You might ask, “What are they on about, everyone knows that!” And we might reply, “So why is it that in December of every year companies ask for bespoke pop up products to be produced within a couple of days even though they have no concept in mind and no artwork to hand?” All they know is that it’s coming close to Christmas and this year they want to send something different.

 For years shops on the High Street have urged us to shop early for Christmas. We realise that they would like to improve cash flow by encouraging shoppers to spread their Christmas spending. We like to encourage customers to plan early and place orders early in order to try to ease the stress and relative madness that is the Christmas rush.

 Even in quieter times such as the summer holiday period we ask for a two week lead time to produce an order of 2000 automatic pop up mailers. The likelihood is that your designer is not familiar with the layout of a pop up product and so the design might take longer than you anticipate. We supply templates and samples to help you with your artwork but even then there can be positional errors and so on which can hold up the job. We then have to produce proofs and a mock-up which are sent via ”snail mail” or via courier as we can’t send a mock-up via email.

 Once the mock up and proof are approved we go to print, followed any adding any finishes that you might specify such as laminating which is a very popular. The next process is die-cutting and trimming before each component part of the pop-up product is carefully stripped out of each printed sheet of board. Then it is the turn of hand finishing and hand assembly. Every single one of our pop up products is made by hand right here in Lancashire - hand folded, hand glued, rubber bands inserted by hand, the mailing outers are made by hand, the pop ups are compressed and inserted into the mailing outers by hand, address labels are affixed by hand, mailers put into postal sacks or carefully packed into packaging boxes by hand. We do not simply press a button and 1000 pop up cubes suddenly appear on a pallet.

 As you can appreciate a hand made product takes a lot of care, attention to detail and quite a bit of time.

 If that happens in August when orders can be taken comfortably in our stride, what do you imagine it’s like in October and November? Or, worse still, in mid December when someone comes on the phone with what they describe as a “screamer”. Pleas such as, “Come on, mate, you’ve got to help us out as we’re right in a mess with this one” are an everyday occurrence. Unfortunately, the fact that someone else has dug a hole for themselves by promising to meet crazy deadlines doesn’t alter the fact that the job still takes two weeks to complete. And being British, we don’t like queue jumping!

The Sideshooter is a promotional product known in the industry as an auto extender and it is most often used as an everyday promotional mailer where the message is growth or speed. But what about its potential as a seasonal mailer - or even a fun Christmas greetings card

Each year companies spend a great deal of time and effort trying to come up with an idea for a company card. Invariably, other projects take priority and the choice of a top notch company greeting is left as a last minute decision and the opportunity to create a lasting impression is lost. If you are reading this as a brand new article you might well be thinking that we’ve gone mad as it’s still only July and already we’re talking about Christmas. Well that’s because we know that things are left to the last minute every single year. It’s almost as if Christmas takes the corporate marketing world by surprise - as if it were a floating date. What we are trying to say here is that if you don’t chose your comany greeting or Christmas card with care and thought then your last minute afterthought of a 4-page A5 card will be money and opportunity wasted. The card will be hung up on a line of ribbon on your customer’s office wall with scores of others who have done exactly the same thing and got hung up with the smalls!

We urge you to start thinking right now and here’s one neat idea to get the grey matter working. In a word, it’s - “crackers”.

As a symbol of Christmas the humble Christmas cracker is quite possibly the most physical and noisy! It is a highly interactive product and contains the promise of a small gift, a party hat and a party joke. If you want to create a similar festive feeling to the Christmas cracker with your Christmas promotion then our Sideshooter might just fit the bill.

The Side Shooter extender is the ideal product to take on the guise of a Christmas cracker. The product is delivered compressed in a custom-designed envelope. When the Side Shooter is taken out of the envelope the sides shoot out with a whoosh and a crack giving your Christmas promotion the impact that you are looking for and making sure that your customer remembers you. The Sideshooter is also a very interactive product and it will be passed around your customer’s office for everyone to have a play with, making it a very effective marketing product for Christmas promotions. Comparison of Sideshooters to Christmas crackers is very apt and one that hasn’t gone unnoticed by advertisers for Christmas ad campaigns.

Calendars that you can mail? Nothing new in that. Calendars that you can mail that turn into pen holders – now that is something a bit different! Calendars and pen holders that you can mail and that have an automatic pop up action – well now, that is something different!

 Our range of pop up mailers is very adaptable as each pop up product starts as a blank canvas. The choice of what is printed on the products is left entirely to your graphic designer. But as we start to approach the third quarter of the year it is time to think ahead to the end of the year and give some time to the subject of Christmas and New Year promotions. A promotional calendar has always been a popular and sensible choice.

