For those of you who missed Monday’s edition of the New York Times, in his coverage of Southern Comfort’s Fiery Pepper campaign, Stuart Elliot brings The Marketing Store’s vision of Southern Comfort Fiery Pepper to press!

Check out the article here.

The Marketing Store and McDonald’s were just featured in Promo Magazine to celebrate the 19th launch of the MONOPOLY at MCDonald’s game. Here is a link to the article discussing the most famous of sales promotions: http://bit.ly/qCsoqB

If you’d like to help us spread the word, here’s a great sample tweet:

RT @Promo_mag: McDonald’s is at it again for the 19th year running its Monopoly promotion. Check out the latest details http://bit.ly/rugWHF

Or, feel free to post this link to your Facebook page: http://promomagazine.com/contests/mcdonalds-monopoly-promotion-2011-0927bq2/

The Marketing Store and Southern Comfort have just been honored by a HOW Design Award for Merit in the 2011 Promotion Design awards for The Marketing Store’s in-store/shopper marketing work for the Southern Comfort brand.

The Southern Comfort Lime launch featured a Gator Head display, you can view it in the current HOW Design issue (cover below).

The HOW Design award is a very prestigious creative advertising and design award, so big news! We’re thrilled for our team!

Recently, The Marketing Store’s Global Director of Digital, Kurt Karlenzig, was invited to present Best Practices of Social Media Marketing (in relation to in-store strategies and shopper marketing) at the POPAI Masters program in Chicago.

If you are a shopper marketer or in retail, you are probably very familiar with this organization. POPAI is the Global Association for Marketing at Retail. If not, you should get to know them—their Masters program was chock full of interesting speakers (and we’re not just tooting our own horn).

Beyond our own social media panel—we had the privilege of sitting in on a few of the sessions—sessions that we thought had some key takeaways/insights that merited mention.

Sustainability: Successful Strategies for The New Normal – presented by Mike Henneghan from RockTenn

This presentation was full of notable facts, figures, and considerations around corporate responsibility and sustainability that we thought you might find useful. Here are just a few we thought were worth mention:

• Retailers use sustainability as a tie-breaker: For many major retailers, sustainability is a tie-breaker between products/vendors. If there is a decision to be made between two almost-identical vendors or products, many retailers go with the provider that is “greener”, has a plan toward sustainability, or features sustainable packaging with in-roads into a green product.  

• Packaging has a giant impact on US waste: Within the US’s total solid waste stream—packaging is the single largest component at 29.5%.

• The US has made in-roads to recovery/recycling: 47.8% of all packaging is recovered in the US according to stats from 2009. This would seem to be a good number, but when you consider European initiatives, other countries have the United States by a huge margin—the Belgians are closer to 97% recovery.

• Sustainability takes a larger strategic plan. It’s not an A-B line, with this package choice, or that bottle. And it’s important to remember that corporate responsibility also means not giving up profitability. It also means that choices need to be weighted. If the package you are selecting is not protecting your product properly, the cost (and carbon footprint) of reproducing that product comes at a much higher cost to both environment and bottom line than a slightly more expensive, “less-green” package.

• Weighing the Total Cost of Delivery: A realistic sustainability program consists of a series of choices to get closer to that ideal level of perfection. An example of this kind of series of choices in the supply chain, and one brand doing it well according to Henneghan, is the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. When looking at their choices to help with sustainability, they selected a slightly more expensive (to produce and ship) bottle, but made selections that offset those choices, selecting a greener transportation option—investing in trucks using bio-diesel fuel to offset the impact of heavier bottle.

• Recycled fiber isn’t a no-brainer: The materials one chooses for both product and packaging should be carefully evaluated as well through the lens of sustainability. And the choices can be more complicated than a simple “how recycled is it?” Often recycled fiber is in the public mind the most sustainable—but the reality, you can’t have a package that is 100% recycled fiber—as some part of it breaks down in the recycling process. It needs to be a combination of new/old—where some plastics can be more recyclable, almost to 100%, as they maintain their sturdiness.

• Reducing packaging at the cost of product is worse: This is where it’s so important to look at total lifecycle costs—again with both price and environmental impact. One example given, which was surprising—but makes sense upon consideration—is yogurt. If the packaging to your yogurt product isn’t protected, or sturdy—and the container breaks—cows (and livestock in general) have a very big environmental impact—the cost of recreating that product and to redeliver it may have a much more negative impact than a few ounces more of packaging. That’s why it’s so important that supply chain and ideally a sustainability officer, are able to evaluate all aspects along the total cost of delivery to create the least cost and least environmentally impactful plan.

• Partnerships in POP for sustainability: One area that needs significant improvement and consideration that retailers and vendors need to team up to create a plan for is Point of Purchase (POP) recycling and materials choices. If you are a POP supplier, and you set up at a retailer—how do you ensure that they are properly disposing of your materials at the end of the promotion?

