We all love a bargain, especially in these tough economic times we now face. Savvy business owners know this is the best time to promote business and are getting creative with limited budgets. Bartering for merchandise and services is on the rise…. and it sounds like a good idea at the time. However it is not always a good idea if you value high quality merchandise or services. Recently I have been working with a new client and his experience with “free” cost him a multitude of problems and misprints in his promotional marketing campaign.
Bartering for Banners
A number of large banners needed to be printed for his trade show booth and sponsor areas. Eight large format (10’ x 12’) banners were printed as a “freebie” from a local sign company which is owned by inexperienced printers. The deal was, sign company will give my client the banners as long as they can pop their sponsor logo on them and business cards get passed out in the booth. My customer received the eight banners, some of them had the wrong company phone number, all of them had a disfigured logo (which should have been reversed out), and they were each unique to a different color blue, NONE of which were my client’s corporate PMS color. They were inexpensively tape hemmed instead of sewn. To make matters worse, the sign company did not put a discreet sponsor logo on them, but had a 3’ wide red, black and white logo on each banner in the corner which stood out like a sore thumb. Benefit to my customer….. cheap looking and inconsistent banners trashing up his very expensive booth space.
Take the Shirt Off My Back….PLEASE!
Through the venue, yet another barter deal was made with a local screen printer. Free imprinted T-shirts, 1500 to be exact. (remember my client’s corporate colors are PMS blue and white). Free T-shirts showed up as neon orange and neon yellow with a black imprint (must have been a sale on day-glo that week)…… and the imprint was crooked on the back…… Benefit to my customer…. Hideous, crooked T-shirts with no relationship to his corporate branding.
Give Me Your Digits
Ok, now about the free business cards that were offered by a local printer……. wrong phone number. It gets worse…. the phone number was for a local competitor. Minor side note….. wrong PMS color too. Benefit to customer…… completely useless business cards.
Revise My Camera Ready Art….. NOT!
Chalk this one up to my customer’s inexperience. He sent in artwork with a few notations written in pen, i.e. move this here, change this there, a few arrows etc. His car magnets showed up….. with everything, the logo, the editing pen scribbles and all. Apparently the artwork was accepted and sent to print without being reviewed by the printer. Benefit to customer…… completely useless car magnets, and hopefully a lesson to my client of the true meaning of “camera ready” artwork.
Free Takes a Long Time
When there is no monetary profit involved for one or both of the parties, the project may get sidelined or pushed out to be completed after the profitable orders. You may never receive the goods you are expecting. Sometimes this is not a problem, however if you are on a deadline, freebies are not the way to go.
If you are going to head down the road of bartering or free merchandise, put the deal in writing and be very specific, ask for proofs, have a backup plan if the product does not meet your deadline…….and please proceed with caution…….
Avoiding these problems would have been easy with a corporate branding specialist. To learn more about avoiding printing problems please e-mail me at Lorraine@RAINpromos.com or call me at 858-565-2963.
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