A week that rocked

Using the tagline Promotional Products Rock, the second Promotional Products Week took place on September 15 to 19 and has been hailed a success.

Organised by the British Promotional Merchandise Association, the week-long campaign began with Student Day when 25 Brunel University students took to the streets of London pushing forward the message to passers by that promotional products rock. More than 150 BPMA members were very keen to become involved in this year’s PPW and used some ingenious and brilliant ways to showcase their companies, offerings and services. The remainder of the week saw many more exciting activities took place.

Award winning BPMA member Outstanding Branding showed it definitely knew how to rock by producing a parody of Queen’s We Will Rock You video, which received very positive feedback and in just over a week managed to reach 1,000 views on YouTube. The video proved so popular that former professional boxer and now Sky Sports commentator Johnny Nelson was one of the first to retweet it to his many thousands of followers.

Gordon Glenister, director general at the BPMA and organiser of the week commented: “It was an absolutely brilliant week and response has been very positive. None of us could have missed the prominent use of promotional merchandise in the Scottish Referendum campaign. In fact, we have estimated £0.25 million has been spent on items, which is the biggest share of marketing budgets ever in a political campaign.

“Plans and activities are already in the pipeline for PPW 2015, which will coincide with the BPMA’s 50^th anniversary. As it will be a double celebration we want it to be much bigger and get the whole industry involved from the start.”

Feedback from BPMA members has been particularly positive. Melissa Chevin, director of marketing – UK at Senator, said: “We were delighted with the amount of brand exposure for LAMY writing instruments during Promotional Products Week and the activities of the BPMA really helped to raise the brand profile. These included samples in the hands of major tabloid, broadsheet and trade journalists and key personnel at London marketing associations.”

Gill Thorpe, managing director at The Sourcing Team commented: “We love the opportunity to make some noise about our amazing industry so, as last year, we fully embraced the opportunity to get involved with Promotional Products Week 2014. The ‘PromoSelfie’ campaign was a fun way to engage with our clients to find their personal favourite promotional product and if they shared that information with us then we donate to the charity.”

The week also saw those in the industry take part in the ‘Deskie’ campaign, where people were encouraged to take a photo of their desk with or without promotional products and tweet it or post it on the PPW Facebook page.

Next year’s Promotional Products Week will coincide with BPMA’s 50^th anniversary.