Posts

My daughter has started reception year at her school and I'm shocked at how much money, time, sweets and other associated things the school have asked for, not including book fairs, cake baking, walking here and there with the kids etc. I have no doubt that this will get worse as time goes on.

Now maybe it's my age but I don't remember it being like that when I was at school and I don't feel I missed out...well maybe not being picked to be an angel... that's another story. If you couldn't afford to go on a trip you didn't go, you stayed at school, you didn't subsidise other kids to go.

I do however feel sorry for the teachers, they are asked to collect the forms for all of this other stuff, the Christmas pudding sale!... I'm not joking.Christmas cards and mugs, sweets as forfeits for things, this confuses me as you seem to pay the forfeit to come dressed up and down. Then we had a book fair which people who went were charged the RRP the school got 60% of the sales! I didn't go , however because parents came and took their children I got it in the neck from my daughter as I didn't take her.

When did school become sooo complicated, when did this change happen?

Rant over, thanks for listening!

Also forgot to add that I love the Coca Cola advert "The holidays are coming" sad I know but it does it for me....I don't drink anymore coke because of it though!!!

It's the scapegoats I feel sorry for, they probably had to do as they were told and look where it's got them!

Let's hope it forces the prices down to try and increase custom!

What a great story Barney, shame you can't try and get some local press coverage out of it. It's not often you get a hardworking youngster nowadays. My nephew will do as little as possible to get by and he's 24.

What will his apprenticeship be in?

Also, more importantly, maybe he is selling them too cheaply if people are prepared to pay more on ebay!

Hi,

Is this quite specialised work e.g. churches? I'm not sure what other types of property have lead roofs.

Leaflets can be very effective depending on the service you offer and the time of the year and targeting the right neighbourhoods, e.g. window cleaning - the patch would be relatively small but you know the areas that are more affluent and so would pay for this service. You also know who in the street currently doesn't use your services, so can be targeted. Word of mouth counts for a lot but if your leaflet dropped on the doorstep at the right time e.g. start of spring when windows look at their worst or the end of the summer when they are at their worst too.

I've had garden fencing leaflets come through the door which I've kept as mine needs sorting out, but in the Spring.

I also think it's a great way of being able to contact customers to remind them you're here with a Christmas message, incorporating a sales message of course! And not forgetting the "January sales" opportunities, although they do seem to start in December, but another great opportunity. The closer to Christmas the more I think people get into the spirit of it and are more receptive to contact.

I agree it depends on your budget, audience and what you're trying achieve. As Steve mentioned its easy to get carried away and end up with left over items that you just can't give away!

There's a lot of hype around 3d printing that may be worth exploiting to get you noticed. I've referred to this elsewhere in the forum....it is the useful things that people take and keep that are the most popular and although I wouldn't have believed it pens always struggle to be beaten for best promotional product.

In education we used USB sticks alot and put certain info on them, need to be careful that customers don't overwrite it though. Pens were really popular with this market as everything was budgeted and had to be accounted for.

Hi Hansi,

I've worked for a few corporates and we used them for brand building, primarily on new product launches. We used them as give aways at events and the most popular were pens and umbrellas! In fact in all of the companies I've worked for pens have been the most popular. We displayed the product name and URL as often we used a microsite to launch the product so it was easy to find the product info. Also pens are small and easy to carry. The other favourite was bags at events as often people collect alot of things and need something to carry the info in.

I think promo items may be a luxury for smaller companies who may not have disposable cash and may not go to shows etc. this is just my view though.