As many of you know, I'm an admin and/or a moderator on a couple of online promotional products forums. I don't do this solely because I have too much time on my hands, but primarily because I still believe in giving back to the industry which has been my home for over 30 years. It's kinda like doing penance... or a prison work release program.
Being a moderator allows me to keep my finger on the pulse of the industry (or in its eye… one or the other) and know what's crawled up the collective, umm… well, uh, what's bothering you all.
A recurring theme I've recently encountered is the (unjustified?) fear that suppliers are marketing directly to end-users. Supplier websites often do have direct contact information and I can see where that might concern distributors. I read today about distributors concerned with suppliers putting their name on their shipping cartons. As I've preached before, it’s best to work with suppliers with which you have a comfort level… even if their website displays contact information.
But let's face facts… this interweb thing on which we all live now has made it easy enough for end-users to source their own products. A simple Google Image search of this pen or that mug will give the end-user a variety of choices for vendors who carry that specific style… and I promise you one of those companies will have direct contact information on their site.
I recognize that this might be hard to fathom, but I do have friends outside of this industry. I know that it's even harder to fathom that I might have friends at all, but that's a discussion for another day. Nevertheless, one of these aforementioned friends recently shared an experience with me, thinking that I might find it interesting. Inasmuch as I claim to be his friend (or is he mine?), I pretended to listen.
He was telling me about a pen he'd gotten from a vendor. Yes, a promotional item. From the way he described it, it was… a pen. A pen like so many other imprinted writing instruments we all see on a daily basis. Emphasis on "we." He, being a civilian, doesn’t have the daily access to the onslaught of e-blasts and brilliant exchanges on our promotional products forums. To him, the pen in question was a thing of wonder, beauty and marvel.
To me it was... a pen. What? Me cynical?
So impressed by this pen was he that he next did what any normal person would do ("normal" being the operative word here, as it does relate to a friend of mine). He took a photo of it, and then did a Google search (take that, Bing).
Only two dozen? That number surprised me. He clarified: there probably were many, many more, but he got bored looking after two pages on Google. Short attention span theater, or had he already accomplished what he'd set out to do? Probably a bit of both.
The point is (and you knew I had one) that distributors needn't fear suppliers marketing directly to their end-users… many end-users already know how to circumvent our otherwise brilliant, iron-clad system.
Maybe it's more important to find clients who want to work with you, and not find ways to work around you. Maybe it's better to accept that you have smart customers (after all… they're working with you) and appreciate that, in many cases, they have access to similar information as you, and yet still choose to work with you. Maybe it's time to become more of an asset to your clients and not just a source for placing orders.
And maybe it's time for me to go back online and view more cat videos.
Mike Schenker, MAS, is a promotional industry veteran and member of the Specialty Advertising Association of Greater New York (SAAGNY) Hall of Fame. He can be reached at mike@mikeschenker.com.