As a brand design and packaging company with our own stringent sustainability program, The Marketing Store and Boxer makes corporate responsibility a priority—so to have a vibrant sustainability discussion around some of the tougher points at POPAI, was not only important, but hopefully impactful to our POP partners as well.

If you’d like to see some of our own work in action, here are a few of The Marketing Store and Boxer’s packaging and brand design greatest hits. We’re betting you’ve held at least a few of these in your hot little hands.

Posted by @heathergately

Check out the new Southern Comfort Social Media Hub—a place where all-things Southern Comfort and social reside. As the lead promotional agency for  Southern Comfort, The Marketing Store created the “Best Get After It” theme, the 101 days of summer game and sweepstakes, and “SoCo Summer Social,” a Facebook app that provides high value Southern Comfort coupons weekly.  

Check out all the details as covered by Mediapost.

Posted by Nolan Bauwens

The Marketing Store Worldwide is proud to announce that our work in Sydney for Diageo’s Bundaberg Rum has been shortlisted in the 2011 Cannes Lions Awards.

See An Example of the Work Here

The Sweets and Snacks Expo is the largest confectionery, cookie and snack show in the Americas, and showcases products from over 500 companies, small and large. It’s also the best place to discover the latest trends in the snack world. 

As a promotion agency and a premium toy producer, The Marketing Store is well-versed in big brand food and CPG promotions—and attend this conference year after year. So, we asked our in-house snack expert (what a great thing to be!), Kelly Ryan, to report back on the latest. Here are the 5 key takeaways she noted from this year’s show:

1.  More sugar than chocolate. This year there was less emphasis on chocolate, which speculatively, may be caused by the cocoa shortage. It may also be due to the economy as sugar is cheaper than cocoa. But, it was definitely notable.

2. Uptick in licensed products. There was a distinct feeling that there was an increase in licensed products this year. There were, of course, the standard players that always do licensed items (i.e. Galerie and Frankford) but even brands like Jelly Belly had Hello Kitty items. It was also interesting to see M&M characters dressed up as the Star Wars characters.

3.  Increase in novelty items. A few years ago, when the economy was booming, there was very little novelty product. This was due to Walmart walking away from novelty products, not needing low cost items in the candy aisle. When the economy started to decline low cost novelty ($0.99 – 1.99) made a big comeback as consumers wanted affordable treats (toys+candies).  This year’s show had much more novelty product than in the past and was at a higher retail ($2.99 – 3.99).

4.  Smaller companies had novelty too. In previous years novelty was owned by key players. This year I felt that smaller companies (ie SweetWorks Radz brand) had much more novelty than in the past. The difference this go-around is that the small players did not have licensed characters but had developed their own character designs. Many were really cute and designed well. 

5.  Eye-Candy. Another trend I noticed but not sure how to describe it is that “candy got girly”.  This is new as I don’t recall seeing such “pretty” candy before. There were more flowers, more glittery packaging. Not pretty like Lindt or Ghirardelli -  pretty like perfume bottles.

Those are the standouts from our point of view. Any to add?

If you have any questions or comments about the list above, contact Kelly Ryan or Heather Gately!

Last week, The Marketing Store hosted the 12th Organic Electronics Association’s working group meeting at its global headquarters just west of Chicago. 

The OE-A, or Organic and Printed Electronics Association, is dedicated to the advancement of innovative printable electronics technologies. OE-A members include major electronic product companies, research facilities, universities, printers and chemical/material/machinery developers and suppliers.  

What are printable electronics?  

Through advancements in technologies such as “electronic-ink,” electronics are getting thinner and smaller—and producible via printing. What two years ago, might have been relegated to science fiction, advancements in this field mean: printable electronic circuits, printable memory, even printable batteries.

Organic and printed electronics are based on the combination of new materials and cost-effective, large-area production processes that open up new fields of application. Thin, light-weight, flexible and environmentally friendly – that’s what organic electronics are all about. 

What’s the connection for a promotion agency?

 As a marketing services agency, The Marketing Store is always keen to learn about these leading edge technologies and the impact such advancements can have in the world of promotional marketing, digital marketing, and betterment of our everyday lives. 

You can learn more about the OE-A here:www.vdma.org/oe-a 

And, here’s a fascinating case study on a recent project that was accomplished by several OE-A members for Canvas magazine (image above) that involved teams of students at Cal Poly and some truly amazing innovations using printed displays, circuits, switches and batteries.

Posted by Heather Gately

Heather Gately is the Director of Marketing and Communications for The Marketing Store Worldwide and can be reached at heather.gately@tmsw.com. You can follow The Marketing Store at Twitter at: @marketingstore