What Are Your Most Effective Promotional Giveaways?

[Scott @ Twenty2Vodka]

What do you find are the most effective giveaway items to promote your brand? I wouldn't be surprised if this varies by region.

We're located in Northern Maine, literally the end of Interstate 95, and 250 miles north of Portland. Our crowd up here is super loyal to the area, and Mainer's in general support Maine-made-whatever which we've totally played on hardcore. With our crowd and demographic, we've found that t-shirts work pretty well in promoting our brand, especially through our facebook fan page. 'Hoodied' sweatshirts too. We've recently been giving away a bunch through our facebook page with pretty good results.

We Also setup a cafepress.com marketplace. They charge about $18.99 for a black tshirt, which you can markup and collect the difference. The base fee is steep, but it does pay for cafepress to keep the inventory, process the credit card, provide the store front, and handle all shipping and customer service. I had to remind myself that i was in the "vodka" business, not the tshirt business, so we outsourced the whole thing. We priced every item at either $22 or $44 and donate 100% of the proceeds we make from cafepress.omc to charity too, (which avgs $3.99/item and might total $70 this month), and will let our fans choose which charity to donate the proceeds to on a monthly basis in an open vote-by-commenting type of contest. We're hoping that the fans will suggest our page to their friends so that they can vote for the charity. We're calling it the "Wear Some Good Project", and if no shirt sales, no charity donation...And no monthly overhead or other capital obligation either...

Other than tshirts, we've been printing a lot of paper materials too. Printing for us has been cheap and so far effective. We post on FB a new recipe every Friday at 3:00 on what is a business-card sized template. We've recently printed 250 of each of the twenty "3:00 Cocktail" Recipe cards (5000 total items with 20 different designs, check them out at www.facebook.com/twenty2vodka) for under $200 through Vistaprint.com. Also we use PrintPlace.com for other items like table tent cards and rack cards. Both sites offer on-demand printing with 3 day optional rush service, and their prices are reasonable when compared to branded key chains or bottle openers with ridiculous minimum order quantities. We're assembling the recipe cards in a portfolio that we hand out to bars and restaurants when we go to introduce and market ourselves.

Are others finding the same items effective? We are forbidden from "giving away" samples in maine and have just recently been granted permission to do tastings.

-Scott

[Classick]

great topic for a thread scott.. thanks for sharing. I wish i had something to add.

[Beauport Bob]

Thanks Scott,for the info.

Maybe some of these guys would like a booth at ADI.

Tee's, hats, glassware drive me crazy.

We recently just got "Bar" Coasters. two sided. About .10 each, online,volume can change that. We used PrintGlobe, there are many companies. Plant logo one side, product on the other. As you can imagine we cannot give them away to restaurants fast enough. We hope they are used effeciently. We want people to walk off with them for home use.

We also use them as giveaways at store tastings. For a dime a coaster, autographed right there by the Distiller, helps increase impulse sales.

How about ADI/we create a "Buzz" or checklist on collecting distillers Autographed Coasters collection. Similar to the U.S. state quarters, baseball cards. It sounds a bit "Jr. High" but people like'em.

I would like to start now (see how it is infectious) I'll exchange signed coasters (2) with you and build a collection for conversational viewing during tours at our shop. We are big on promoting all craft distilleries on our tours. Gloucester is a destination and we get many people from around North America and the world. This is a "what is good for one is good for all" item.

Cheers, Bob

[HBD]

Thanks Scott,for the info.

Maybe some of these guys would like a booth at ADI.

Tee's, hats, glassware drive me crazy.

We recently just got "Bar" Coasters. two sided. About .10 each, online,volume can change that. We used PrintGlobe, there are many companies. Plant logo one side, product on the other. As you can imagine we cannot give them away to restaurants fast enough. We hope they are used effeciently. We want people to walk off with them for home use.

We also use them as giveaways at store tastings. For a dime a coaster, autographed right there by the Distiller, helps increase impulse sales.

How about ADI/we create a "Buzz" or checklist on collecting distillers Autographed Coasters collection. Similar to the U.S. state quarters, baseball cards. It sounds a bit "Jr. High" but people like'em.

I would like to start now (see how it is infectious) I'll exchange signed coasters (2) with you and build a collection for conversational viewing during tours at our shop. We are big on promoting all craft distilleries on our tours. Gloucester is a destination and we get many people from around North America and the world. This is a "what is good for one is good for all" item.

Cheers, Bob

Bob,

That's a good idea. I've been thinking about doing coasters for a while now, but I haven't broken into the bar/restaurant scene yet. Around here, there's not enough local support for the micro scene, especially for a Asian rice based product no one has ever heard about. Send me a few of your autographed coasters.

Rinna

[Scott @ Twenty2Vodka]

I like the coaster idea too! But i havn't taken the plunge to buy any coasters yet. I was concerned that they would get lost in the mix of the restaurant atmosphere... Can you post an image of your coasters? What about them grabs the customer's attention so they want to take them home?

