Convert a Bottle Hanger Into Pocket Media and Create a Winning Bottle Promotion

By Paul Whitney

How much information do we get from advertisers and marketing professionals that we never look at? We know that it's there. We know that there might be something for us to read but we treat it like junk mail and confine it straight to the waste bin.

Imagine this - you have bought a shirt from a popular High Street store. You take it home and remove all the see-through plastic packaging. You remove those strips of cardboard that stiffen the collar. You take off all those plastic clips and remove the leaves of tissue paper. Then what do you do with the tags that are held on with string? I personally cut off the string with some scissors and then recycle the whole lot.

So why don't I read the tag when it might contain care instructions? No matter, washing and ironing care instructions will be sewn inside the shirt. What ever was on the tag I will never know. However, what if that tag wasn't a tag at all but some kind of pocket media, a product with a bit of bulk about it that was not at all like every other shirt tag that you have ever seen? That's a totally different matter. That is something that I would have at least had a look at and at least glanced through it. Does the same not apply to bottle promotions?

For some reason, advertisers seem to favour promotional items on bottles that are easily ignored. Is that because they can't think of anything other than a tag with a loop of string or a card with a big hole in the top to act as a bottle promotion? Surely there must be better products than those plain conical sleeves that act as bottle collars.

Pocket media has long been acknowledged as a successful way to pass on information that will be retained by the recipient. Just look at the terrific success of Z Cards which were introduced to the UK by Runcorn-based Z Finishing back in the early 1990's. The product became so popular that the name "Z cards" became a synonym for the many folded paper products of that ilk that soon flooded the market, thereby giving birth to the term "printed pocket media". Nowadays, examples of credit card-sized pocket media can be seen everywhere. Z cards have been produced as bottle media so why not other similarly-sized ideas?

A small swatch book would work well as a bottle promotion, as would a bottle hanger combined with a starburst-fold style of product. People will not only look at a swatch book, they will keep it, particularly if the product was designed so that the pocket media was detachable from the bottle hanger once the bottle had been purchased. This would ensure that the consumer would be encouraged to put the swatch in a pocket or handbag.

Another beauty of a swatch book is that it would give the advertiser many different options. For one thing, they could vary the amount of cards in the swatch. For another, the cards can be custom shapes, there is no need for them to be rectangular, they could be square, round or an abstract shape. The size is limited only by the size of the bottle and the arrangement with the packers and with the supermarkets.

Swatch cards are attractive to the consumer because they offer an interactive way of looking at the cards. The fan action is a satisfying thing and the cards also feel good in your hand. This is a massive plus for bottle media. It allows the advertiser to grow the brand and it authenticates the actual bottle promotion as the swatch itself feels substantial.

From my point of view, this would be the way forward for advertisers using bottle promotions. At the very least, the bottle hanger would not be slung straight into the bin!

Article by Paul Whitney. Whitney Woods Ltd is a manufacturer of promotional marketing products designed using sophisticated cardboard engineering techniques. The company is a market leader in this field in the UK and publishes a large range of products covering the areas of promotional pocket media, interactive marketing products, information discs, promotional pop up cards, creative folding and automatic pop up mailers. Whitney Woods also publishes a range new bottle media in The Bottle Boutique which can be seen at http://www.popupmailers.co.uk/popup_bottlecollars.html