Creative Emporium Blog

You’re invited to….

VISIT US AT EUROPE’S LEADING MARKETING EVENT (& WIN AN iPAD MINI!)

We’re exhibiting at this year’s Marketing Week Live exhibition, and we’d like to invite you to visit us on our stand, number D301, in the Promotional Merchandise Zone.

When & Where:

26 – 27 June 2013, London Olympia Exhibition

Why are we exhibiting?

We have recently spent some time as a team developing our own brand proposition, to define what really makes us unique and how we add maximum value to our clients’ marketing activities. What we have established is a set of core values and personality attributes which we feel really sums up our brand. These values are extremely important and our new brand identity needed to reflect these values throughout, to match the expectations of our clients, and encompass our brand promise and capabilities.

Why visit us?

Win a FREE iPad!

We’re also offering visitors to our stand the chance to win a brand new 16GB iPad Mini and wanted to give you a heads up before the show!

Register as a visitor, and come along to see first-hand our new brand as we launch our fresh new image, along with our latest products and services, exclusively at the show.

Our friendly team will be more than happy to discuss any specific requirements you may have or look at how we might be able to help you to spend your marketing budget more effectively in order to gain a competitive advantage in the future.

About the show | View our exhibitor profile

As mentioned in our previous blog post in January, over the past 12 months we have invested heavily in our people and grown our team to 60 members of staff.

The growth in people has been due to continued business growth and development of key client accounts; and we acknowledge that as a business our people are our strongest asset. One of the reasons many of our clients say they continue to work with us is due to the excellent customer service we provide through ongoing client account management and our passion for delivering innovative and creative solutions.

So let’s introduce you to our new team members!

Account Handlers:

Charlotte Hooper

Charlotte relocated to Leeds in December from Scarborough,  and joined the CE team as an Account Executive working with our clients in the Leisure/Fitness sector. With experience in the customer service sector, she enjoys problem solving and previously worked for an online men’s designer clothing website. In her spare time she loves travel and previously worked in Sydney and Melbourne for American Express and Guthy Renker. Whilst in Oz she managed to white-water raft, do a 14,500 foot skydive, bungee jumping, zip-wiring through the rainforest and scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef!

Amy Smithey

Amy joins the CE Team as Account Manager. She also relocated to Leeds three years ago, from Newmarket in Suffolk. Her previous experience comes from the oil and gas industry in sales; managing their European accounts and visiting them a few times a year. In her spare time, she keeps busy with her four-year-old son, Tyler, and she really enjoys baking (if we’re lucky she’ll bring some goodies in on a Monday morning!) At Creative Emporium, she is responsible for a number of our University clients, and will be taking on more accounts as time progresses.

Louisa Bell

Louisa joined us as an Account Executive on the 25th of February. She comes from a varied background; working as correspondence advisor for a debt charity, front of house at Virgin Active Fitness and a retail sales role working for Clarins Skincare. She studied Media and Theatrical make-up at college, and showcases her make-up work and ideas on her online blog: makeupbylouisa.blogspot.com. She loves ‘anything artistic and creative’, enjoys drawing/designing, listening to music and also plays the piano.

Alexa Lymer

Alexa joined us on the 4th of March as an Account Executive. With previous experience in retail buying at House of Fraser in London, the skills she gained in this role are proving to be transferable; providing excellent customer service and attention to detail. Alexa is keen on marketing, and is currently studying a Certificate in Marketing with the Chartered Institute of Marketing. Alexa loves cookery courses, foodie TV programmes and trawling charity shops for home-ware finds. Oh, and did we mention she has a Duke of Edinburgh award for reaching the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro?!

Digital Team:

Elliott Hutchins

Elliott is our Lead Web Developer and has skills in Object Oriented PHP, MVC Frameworks, Agile Methodologies and Web Project Management, with the goal of being a web developer that strives for total 100% customer satisfaction. Outside of work, he’s a massive Crystal Palace fan, loves F1 and cricket, and spending time with his 21 month old son, Ashton. Interesting Fact: He can name the flags of all 197 countries in the world and most of the capitals too….

Emmanuel Acquah

Emmanuel is a new addition to the web team, and joins us as a Web Developer. Originally from Ghana, he relocated to Yorkshire in 2011 to study his MSc in Information Technology Management at the University of Bradford. He also has a BSc in Management Information Systems that he gained at University in Accra, Ghana; and prior to joining Creative Emporium he worked for a web design and online advertising company in their web development team. He’s a keen basketball fan and player, and enjoys working out at the gym in his spare time.

