1. Industry Transformation & A Time To Pivot | CONNECTIONS
https://paulbellantone.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/industry-transformation-a-time-to-pivot/[1/20/2016 2:17:38 PM]
CONNECTIONS
Observations from Paul Bellantone, CAE, President and CEO of PPAI
← Product Safety Milestones
Industry Transformation & A Time
To Pivot
Posted on January 20, 2016 | Leave a comment
As an advocate and evangelist for our industry, I’ve spent
the better part of my career traveling the US (and the
world) to tell anyone who would listen that the
promotional products business is about so much more
than selling products at the lowest price.
This year at The PPAI Expo it was more evident than ever
that the overwhelming influence of technology and access
is making industry stakeholders reconsider and reposition
how they go to market now and in the future.
With this, it is my pleasure to feature a guest blog I
stumbled upon from Boundless Marketing Manager,
Stephanie Freyer, who along with her team is responsible
for delivering ‘Brand Love’ moments—everyday. Steph’s
observations are on the mark and sum up, quite well, what
so many in the industry are experiencing today.
Enjoy the read.
Paul
ARCHIVES
January 2016
November 2015
September 2015
August 2015
June 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
BLOG STATS
17,933 hits
BLOGROLL
ppai.org
theppaiexpo.org
BELLANTONE’S
TWEETS
Trends in promotinal
products seem to have
less to do with products
and more with
experience around the
products? Ex…
wp.me/p1O8dD-gd
3 hours ago
Industry Transformation
& A Time To Pivot
paulbellantone.wordpre
ss.com/2016/01/20/ind
…
https://t.co/zlbz4HVM
Pi 3 hours ago
PPAI's PC Today
Presents "2016 Sales
Kick-Off Meeting Ideas"
lnkd.in/epRuM3R
2 days ago
@chad_cady thank you!
3 days ago
HOME ABOUT

2. Industry Transformation & A Time To Pivot | CONNECTIONS
https://paulbellantone.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/industry-transformation-a-time-to-pivot/[1/20/2016 2:17:38 PM]
2016’S GUIDING TREND IN PROMOTIONAL
PRODUCTS
HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PRODUCTS
Coming to you live from Las Vegas at the Promotional
Products International Association’s (PPAI’s)
largest
event of the year and the biggest trade show in our
industry, I’m excited to reveal some of the insightful
marketing trends we’ve seen at this year’s Expo. In case
you aren’t familiar with Expo, PPAI hosts over 1,300
exhibiting suppliers and 11,000 distributors from across
the globe – all clamoring into the Mandalay Bay
Convention Center on the heels of the
International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to find
out what the hottest new products for 2016 will be.
After closing out day two of the Expo, I sat in my hotel
room trying to digest everything I had been absorbing over
the past couple of days. I
could have easily started writing
about the cool life-hack products that are perfect for, say,
people who are taking photos all day (like me), or just want
their phone readily available to make sure they can check
email without digging through their bag (see below for
“slingback” and “pop socket” to name a few). But
while
these little life hacks are cool, catchy, and buzz-worthy,
they aren’t the real takeaway of the event.
Products for Mobile: Pop Socket & Slingback
Even more impressive than capitalizing on the mobile trend
is how deeply our suppliers are invested in their products.
From specialized trend research teams, to full-fledged
development departments, to entire
facilities dedicated to
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
January 2016
M T W T F S S
« Nov
1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31
TOP CLICKS
ppai.org
forbes.com/sites/sap/201
FOLLOW BLOG VIA
EMAIL
Enter your email address to
RT @JayBusselle: Epic
day 2 @PPAIExpo &
look who I ran into...
Paul & Peekaboo Paul
@Bellantone
#PPAIExpo
#promopunked #promo
https://t.c… 3 days ago
RT @chad_cady:
@Bellantone
#MelindaDoolittle
#PPAIExpo
##LasVegas
https://t.co/sBAkHKw
G6Q 3 days ago
PPAI's PC Today
Presents "Post-Show
Power" lnkd.in/ez7i465
6 days ago
PPAI's PC Today
Presents, "Be The
Brand"
lnkd.in/dtSpKJY
1 week ago
Late night antics...
twitter.com/DannyRosi
n/sta… 1 week ago
The PPAI Expo 2016
Unveils New Layout
Next Week In Las Vegas
pubs.ppai.org/2016/01/
the-pp… 1 week ago
Follow
 Follow
Follow
“CONNECTIONS”
Get every new post delivered to
your Inbox.
Join 10,348 other followers
Build a website with WordPress.com
Enter your email address
Sign me up

3. Industry Transformation & A Time To Pivot | CONNECTIONS
https://paulbellantone.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/industry-transformation-a-time-to-pivot/[1/20/2016 2:17:38 PM]
quality assurance, our suppliers are investing in resources
that will ensure their products are not only on-trend and
meeting consumer needs, but also following compliance
laws and making sure they are safe, and risk-free for our
clients and end users.
I initially predicted that come time to write this blog post,
I’d be sitting here compiling the brand-new items hitting
the market. In a recent Facebook post,
I remarked on being
curious about which trends from last week’s CES show
would carry over to PPAI—I joked about seeing branded
holograms and mused about new wearables. And while I
did see plenty of wearables (and even virtual-reality
products…and drones!) what I found is that most of the
products at PPAI are not, in actuality, “new.” At first, I was
surprised to see that most of what I looked at was the same
as last year, with a slight enhancement—a 2.0 version. But
this is, in fact, the crux of one of 2016’s guiding trends.
On Wednesday, I spoke
with a supplier partner of
ours about their fitness
tracker device, and in
discussing a proprietary
app they built for it, he
follow this blog and receive
notifications of new posts
by email.
Enter your email address
Sign me up!

