Greensboro, North Carolina-based Senator Pen won the prestigious 2008 Suppliers Golden Achievement Award from Promotional Products Association International (PPAI), the promotional marketing industry’s largest organization. Senator won in the Most Beneficial Sales Kit category for their “Top Secret” promotional sales kit.
The PPAI Suppliers Golden Achievement Awards are given each year to distinguished suppliers for craftsmanship, creativity and graphic arts. The Top Secret sales kit was the brainchild of Jill Randolph, product marketing manager for Senator, and was designed for the company’s top distributors. It features a sleek, mailable sample tin, simply marked on the outside with the Senator Logo and the words “TOP SECRET” in an appropriate, stencil-style font. Upon opening the tin, recipients hear the theme song to Mission Impossible, and read a well-designed “clandestine” message explaining that the contents of the tin are “For Your Eyes Only.” The card continues to explain an above end quantity promotional offer, with a secret panel that reveals seven of the Senator pen styles featured in the program. Asking the recipients “If you choose to accept this mission...” the kit cleverly provided similar, coded cards for distributors to use with their own customers.
“We were looking for a creative way to educate distributors on our newly published end-quantity pricing, while providing a fun and interesting sales tool to help promote it to their customers,” said Randolph. The idea worked very well, prompting a 39 percent increase in end-quantity pricing requests over the two-month penetration period, with resulting 1,200 percent increase in closed, above-end quantity sales. Randolph continued, “We believe that if you create a very memorable visual promotion that salespeople will enjoy presenting, our brand will stay in the minds of those prospects the next time they order.” The Golden Achievement Award was presented to Randolph in January at the 2008 PPAI Expo in Las Vegas, where Senator was debuting several new offerings of five new pen styles including two eco-friendly options, exclusive “touch ink” raised imprint technology, and their newly redesigned, interactive web site, www.senatorpen.com.
About Senator USA:
Senator is the sole producer and imprinter of Senator brand fine writing instruments, and is the third largest pen manufacturer in the world. With over 88 years of writing instrument experience and facilities in nine countries, the company adds value to global brands and enhances consumer demand for its products through the development and imprinting of award-winning writing instruments that provide excellence in engineering, design, and long shelf life.
For more information about Senator USA, visit www.senatorpen.com.
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- Senator USA