Last week, we asked our team to bring in their unwanted clothing and household items so that we could donate them to Martin House Children’s Hospice, based not far from the CE offices in the North of Leeds, West Yorkshire.

John Haigh, corporate fundraiser at the Hospice left us a lovely email message today:

“Many thanks for the kind donation of 12 bags of items for our shops, picked up this morning by our Volunteer Team. As I may have mentioned previously, we estimate that on average each donated bag can realise approximately £25 of retail value when sold on through our charity shops, so just this delivery amounts to some £300 of value to Martin House! Please accept this e-mail as our formal thanks from all at Martin House on this subject.”

We will look to continue supporting Martin House and our other chosen charities throughout the year.

Check out some of our previous blog posts regarding the work we do to support local charities.

You can find Martin House on twitter @MartinHouseCH

To keep up to date with our latest news, you can also subscribe to our quarterly email newsletters:

As part of this blog series, we will release our ‘top tips’ to give you some ideas on how, by repeatedly exposing your brand to your target audience and by delivering positive customer experiences, you earn their trust and loyalty (and that usually translates to more sales and long-term business!) In this post, our first tip focuses on planning and understanding your audience.

Did you know that 94% of people feel more aware of a brand after receiving a promotional merchandise item?

The best way to create strong brand awareness is by repeatedly exposing your brand message to your target audience – but you don’t have to spend thousands of pounds in order to boost exposure for your brand!

Research conducted by the British Promotional Research Association (BPMA) in 2012 and 2013, suggests that promotional merchandise is a cost-effective way of raising brand awareness – especially in a tough economic climate. The research also shows that spend on merchandise has increased in the past year, and this upward trend should continue given its ability to increase brand awareness, and more desirably, create loyalty amongst your customers and prospects.

So how do you go about building brand awareness to help your target audience become familiar with your products and services?

Tip #1: Planning and understanding is key to success!

•Promotional Merchandise is an effective brand awareness tool as it can bring relevance and longevity to promotional campaigns, by keeping your name in front of customers and prospects – but first you need to match the right products to your brand, and allow sufficient time to implement the campaign

•Set realistic timescales for developing your brand and generating awareness in your marketplace. By understanding your brand and what it stands for, you can plan promotional activity that reflects your core values and targets the right audience, in a practical and relevant way

Our Marketing Team give their low down on best practice…

“The potential return on investment for a promotional marketing campaign using merchandise can often be limited due to a lack of planning or setting unrealistic time-frames” said Hannah. “If promotional merchandise is used a last minute tactic – for example, a few days before a conference where you need ‘something with your logo on’ in a rush – this can increase production costs and limit room for creative thinking, and not align with your core message or proposition”

“Well thought-out, targeted promotional campaigns are part of the marketing mix at the earliest stage, and the best campaigns happen through collaboration between the client’s team and our experienced account managers, marketing, creative and production experts. Together, we’ll do our research; share our creative ideas and work together to ensure the proposed products are a strategic fit with our client’s brand; as well as being aesthetic, useful and cost effective,” added Rachael.

So – promotional merchandise needn’t be an after-thought, make it an essential part of your marketing mix from the start of planning your marketing campaign.

Watch this space for our next tip, on how to use ‘personalisation’ in your brand awareness campaigns to gain customer loyalty.

More about the blog authors:

Hannah is our marketing manager and CO3 expert, who loves all things online and project manages all of our CO3 website builds from concept to launch, working closely with the client and our web team. Rachael is our marketing communications manager, who loves creative writing, social media and all things branding. Together, they work closely with our internal teams including the account managers and creative/web team – and help to add input at various stages of a client’s campaign/project, in terms of strategy, insight and brand positioning – linking the client’s objectives with the creative output.

Find us on LinkedIn: Rachael Simpson | Hannah Potts

Need inspiration for your next marketing campaign?

If you want to discuss your branding and promotional merchandise requirements in more detail, please feel free to contact us and one of our friendly account managers would be happy to help and advise you on the best approach for your business.

Simply call 0870 7500 057 or email marketing@creativeemporium.co.uk

Why not take a look at our online catalogue to inspire your next marketing campaign?

To keep up to date with our latest news, you can also subscribe to our quarterly email newsletters: