Last year around my birthday I wrote a blog entry about an email I got from ING Direct about the ING Direct Shop which was interesting to browse because it's full of promotional products.  The original blog was written about the Emergency Wind Up Lantern Radio which I later wrote another blog about after I found it again in Pep Boys.  As the third installment in my exciting Orange Promo Products blogs, I am writing about the same email I got last year on my birthday, only this year they've expanded their selection a bit.  One item in particular that I noticed is the Eco Friendly Owl Journal which I noticed was a Leeds item, which we also sell known as the EcoSmart Owl 51% Recycled Writing Pad.  I realized the one available from ING Direct is 100% recycled which either means that it is a fully custom item, or they falsely listed the percentage of recycled content because 51% is the correct amount.  Being a fully custom item is very possible since the color is definitely custom, but it is always important to be sure you are buying from a trustworthy source like Motivators to be sure of accurate information and available tools like expert advice from our experienced promotional consultants or free virtual proofs.  With a selection of tens of thousands of promotional products, Motivators.com is sure to have what you need.  And if you can't find what you need, call us and we'll find it for you.

This may be one of the most practical and simple uses of solar energy I've seen.  Made by Yanko Design, this Some Shine Solar Energy Storage System is an eco-friendly way to re-juice your electronics.  Simply hang the panel on your window during the day with the battery base attached at the bottom.  At night, plug your electronics into one of the two USB ports and you're all set.  No information about options or pricing yet but this is certainly something I would be interested in purchasing for myself.

For plenty of other eco-friendly electronics, look at the selection of energy friendly promotional items available at Motivators.com.  Some items comparable to the ability of the Some Shine Solar Energy Storage system are the Solar Charger Pack, Leeds Lunar Solar Charger, Leeds OptiSol Solar Mobile Charger, Deluxe Solar Charger, or the Gemline Catalyst Solar Computer Backpack.

Victorinox, creater of the popular Swiss Army Knives, have recently added the option of a USB drive in your pocket knife.  Known as the Presentation Master, this Swiss Army Knife comes with actual knives, without knives, with laser pointer, without laser pointer and so on.  They've created a version with nothing more than a flash drive as an airline friendly travel option.  Very recently, Victorinox has released a new version of the Presentation Master which, they say, in completely un-hackable and the most secure device of it's kind.

This new Presentation Master sports a fingerprint scanner, thermal sensor, and self destruct feature (Chief?  You're where??).  The fingerprint scanner is a great feature and has been around for some time, only recently added to flash drives to make them more secure. Victorinox took this security one step further and made the fingerprint scanner also a thermal sensor which means that the finger scan will not work if the finger is not attached to the body.  Additionally, if too many failed attempts are made to access the data, or someone tries to pry open the device, the flash drive will self destruct. 

Pricing on these Presentation Masters range from about $75 for 8GB up to about $270 for 32GB.  Aside from what has already been mentioned, The Presentation Master sports an LED light, retractable ballpoint pen, a blade, a pair of scissors, a nail file, a screwdriver, and a key ring (no news yet about a built in cell phone, MP3 player, and automatic car starter, but if I know Swiss Army, and I don't think I do, they'll have all those features soon).  On some models, there is even a bluetooth remote for presentations and a laser pointer.

Motivators has over 250 styles of custom USB flash drives as well as dozens of Victorinox Swiss Army Knives to choose from.  In to keeping your electronics safe and secure?  Check out the Leeds Technology Security Lock Set for peace of mind. 

Protecting the environment may start with eco-friendly promotional products but don't think it stops there!  Save the trees.  When you construct a home, put up a fence, or install a pool, build around those trees, don't knock them down.  Mother nature wants us to live comfortably, but not if we have to start cutting her limbs off.  For some design inspiration, I found these images on a great blog known as ThereIFixedIt.  

And when it comes to promoting your business, go easy on the environment by promoting with eco-friendly promotional products.  

