p70,71 Scribbler:Layout 1 16/02/2010 14:14 Page 70
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Our resident columnist has a fund of ideas for printwear specialists
and a few wry observations about what's happening in the world
in his latest sideways look at life…
Selling to the future On the buses
A recent visit to my nearest university More and more of us are travelling on buses: Stagecoach reports revenues up
demonstrated that students are presented 9% in100 towns. This is partly due to the recession but mainly because
with a range of printwear options people find them fast, convenient, cheap and reasonably reliable – at least in
unimaginable when I was an major cities. More than that, the demographic of urban bus passengers is not
undergraduate. We had the electrifying as down-market as you might think nor so skewed by free passes for
choice of a dull scarf or a dull sweatshirt pensioners. It is therefore an ideal opportunity for market research – done
– olive green just doesn’t make for sitting down in warm, dry conditions, too. Some years ago I heard of a guy
powerful printwear. But obviously researching and product testing a new board game on London buses and he
everybody’s been busy pitching to student successfully sold it to a major manufacturer. I’m surprised the bus companies
unions and successfully (I’m told that my haven’t harnessed this. It would also be a highly cost-effective way to show
sample of one is reflected around the off new products or give out product samples and vouchers, just before
country). Long may it continue, because customers hit the shops. Good for the bus companies, too.
amongst these customers is the next
generation of marketing managers. If they Fluent Brummie…
start work with an enthusiasm for …And indeed Scouse, Geordie, Glaswegian and Yorkshire. Researchers at
printwear one important battle is already Lancaster University have found that we are, as a nation, increasingly proud
won. of our local accents. Quite right, too: the new accent every 30 miles is part of
the colour of Britain. This has been reflected in advertising from time to time
Power to the fans and you see tea towels telling you, for instance, how to speak Scouse but it’s
Supporters’ trusts are all the rage. A mixture of anger, frustration and fear is very rarely featured on printwear. Surely this is a missed opportunity. Much of
leading fans to band together in an attempt to influence the way their printwear is about belonging and your accent is part of that belonging.
football clubs are run. The Americans at Liverpool and Manchester United are ‘Appen where there’s dialect, there’s brass.
the most noted villains but there are others at such as Newcastle, Cardiff and
Portsmouth. There will be plenty more trusts springing up, too. Membership is The sweet taste of failure
small as yet - except for the 38,000 recruited by Manchester United Cadbury’s have been
Supporters Trust – but reputedly growing fast. These should be ideal prospects fighting off a takeover
for printwear since they want to generate revenue, announce their allegiance from Kraft for months to
and shout their disapproval, all of which printwear is very good at. no avail. This not only
costs a multi-million pile
in advisors’ fees but it
Going for a Chinese takes everybody’s eye off
More and more schools are offering mandarin as a language option, which the ball. It’s a bit late
should give the pupils a skill valued in the printwear industry. Unfortunately, now, but wouldn’t it have
we’re a day late and a dollar short. There are an estimated 10 million English made such sense for the
speakers in China, but last year fewer than 3,500 students sat GCSE product’s packaging to
mandarin. At the same time, 100,000 Americans are studying the language. recommend enthusiasts of
their chocolate – of which
I could have told you that… there are millions – to buy
Happiness is what we all want and if proof were needed bookshops have big stock in the company and
sections dedicated to its pursuit and achievement. Reading more than a page so share the success of a company whose product they like? Having a lot of
of any of them is next to impossible without running screaming from the small shareholders tends to make a business more secure against takeover
shop, but they (and a long term study by Harvard University) throw up the bids, especially when those shareholders are fans…
fact that the key to happiness is the healthiness of our personal relationships.
This translates into a business context too. All the best business people I have Back to basics
met seem intuitively to understand this and work hard at developing and I see that a mobile phone has been launched which is bigger than normal,
fostering those personal relationships. Even in our wired world people still buy which doesn’t take photographs or download video and which has big
from people. buttons, hence its name the Big Button phone. It is designed for those people
| 70 | March 2010 www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk
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