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Olivia Newton-John Interview

Filed under: Education, site updates

Olivia Newton-JohnHow cool is this story?!

Olivia Newton-John — that’s right, Sandra Dee herself! — is not only a breast-cancer survivor but the spokesperson for a new breast self-exam item called Livgeiger. The actress and singer recently sat down with Counselor magazine for an interview about Livgeiger. Listen to the podcast here.

And here’s the news excerpt From Counselor PromoGram, vol. 732:
Counselor Top 40 distributor Geiger (asi/202900) announced this week that it is the exclusive promotional and small retail provider of a new groundbreaking item called Liv. The breast self-exam item, created by Emmy-award-winning singer Olivia Newton-John and Dr. Ernie Bodai, is FDA-approved and is meant to make it easier and more accurate for women to examine themselves for breast irregularities.

Newton-John, a breast-cancer survivor, is the spokesperson for the product, which will be sold by Geiger’s new unit, called Livgeiger (www.livgeiger.com). The item has a retail price of $19.95 apiece. Companies and organizations can use it as a promotional product by placing logos or messaging on the device’s handle, packaging and carrying case.

In this exclusive interview, Newton-John sits down with Counselor to explain her vision for the product and how it fits into the ad specialty market. Click here to listen to the podcast.


Counselor State of the Industry 2010

Filed under: Research, Uncategorized, site updates

Yes, folks, it’s that time of year again! Time to get a raw data look into the overall health of the promotional products industry, as well as gain some insight on how to move your business in the coming years. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Counselor’s State of the Industry 2010 Business Planning Guide!

From the exclusive Distributor and Supplier Top 40 list to the strategies on how to improve your business, the Counselor 2010 State of the Industry is chock full of stats, facts, how-to manuals and much more!

Plus, as an added online bonus, we’ve created a video with tons of charts, graphs, quotes and “Did You Knows” regarding the industry in 2009.

So what are you waiting for?! Check out www.stateoftheindustry.com now!


20 Creative Thinkers

Filed under: site updates

20 creative thinkersFor the July issue of Stitches magazine, Editor Nicole Rollender went in search of the 20 people who are shaking up the decorated apparel market right now with their innovative ideas. From those toying with new decorating techologies to those taking digitizing to a whole new level, Nicole came up with a great list of the industry’s most creative thinkers.

And we here at ASICentral came up with a creative and interactive way to display them.

Presenting the decorated apparel’s 20 Creative Thinkers, online style! Click here to check it out.

Enjoy!

–ThinkTank


ASI Education Update: Webinars Page Redesign

Filed under: Education, site updates

The value of education within the promotional products industry cannot be emphasized enough, and success greatly depends upon your knowledge of everything from the latest sales and marketing trends to negotiation strategies. Our ASI Education folks — in particular Nicole Rollender and Dana Reaume — do a terrific job every month presenting Webinars geared toward the education of promotional products professionals.

(For those of you who don’t know what a Webinar is, let me elaborate. It’s a free 60-minute online course that you take simply by logging onto your computer at a predetermined time. The presenters and moderators do all the work - all you need to do is show up and pay attention! From informative discussions and slideshows to interactive discussion rooms, our ASI Education Webinars are really a great way to learn how to succeed in this industry. Best of all, Webinars are archived so you can learn any time, 24/7.)

And now we’ve given the ASI Education homepage a nice, new snazzy look so you can register and access archived Webinars more easily. Click here to see the page, and use the tabs above the calendar to toggle between the upcoming and archived Webinars. (NEXT WEBINAR: Become an Eco-Apparel Selling Expert, Weds. April 14, 2-3 pm EST - Register now!)

Got questions or comments about the new Webinars homepage? Feel free to email us at feedback@asicentral.com.

Shout out to Sr. Web Designer Craig Veltri for the design!

– Deez


Interactive Map: Hottest U.S. Sales Region

Filed under: Education, site updates

Of the 4 major U.S. regions (Northeast, South, Midwest, West), which do you think did the best in overall promotional products sales in 2009? What were their top markets and hottest items? Unemployment numbers?

Give up? Well Advantages’ magazine has done a terrific feature this month called What’s Hot in Your Neck of the Woods where all of these questions are answered, and more including regional sales forecasts for 2010!

And best of all, we here at ASICentral took the liberty of creating an interactive map that allows you to simply mouse over the region for a pop-up of all the details. Simply click here to see the map! (Or click here for entire article.)

And for those of you who would rather get the numbers right here, below are all 4 regions ranked by overall sales in 2009 (Go South!).

– VINteractive


Introducing the ASI Tweet Tracker

Filed under: site updates

BREAKING NEWS! ASICentral now has a Tweet Tracker!

If you’re asking yourself, well what’s a Tweet Tracker (don’t worry, you’re not the only one I’m sure), let me explain.