As someone who has worked at 2 sign shops, I definitely have an appreciation for some good vehicle graphics, especially full wraps.  This advertisement appears to be for a zoo and is shown below on a city bus in Denmark.  Jobs such as this one can get pretty pricey at up to and even exceeding $15,000.  I always felt like these would be worth every penny because they move around so much.  One that catches the eye like this city bus would really give the company a good return on investment.

Looking for a great promotional item that catches the eye?  How about a custom imprinted print umbrella?  The Casino Automatic Folding Umbrella is a great eye catching promotional item because of it's size and bright colored print.  Bring customers into your casino by printing your company logo on the umbrella, just don't twirl it too fast or people won't be able to read it!

QR Codes are a new development that are already being used widely by Google.  Recently, The Weather Channel actually used one of these codes during it's broadcast.  For anyone who doesn't know what these codes are, they look like the one below and are used to link to either text or a URL.  If you have a phone where you can download a QR Code reader application, try it out with the one below and find out which amazing promotional items site you end up at.

The Weather Channel used this new technology to display a code which links to the download page for TWC phone application.  During the broadcast, a countdown, starting at 5, showed on the screen alerting you to ready your QR scanner.  After this, the code is displayed for 8 seconds so you can scan it.  I think this is a great idea, but should probably be up on the screen for a bit longer.  I also feel like they could use the codes to link to pages about the broadcast itself.  Kind of like at the very end, the newscaster(s) could say "Miss any of our broadcast?  Maybe there's just something you'd like to check out again.  Scan the code at the bottom of your television for more information."  Or Mybusters as another example.  During every episode they tell you to go to Mythbusters.com for deleted scenes and more info.  That could also be done by displaying a QR code with a link to their page for that particular episode.

Here's a great example.  To see Best Selling Promotional Items scan the code below.

Today I came across a site called One Billion Bulbs.  One Billion Bulbs is a division of Energy Trek, a company that aims to inform people on how to use less energy in the home.  One Billion Bulbs focuses on the lighting aspect of energy saving, specifically, changing to compact fluorescent lighting in the home.  This site encourages people to replace their bulbs by providing them with energy and money saving information.  So far, One Billion Bulbs has helped to change 169,036 bulbs to CFL in the United States.  When you think about the fact that there are over 100 million households in the United States, lets say there are 10 bulbs per house (although I'm sure that number is more like 40), that means there are one billion bulbs (hence their goal) in the country.  Unfortunately, 169,036 bulbs is less than 0.02%, but that is definitely a start, and also over 37 million lbs of greenhouse gas reductions.  I enjoy seeing a goal oriented group such as this that tries to make changes to the world in small, realistic ways, and they are certainly succeeding.  I believe they should succeed even more via the use of promotional items!

Ok, here's my vison.  Mail out the following Light Bulb Stress Reliever to the selected households...

Then a week or two later mail out an Energy Saving Bulb Squeezie Stress Reliever ...

The hope is that, even though they may throw it away because it says "throw this away", it should definitely be something they will think about and remember.  Two weeks later when they recieve the next item, they'll think back to the original mailer and realize the connection.  Then they will say "oh boy!  This is the most well thought out mailer I've even received!  I'm going to go change all of my incandescents to CFL's right now!"  Perhaps that reaction was exaggerated, but I think it would work out well.

Another great way to save the world one item at a time is by the use of eco-friendly promotional products from Motivators.

Information for this blog taken from One Billion Bulbs, Energy Trek, and the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

I have always enjoyed advertising, especially the design aspect.  There are many things, however, about advertising that I think cross the line.  For example, some years ago, Major League Baseball was toying with the idea of advertising on patches on players' uniforms.  Sure they would make a ridiculous amount of money for it but (1) don't they already make enough money?  And (2) I don't want a baseball player to end up looking like a race car.  There should still be some old fashion ties to the sport of baseball especially in the uniforms.  Moving along, I found out that recently, KFC has decided to pay 2 towns in Indiana $7500 (maybe that's alot of money to people in Indiana?) so it could advertise for their new fiery wings on fire extinguishers and hydrants.  

