Product category:
Promotions and incentives
News Release from: SPECIAL REPORT by the Editor | Subject: Promotional merchandise
Edited by the Marketingservicestalk Editorial
Team on 29 June 2007
Glenister unveils blueprint for future
BPMA director-general Gordon Glenister talks exclusively to Marketingservicestalk about what he wants the association - and the industry - to achieve and how he plans to get them there.
After just eight weeks in the job of director-general of the British Promotional Merchandise Association, Gordon Glenister is passionately outlining the raft he plans he is making He has had enough of promotional marketing being seen as the Arthur Daley of the marketing world, or as a discipline that is so far below the line it's barely visible
This article was originally published on Marketingservicestalk on 16 Oct 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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"I have a vision of change on a number of levels.
"First I want to raise the profile of promotional marketing in a wider context to make it a credible alternative for sales promotion agencies".
Glenister cites the survey conducted by Source-e about promotional items, What's on your desk? "It got some awesome results: 92 per cent believe that branded promotional merchandise increases a company's overall brand awareness: 76 per cent could name a company featured on merchandise on their desk without looking; and over half purchased from the companies that were branded on a piece of promotional merchandise on their desk".
But those same people almost certainly couldn't tell you the last three ads they watched on television, he asserts, arguing that promotional merchandise should be a bigger part of the marketing mix.
Glenister has been meeting with other marketing trade bodies - "professional top-end organisations" - such as the Chartered Institute of Marketing and the Institute of Sales Promotion to establish how to raise the profile and the professionalism of his industry, and create a forum where successful ideas can be shared.
"Customers want solutions," he says.
"One of my criticisms of the industry would be that we have been too reactive and not proactive enough.
"We need an education programme in-house: but also the challenge is to educate the customer about procuring in a more professional way.
"We want to raise the bar in the industry and offer a professional alternative to a marketing problem.
"Education is high on our agenda; we've just done our first educational seminar, about selling on the phone, and got a superb reaction.
"Another thing I feel passionate about is export: we hear too much about importing," says Glenister.
"This country has one of the most creative communities in the world and fantastic manufacturers, but we're not helping our industry to make export easy - there are concerns about language, currency, distributors - so we're setting up a series of export workshops later in the year.
"This is an exciting industry, but it needs to move with the times.
"We have a dynamic and creative customer base and we need to show similar attributes".
Glenister believes there is plenty the industry can do to improve its offering, and cites examples of innovative companies that are tackling issues in the right way: "There's an organisation called Sourcing City; they've created a portal community and made searching ideas really important.
"If you want to find gifts that are red because your logo is red, or products that fall within a certain price bracket, or if you want to find gifts that fit in the transport sector, it picks it up.
"That's the sort of thing that will move us into the 21st century - it makes selection of gifts appropriate.
"Buyers want to talk to a consultant, not just buy from a catalogue - a brochure doesn't sell solutions.
"We need to ask buyers several questions: Who is the target audience? How much can you spend? What are you trying to do? "So then we can say I've got just the thing for you.
"The more we start the consultative sell, the more we will start to deliver real value for our customers.".
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