Since ASI has 5 different people using Twitter for various aspects of the company (CEO Tim Andrews, Randi Bromberg for ASI Show, SGR Editor Michele Bell, Stitches’ Editor Nicole Rollender, and Yours Truly for ASICentral), we thought it would be a great idea to aggragate all five “tweeters” on the ASICentral homepage so that our users can actually read what’s being posted in Twitter right on ASICentral!

So every time one of us posts a “tweet”, it’ll appear in the aggragator module, which looks like this:

See the Tweet Tracker live now on the ASICentral homepage by clicking here.

So why add a Tweet Tracker? It allows us to present even more content on our homepage while showcasing to our users not only out continued effort to embrace social media, but exactly what we’re doing with it.

Pretty cool, huh? Let us know what you think about the new Tweet Tracker by posting a comment below or emailing us at feedback@asicentral.com.

– TweetieDee


Subscribe to the ASI News Feed

Filed under: site updates

There’s a ton of news happening in this industry and we try our best to get everything onto our homepage news rotator, but many of our users have been clamouring for one place where they can find all the industry news without having to sift through the rotation of the panels.

Ask, and ye shall receive.

Thanks to our new RSS feed, ASICentral now has a one-stop shop for industry news. Not only can you now find all the news from the homepage in our new RSS list, but you can also subscribe to the list and have the content come to you.

Beautiful, huh? Just click the icon here to learn more and subscribe!

– Mr. RSS


How Well Do You Know Your Designers?

Filed under: General, site updates

For the December 2009 issue of Advantages’ magazine, Editor Kathy Huston ran a story that was all about designers and some of the interesting things they do. From sparkling logos to coffee-scented inks (no kidding!), designers today really have to be a creative bunch. It’s a great read and I highly recommend checking it out, but then we here at ASICentral started to to wonder, How well do we really know the designers and some of the things they’ve done?

I mean, I can count on one hand the designers I know and the items they’ve designed. Let’s see, hmmm, there’s Ralph Lauren and the classic Polo shirt, and, umm, well OK I’m drawing a blank … maybe I should’ve said one finger?

Anyway, doesn’t matter what I know, it’s what you know that we’re interested in! So, we created a neat little Designer Match Game that poses your knowledge of designers with some of the brands they’ve done work for.

Think you know designers? Then prove it with the …

(click on the image above to play!)

– DeezZINER Central


Interactive Power 50

Filed under: site updates

With last month’s announcement of the annual industry Power 50, we here at Team Central thought, “Hmmm, how can we spice this up online?” After all, it’s just a list of names …

And Since Counselor magazine was doing an extended spread in their December issue on every Power 50 player, we figured it might be kinda fun to add an interactive element to the package. So, with a little creativity and some technological finesse, the Interactive Power 50 was born!

In this cool, new ASICentral feature, you can learn about each of the Power 50 players — including their rank, reasons for ranking, comments about important industry topics — just by clicking on their headshots! Best of all, you control the tool simply by moving your mouse left or right on the screen, so you can pick who you want to learn more about and click on them. It’s that easy!

So check it out by clicking here, or on the image above.

Hope you enjoy it, and don’t hesitate to let us know what you think by emailing us at feedback@asicentral.com.

– VINteractive


New ASICentral Video Pages Launched

Filed under: General, Video, site updates

From the weekly Joe Show and Advantages Hot Deals Sales Tip of the Week, to Trade Shows and Events, ASI-TV covers a lot of ground and we’re really proud of our videos. So much so that we’ve decided to give them a sweet makeover and a new home on ASICentral. The following is a breakdown of all the features of our new Videos Pages:

  • Appearance. All our videos are still housed in YouTube, but you can play all of them on ASICentral in our beautifully customized video players. Each player has a main window that allows you to watch the most current video, with a list of archived videos to the right. See Example, below.

  • Branding. We’ve come up with 7 top-level categories for all our videos that shy away from the traditional name-branding of the videos for a more categorical branding. The following are the 7 new branding categories:
  1. Hot New Products (Videos from The Joe Show)
  2. Fun (Collection of humorous videos)
  3. Sales Tips (Videos from Advantages Hot Deals Tip)
  4. Industry News (Videos from Counselor PromoGram)
  5. Fashion & Apparel (Videos from Your Stitches & Wearables Fashion Sense)
  6. Media Clips (Videos from media outlets about the industry)
  7. Trade Shows & Events (Videos from the ASI Show and other Events)
  • Navigation. Once you’ve accessed our new Videos Pages, you are now within the “Videos” experience, which means you can now choose from a customized set of icons above the video players for more videos. There seven categories discussed under “Branding” are represented in the new navigation iconography and you can toggle between videos simply by clicking on the icons. See Example, below.

  • Location. By adding the Videos Page in our vertical navigation, you can always access the Videos page from anywhere on ASICentral. Just look about midway down the left navigation and you will see the following icon:

And that’s the gist of the new Videos Pages!

To access the new Videos Pages, click here.

And if you’ve got any feedback regarding the new pages, please send to feedback@asicentral.com.

– VideoVND


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