I like the concept, the wings are so hot you'll need a piece of fire extinguishing equipment just to cool you down.  Just as the baseball uniforms, I definitely think that safety equipment is not something that should be advertised on.  You don't so JetBlue advertising on car airbags ... "We'll get you there faster than this airbag hit your face!"  The real item I had a problem with was the hydrants.  I wasn't able to find great pictures for this, I guess all of the decent photographers didn't want to travel to middle-of-nowhere towns in Indiana.  The hydrant appears to have a large bucket on the top and a wrap around the base.  I recently joined the fire department and one of the first things you learn is how to work the hydrant.  Step 1: Grab hydrant bag, flashlight, and radio from the back of the truck, Step 2: check that the two 2 1/2" side connections are tight, Step3: Remove chicken bucket from top of hydrant, Step 4: ....  So not that ripping a bucket off the top of a hydrant will add that much time to an operation but come on, what's next, advertising on needles in the hospital for fine top markers?  Advertising a women's brand of belts on a city bus seatbelt?

On the 12th day of Christmas my parents gave to me, a universal remote for my TV.  For Christmas this year I became the proud owner of a Logitech Harmony One Advanced Universal Remote.  Although this it by far the most expensive remote I've ever owned with an MSRP of $250, I think it's worth every penny.  Before this gift, I used 5 remotes to control my various audio and video stimuli.  My new remote controls every function of every component with ease.  On the bright touch screen, you can select actions, for example, "Watch TV."  This function would turn on the TV, set it to the correct input, turn on the cable box, turn on the receiver, and set the receiver to the correct output.  Lets say I then wanted to plat XBOX, with the push of one button, it would turn off the cable box, turn on the XBOX, and change the input on the TV and output on the receiver.  Two of my favorite featured thus far are (1) the power button on the remote turns off every component, no more using 4 remotes to turn everything off and (2) any button on any remote that doesn't directly correspond with a button on the Logitech is shown on the touch screen in full color.  You can even control the lights in the room with the proper receivers.  I'm very happy with it so far and highly recommend it.

Now lets say Logitech needed to give some push their sales.  (Ok, Logitech needed to give some push to their sales).  What better way than some quality promotional items from Motivators?  (I could make a bad advertisement and slap it guaranteed if you want me to, I've got the spare time, but for your customers' sake, for your daughter's sake, you might want to think about buying a quality product from me.)  Some great ideas for a Logitech promotion would be the Remote Control Stress Reliever or Custom Chocolate TV Remote Control.  

While watching a recent episode of Family Guy, I noticed (1) what seemed like an advertisement for Windows 7 (especially since it was just before a commercial break which started off with a Windows 7 commercial, and had nothing to do with the episode) and (2) that they had a few pokes at the Mac Operating System, which I'm assuming, was paid for by Windows.  I looked into it a bit further and found a blog mentioning a previous sponsorship of Family Guy by Microsoft which they later cancelled once they realized how innappropriate the show was.  What I don't understand is, the demographic they're trying to market to with that sponsorship enjoys the innapropriate jokes, why not continue with the sponsorship?  Anywho, on a recent Family Guy, they poked fun at the spinning balloon on the Mac OS indicating that the computer is busy  (can be viewed here).  Peter was in the middle of a sentence and he says "Oh ... oh wait a sec"  followed by Lois saying "what is that?" which Peter answered "I don't know it's trying to do somethin."

I guess the hourglass on Windows never existed?  Do Windows machines never have to take some time to "think"?  Come on, we all need time to think sometimes.  Additionally, Windows has since changed their busy icon from the spinning hourglass to a blue spinning circle ... seem familiar?  I'm not going to sit here and argue that a spinning circle is copywritten by Apple, but how can you make fun of an operating system for having a busy icon?  Since cancelling their sponsorship, I think Microsoft should invest in some great promotional items from Motivators.  Something like the Light Bulb Stress Reliever here' my vision ...