 Pretty well any shape in our 3-D range can be printed as a desk top calendar and some of them can be adapted for use as pen holders. This simple action has the effect of doubling the product’s use to your client and also doubles the likelihood of being kept on your customer’s desk for the next 12 months. The fact that it has an automatic pop up action only enhances its appeal as a Christmas and New Year promotional tool.

 The Pop Up Ball, Cube, Castle, House, Pen Pals and Pyramids have all been printed as desktop calendars at some stage or other but not all of them are suitable for conversion to double as a pen holder. We have chosen just 5 products from our range as examples that are totally suited to being used as pen holders and the unusual shaped ones are our pop up cube, the Six Ball and our pop up house along with two styles of regular pen pots! However, other products can be converted such as our pop up castle, the choc box and pop up cuboids and with the right choice of graphic design each one could be a successful calendar as well.

 Christmas and the New Year seem to be eons away but in reality there are only about 16 weeks left in the year to plan, design and print pop-up calendars and pen holders for 2009. We usually start to take orders at the end of August through to the end of November but those last minute jobs are always stressed out affairs because of the desire to catch the Christmas post. We urge you to start planning now to ensure that everything runs as smoothly and as stress free as possible.

The Whitney Woods range of promotional pop up mailers and interactive marketing products is bound to get your creative juices flowing. Our free sample pack contains a host of terrific marketing ideas and to get a taste of what’s in store we have put them all on video on http://www.popupmailers.co.uk/index.html .

 Advertising and marketing professionals throughout the UK are familiar with the Whitney Woods range of cardboard engineered promotional pop up products but our website statistics tell us that we are getting hundreds of first-time visitors to our site every day. In order to help new visitors get a grasp of what they are all about, we have added a video link on many product pages. The videos are usually about 10 seconds long so it’s not going to take up too much time from your busy working schedule to pop in and have a look.

 However, adding the videos is only part of the story. We have given the whole site a re-vamp. It is now much easier to navigate with new links having been added and the whole site has much cleaner lines and is easier to read.

 The product range can be viewed as a whole but we have also made it available to view in product groups such as “pocket media”; “products that turn”; “products that jump” and so on in order to help you to find the effect that you are looking for.

 We also suggest various solutions for marketing applications such as promotional products for events, exhibitions and trade shows; ideas for announcements and invitations; suggestions for conferences literature and products for corporate branding campaigns.

 The new look site, which was designed by Jamie Coles at Clear Squares based in Burnley, is live from today and presents your easiest way of finding countless solutions to marketing problems. Take a look and then get hold of the free box of samples – a rich source of advertising, marketing and promotional ideas.

 Events management companies often organize a whole series of related covering, say, race meetings, rock concerts, celebrity dinners and corporate road shows. The Foldilocks card from Whitney Woods is an ideal product to hand out as a calendar of events.

 Promotional print makes an extremely valuable contribution to the success of any event. From publicity posters to invitations, floor plans to agendas, programmes to guest passes and badges – every aspect is very important and if even one is overlooked it can be a major setback to the accomplishment of the organizer’s goals.

 One major aim of any event is to ensure that things run smoothly and that the guests are made to feel at ease with the organizer’s presence being almost invisible. Football pundits say that when you watch a match and you don’t see the referee then he’s having a great match. Sometimes it’s the same with the promotional print. There are times when it’s good for something to jump out and shout - a poster, for example or a high-impact invitation such as our own Jumpinjax product. But at other times it’s good for a product to keep working away in a quiet fashion.  

 A calendar of events might be an example of such a product. It could be just one part of a promotional mailing. The pack might contain a major announcement, some high impact invitations plus a calendar of events for the next 6 months. That makes the calendar a long term product and something that the events organizer is keen for his customer to keep. That immediately rules out a leaflet or even a tidy booklet but a really neat piece of folding pocket media the size of a credit card – now that’s a different matter.

 The Foldilocks card features twelve pages which fold out into a strip that is over 400mm long but then fold away and then lock into a four-page cover that is the same size as a credit card. It is absolutely ideal for giving dates and details of a series of events, race meetings, sporting fixtures and so on. The fact that it is the same size as a credit card will encourage the customer to keep the Foldilocks – in a wallet, a purse, a handbag, a pocket or it might just be popped in a desk drawer but it is unlikely to be thrown into the bin which happens all too easily with a leaflet.