Physical marketing Archives

King of the hoodies!

Probably the most requested item in any apparel range is the Hoodie. They’ve evolved so much over the last few decades, styling comes and goes, and equally “trend” colours shift on an annual basis too. But they’re well and truly a staple of the apparel mix. Corporates now adopt them for team wear, they appear as an easy means for work-from-home branding, and above all there functional.

Where did they stem from? Well if you go back far enough it’s the monks, that were the first adopters of the hood in everyday apparel. More for functional purposes than style. Hoods keep the warmth in and are so relevant to today’s cost of living issues. Yes, hoodies have had it rough, the 1990s associated them with yob culture. As we said, the flavour has changed.

So with the plethora of options now available how do you start?

With the likes of Just Hoods by AWDis with over 75 colours, the choice is massive. The generic college is the starting point. Also, AWDis have an excellent choice of varsity hoods, with the 2 colour combinations. So the sky is the limit when it comes to colour options.

The next option people ask for is something more weighty. The standard hoodie weight is 260-280gms material, so the next level is 300-310gms weight. In our opinion there are two options AWDis have a heavyweight option, note not with the same range of colours. Also, the other option is Anthem’s heavyweight – we seriously like these, the trim and finishing level on these. Yes, we can get other options around this, however, the finish or quality doesn’t match the two options.

If you’re running an event and need hoodies on a budget, we’d recommend Ultimate Clothing Co, a 260-270gms weight garment, with a limited colour range, but it prints great and delivers a product you can be proud of within a budget.

All of the above can be found in our showroom, so pop in if you want to get your hands on them and decided for yourself!

So if you are planning to style up a hoodie for a merchandise project, here’s the low down on how to manage this from stock to something different;

• consider the cords, yes you can often upgrade these to match your print colour or other styling facet
• hood prints, you really need to get the garment and work out what can appear where, as hood panels do vary from garment to garment style.
• if zipped, you can look at zip pullers, there are options to trim these to make them look funkier.

If in doubt, ask, between us here at HAD-Print we live our hoodies, we’ve tried many different options, and we know what we like. We listen to our customers and pick up what works, even when it is family members who are envious at people’s hoodies!

Targeted, direct and relevant.

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Almost sounds utopian but highly achievable. But yet small businesses still use scattergun approaches to marketing, in the hope of a big return.

What happens when you get something which isn’t relevant to you, you ignore it. If it’s impersonal it too gets ignored. So why the ignorance or your potential customers and customers? Are you just being lazy? Would you respond if someone shouted “Oi! You!” In the street – not likely.

The levels of message absorption in marketing materials are on a downward slide. Due to the high volumes of digital content, people just cannot remember it. Or it just doesn’t strike an accord with them. You want a meaningful customer journey; however, the use of selected channels doesn’t reap the return. Blasting out messages which just don’t get seen or heard seems to be a small given factor in some cases. Looking at our digital profiles, we get plenty of hits, however, the conversion to actual clients is nothing to write home about.

Business is about relationships. No one starts a meaning relationship digitally, how many online dating swipes, either way, dismissing without any validated reason. It’s about reputation, trust and referral. People like people like themselves, commonality, humanity is at the heart of all of us. So why do we try to start a meaningful relationship with so little engagement?

As printers, we haven’t forgotten the power of physicality in marketing. We do networking, we regularly call and chat with people (yes on the phone, not a chat-box), and we aim to inspire our audience with the physical presence print offers. We know we gain clients when it’s a proper relationship. (Proper might have something to do with us being based in Yorkshire) A large percentage of our work comes from referral, we wouldn’t have household names like The Scouts, Barnardos and other prominent charities in our portfolio, if it wasn’t for recommendation by people. How do we do it? Storytelling is the key, it’s the difference we make, the added value of our actions (which don’t necessarily appear as an item on a line on an invoice), how we do business which makes the difference.

This June, we did another release of our House Newsletter, which focused on direct mail and what it can do and offer, it went to a very selective list of people – so focussed, either existing customers of people we’d like to work with. It links with all our other marketing channels, so it builds our story. To be fair, it is an entry-level functional item of direct mail, personalised on every piece within it, so ticks the box of being direct and personal. We added a small twist, a little piece of Yorkshire, with some Yorkshire Values.

My next question is would you be hospitable to all of your customers? I think we all would say yes. So we only did a list of about 100 names, print and production costs came in around the price of a good cup of barista coffee for each piece. (Of course creative and artwork costs do vary, so depends how you view it.) For reference, I also did the number crunching on double the volume and it came in around 65-75% of the price of your barista coffee. All this including the postage, using Royal Mail Barcoded Mail solutions.

In the commissioning process, we dummied and tested different paper stocks for weight and performance. Included and tested different insertion items for weight and Royal Mail compliance. This ensured we remained in Letter, Band One for postage purposes, so controlling the budget.

If you need to be proper and stand out, demonstrate your values, show you’re real and trust-worthy, we can tailor direct mail solutions to fit. We can suggest ideas to get you remembered for the right reasons too. We are well aware that opportunities for face to face business development could be limited in the foreseeable future. Creating a memorable engagement will become paramount.

Challenge brings change…

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The outbreak of Coronavirus certainly has got a lot of people thinking, if not concerned. However, resilience is created through necessity and is born through a desire to succeed.

Understandably a lot of small businesses are seriously concerned about the impact of the lack of customers, whether this is b2b or b2c based. With a substantial amount of transactions requiring either a proper face to face engagement or a customer journey which needs real personal engagement, alternative thinking is needed. If you ask any designer or creative where and how they get their ideas, usual influences of X Y or Z pop into the conversation. In other words, nothing is new but just evolved from existing sources.

A face to face engagement creates a meaningful value exchange through several routes, “being there” where both parties read the verbal communication, including tone and timbre of the voice, but also the non-verbal communication of body language. (For specialists which study this, it’s a wealth of signals.) The tone of communication also reflects the attitude which the individuals show towards each other, which allows for a hook for future connections. All this is seriously curtailed with limited face to face contact.

Any seasoned marketing professional will be the first to remind single-channel minded individuals the marketing tools used on the journey can drive the touchpoints to achieve results which meet the end goal.

Using proven methods which evoke kinaesthetic engagement provides a powerful alternative to the lack of face to face engagement. The power of touch is next most engaging method after face to face communication. Using the senses of touch, coupled with the physical interaction of using hands to interact with an item creates a moment of connection to drive further actions.

The world of print has overcome many communication challenges. Conclusively print materials when used with effective messages, the right design structure of the printed piece, constantly achieve higher levels of engagement compared to just digital communication.

The Coronavirus update from the Royal Mail (13/03/20) “From experience with other coronaviruses, we know that these types of viruses don’t survive long on objects, such as letters or parcels” https://www.royalmail.com/coronavirus

So delivery of professional mail shot communications still has the opportunity of engaging your audience, whether at home or business place. So where you face to face opportunities might be diminished, carefully executed and delivered can provide a lot more leverage to assist your business message.

Remember when crafting your mailshot;

The creativity of the communication gets you remembered
Being engaging, physically with the item, along with a tone of voice
Be timely, create wider opportunities to engage
Create opportunities to engage face to face when safe to do so
Use professional print providers as they can ensure compliance for Royal Mail standards, and help you achieve the “best bang for your buck” through clever print and business-grade postage options.