We did have coasters priced locally and i've used file folders that were a thicker paper material. Sure there were tons of options, i could opt to go thicker, or i could have them leather bound if i wanted too. But i was turned off by how flimsy they could be, and didn't feel the time i'd consume obsessing over samples or learning the printer's lingo, was worth it in the end...so i just kind of moved to different items. But that's the reason i started this thread, if coaster work i'd love to give them a try.

Do you post anything interesting on the coasters to track if they are brought home from the bar? Like maybe a special website, or coupon code, or email the answer to this trivia question for a prize... I'm inclined to feedback systems like that, another reason FB has been an awesome resource.

So Bob, i'd gladly accept some signed coasters and will send some of ours out to you if we ever get any in!

-Scott

[grehorst]

We've done coasters. I actually think these were a pretty decent investment as marketing stuff goes. In fact when we opened our tasting room we were selling a 10 pack for $3 and people snapped them all up for their home bars. But the real value is in bars. We found that when the bartenders are putting these down they realize were small and don't have a lot of cash for marketing. By giving them coasters we've invested in their bar and they push us a little more. Our coasters were also in high demand because about half way through our supply the breweries were having trouble getting coasters when one the main producers filed bankruptcy. People were begging us for them.

Coasters only work in certain bars- many high end places don't use coasters- napkins only for them. We did napkins too but of course they get used once and are tossed, coasters get used until they fall apart or become saturated.

We used canadacoaster.com I think we got the middle weight cards which we and our customers were very pleased with.

[rlw]

Scott,

Thanks for sharing what you are doing and the bar coaster thing might stir some interest.

We are using full color postcards & logo shot glasses.

For on premise we are asking our customers to put shot glasses or postcards on the bar and let people touch them.

For off premise we try to get them to place the postcards as a shelf talker and @ the register for their customers to take. Also give away a couple of shot glasses with a purchase of our bottle.

It is always difficult to quantify your marketing efforts, however, every customer we visit wants postcards & shot glasses.

Look forward to hearing what everyone else is doing.

Cheers! Dick & Marti

[daveflintstone]

Here's the advice I got from my distributor regarding drink coasters:

"Once you start to give Coasters you might always get requests for them. The bars use them like water and I would not suggest you get into that business. You might open a can of worms for yourself and if you provide them once and not again some places might say they do not want to carry the product."

Anyone ever experience this? Have you had a downside to providing drink coasters to on premises?

[Beauport Bob]

We were giving the out selectivly, as we self distribute. We did not care much about usage until we realized they were being used mostly for beer customers. That extra condensation shortened there life quite a bit. We did have one owner say "we are all out and we really need more". People do have gaul. We had given him 2 packages prior. I could see them, unopened, next to packages of Heineken, and Sam Adams' coasters. He never uses them. We stopped handing them out by the package and currently use them only at tasting events and as freebies out of our retail store. Giving shot glasses away? Wouldn't that eat a big part of the margin?

[CharcoalAged]

There's obviously a cost here that has to be considered, but if you're getting eyeballs on your brand on the coaster, does it matter if a beer sits on the coaster? It's a question of whether a) are those beer drinkers ever going to be your customer (or are they only beer drinkers) and b ) is this the most cost effective way to build awareness.

Anyone see an increase in retail sales following an introduction of coasters to an establishment?

[JohninWV]

We just launched a coaster with a QR code linked to an app on our facebook page. I'm interested to see if it generates any interest and will try to keep all posted.

[Palmetto Coast]

We just launched a coaster with a QR code linked to an app on our facebook page. I'm interested to see if it generates any interest and will try to keep all posted.

John, I like the potential I'm this idea. If you give them out to bars in your direct area AND you can do onsite sales and tastings. Have it say something like, "your friends at xyz distillery would like to buy you a drink." The QR directs them to a downloadable certificate good for a free tasting at your shop. You would be able to directly correlate this. Not sure if you can offer something like this on FourSquare as well.

[cowdery]

Dave's distributor gave him good advice. That's the conventional wisdom among the majors as well. Consumables (napkins, coasters, stir sticks) are problematic because bars will always take as many as they can get and in the long run you just piss them off when you cut them off. Thinking they will use them just with your products is delusional. Yes, bars are always happy when you give them something they would otherwise have to buy, but that doesn't usually translate into any additional sales of your product.

The real mistake here is in the question itself. The 'most effective promotional giveaway' is the one that uniquely supports your brand positioning. The most common marketing mistake people make, in every kind of business, is thinking about tactics in the absence of an overall strategic framework. In that context, the fact that Distiller X was successful giving away t-shirts tells Distiller Y nothing unless they, improbably, are selling brands that are identical in every respect. It's not about t-shirts versus baseball caps, it's about brand positioning and brand development, and doing things that uniquely convey your brand's message to customers or consumers.

As the old saying goes, if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.

[H-D]

I'd like to reivse this thread, as it relates to coasters. They seem like a good way to create brand awarness with likely consumers, but obviously they're not free. Anymore opinions out there regarding the cost effectiveness of coasters vs other promotional items?