4. Industry Transformation & A Time To Pivot | CONNECTIONS
https://paulbellantone.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/industry-transformation-a-time-to-pivot/[1/20/2016 2:17:38 PM]
Source: @LogoIncluded Twitter
Account
actually said the words “to
us, the app was the most
important part.” Hold the
phone. That is quite a
strong (and telling)
statement. We are in a
PRODUCTS industry,
people! Promotional
products.
But as it turns
out, the most important
thing about promotional
advertising moving forward won’t be the product alone,
and this show wasn’t about the next groundbreaking item
on the market that no one had ever seen before. It was
about driving the next level of engagement…it was about
the enhancements that can be made to products to make
them even more useful, even more necessary, even more
relevant to a consumer.
The seeds of this trend were planted in my head at the first
session I
attended on Tuesday morning with marketing
guru and renowned author Seth Godin.
Godin speaks in an
almost lyrical way—gliding through pretty words and
impactful phrases. He is ever-inspiring, and seemingly
easy-to-follow—yet he spends most of his time illustrating
abstract concepts that are eventually boiled down into a
simple idea. His style, his writing, and his whole point is to
get marketers to think
differently. As Godin said, “one of
the biggest marketing challenges is that most of the people
you are trying to sell to don’t think they have a problem
that only you can solve.” In
essence, brands are challenged
to put products into the world that play
a critical role in
consumers’ lives—and do it better than the next guy.

5. Industry Transformation & A Time To Pivot | CONNECTIONS
https://paulbellantone.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/industry-transformation-a-time-to-pivot/[1/20/2016 2:17:38 PM]
Seth Godin’s Opening Keynote at The PPAI Expo
In case you haven’t been following Boundless on Twitter,
we’ve been tweeting out soundbites heard throughout the
Expo from
our top suppliers. Reading them back to myself
gave me the opportunity to clearly identify the theme that
had already been manifesting in my mind.
Tweets from PPAI 2016
All the suppliers I spoke with told a similar story in a
different way: the product is only a part of the equation.
The critical ingredient
is finding a way to create a
marketing tool (a promotional product) that builds a
relationship. How do we enhance a product so that it
actually becomes a necessity, or occupies a
permanent spot
on your desk or in your bag? Something you couldn’t
imagine living without?
We need to pay attention to how
people interact with
products. In what situations

6. Industry Transformation & A Time To Pivot | CONNECTIONS
https://paulbellantone.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/industry-transformation-a-time-to-pivot/[1/20/2016 2:17:38 PM]
and contexts do people have challenges that need
to be solved? How can a product be enhanced to
meet those needs?
For some suppliers like the one mentioned above, that
means building a
client-branded app that not only
connects to a fitness tracker like a FitBit, but lets users
interact with each other—from engaging in fitness
competitions to arranging meetups. For others, it means
designing a special pocket in a bag that addresses a unique
need for a certain demographic or interest group. And yet
for others, it means leveraging a digital rewards code to
connect on the platform we use most: the internet. Some
suppliers embrace the age of digital connectivity by
creating products that continue to make it easier for us to
stay connected with one another—from chargers, to tablet
stands, to storage devices—they’ve developed a product
that once you have, you cannot live without. Or at least,
you think you can’t. Addressing a
unique need, driving
people to a connected platform, serving up a branded web
experience—all of these methods produce a more engaging
interaction with a consumer.
All this to say: the pen, the water bottle, and the grocery
tote aren’t going anywhere. Value can be found in any
product that is suited for the audience and is “sticky”
because of utility or novelty. But the future of our industry
lies in the type of functionality that goes deeper than the
bag that sits in your trunk. It taps into our basic human
need to connect. It gives us avenues to build relationships
over an extended period of time, and it makes us feel like
we can trust in brands. From what I can tell, 2016 is going
to be a great year for promotional marketing.
SHARE THIS:

7. Industry Transformation & A Time To Pivot | CONNECTIONS
https://paulbellantone.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/industry-transformation-a-time-to-pivot/[1/20/2016 2:17:38 PM]
Twitter Facebook 13
LEAVE A REPLY
 
RELATED
Have you met
The Party
Animal?
U.S. Marshals
Service’s Use of
Appropriated
Funds to
Purchase
Promotional
Items
SHRM Show
Amusements
In "PPAI"
In "PPAI"
In "PPAI"
This entry was posted in Advertising, Branding, experiential,
Marketing, media buying, media planning, PPAI, Promotional
Products, Promotional Products Association International,
Promotional Products Business, Promotional Products
Industry, Promotional Products Work, Promotions, The PPAI
Expo, Uncategorized and tagged #BestExpoEver, #PPAIExpo,
@BoundlessNetwk, @PPAI_HQ, @ThisIsSethsBlog, Ad
Specialties, Advertising, Advertising Specialties, Associations,
Awards, Boundless, Boundless Network, Branded Merchandise,
Branding, CES, Corporate Gifts, Distributors, Gift with
purchase, giveaways, Incentives, Logo Included, Marketing,
Media, media buying, media planning, Paul Bellantone, Pop
Socket, PPAI, Promo Products, Promotional Items,
promotional marketing, Promotional Merchandise,
Promotional Products, Promotional Products Association
International, promotional products industry, Rewards and
Recognition, Sales and marketing, Seth Godin, Slingback,
Stephanie Freyer, Suppliers, swag. Bookmark the permalink.

8. Industry Transformation & A Time To Pivot | CONNECTIONS
https://paulbellantone.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/industry-transformation-a-time-to-pivot/[1/20/2016 2:17:38 PM]
Blog at WordPress.com.
The Coraline Theme.