August 23, 2010

Tip of the Day - 3 Reasons Why Email Subscribers Unsubscribe

Filed under: Tip of the Day

Why do subscribers choose to unsubscribe from a mailing list? Here are the three most common reasons, according to the experts at GraphicMail:

  1. Your content is not relevant. Subscribers opt in to your e-mails with certain expectations of the nature of content they want to receive. When these expectations aren’t met, they unsubscribe. Solution: Get to know your subscribers and what information it is that they want to receive from you. A simple idea is to add a subscriber preference field to your subscription form – when the subscriber creates their profile they can then indicate what they’re interested in: promotions, new product launches, industry news, etc. Alternatively, look at the reports of your past sends. What kind of content generated the highest click-through rates?
  2. Your subscribers don’t know who the e-mail is from. If a recipient doesn’t recognize the “From” name as the same sender whose e-mails they subscribed to, they unsubscribe. Solution: Keep your “From” name consistent. 
  3. They’ve forgotten that they’ve subscribed. With the mass of e-mail communications sent daily, people sometimes forget that they’ve subscribed to your e-mails. This could mean that you’re not sending e-mails regularly enough – if you’re only sending quarterly e-mails chances are they’ve forgotten about your brand. Solution: Regularly ask subscribers to update their profiles. It ensures that you always have their latest contact details, gives them the option of choosing what kind of communication they’d like to receive from you and reminds them that they are subscribed to your list. As an added benefit, it can help you achieve greater relevancy in your e-mails.

From Advantages August 2010 issue.

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