Minnesota Printing and Direct Mail Experts
Just another WordPress.com weblogArchive for May, 2009
Highlight Printing, Minneapolis, MN: Reports “Full Frontal BBQ” Results From The Great American BBQ Competition, 2009
Highlight Printing, a local printer near downtown Mpls, sponsors the BBQ team “Full Frontal BBQ” and presents these results from the Great American BBQ competition on May 23rd, 2009.
Full Frontal BBQ is a competition BBQ team lead by team captain Don Bickford.
Because of his Grand Champion winnings last season, Don and his team qualified for the Great American BBQ competition that was held this past weekend in Kansas City, KS. This is one of the “biggie” national competitions and we are proud to annouce that Full Frontal BBQ took home 3 ribbons: chicken, pork, and brisket.
Every KCBS (Kansas City BBQ Society) sanctioned BBQ competition includes these 4 categories: chicken, ribs, pork shoulder (commonly called pork butt…don’t ask me why) and beef brisket.
Don had this to say, “Kansas was beautiful, the event was very well managed, and we had great weather. The fun thing about this event in particular is that it was part of a festival and had a carnival with rides that my kids could enjoy. It’s always great to meet other BBQ teams from around the country and to get reacquainted with teams we have met along the way.”
We at Highlight Printing are fortunate enough to have Don cater our client thank-you BBQ’s twice each summer. We call it “Smokin’ In The Summer” and this is our 5th year of hosting these events.
Check out Don’s tweets @: http://twitter.com/FullFrontalBbq
The author, Lisa Bickford, president of Highlight Printing, is a veteran of the printing industry and a lover of all things printed. Since 1984 she has worked her way up through many areas of the industry before acquiring Highlight Printing in 1996 with her husband Don, who has also been in printing since the early 80’s. The things she continues to find most satisfying are the wonderful business relationships that have developed with clients, vendors, & co-workers, and the energy that is created from challenge resolution. You can email her directly at lisab@highlightprinting.com
This Printing Blog was launched in November, 2008, as a vehicle to share ideas, information, and innovationsTo see other topics within this blog, click HERE.
Highlight Printing, Minneapolis, MN: Reports “Full Frontal BBQ” Results From MN in May BBQ Competition, 2009
Highlight Printing, a local printer near downtown Mpls, sponsors the BBQ team “Full Frontal BBQ” and presents these results from the “Minnesota in May” BBQ competition on May 16th, 2009.
Full Frontal BBQ is a competition BBQ team lead by team captain Don Bickford.
There are 5 “Championship” level BBQ events in MN:
- MN in May, Austin, MN
- Smokin’ In Steele, Owatonna, MN
- Crow River Challenge, Watertown, MN
- Big Island BBQ, Albert Lea, MN
- SMSU Smokefest, Marshall, MN
MN in May was Full Frontal BBQ’s first KCBS sanctioned Grand Champion win in the 2008 season, and while Don and the team didn’t go home with the Grand Champion trophy this year, they did go home with 2 prizes that are almost as much fun: 2nd place in the “chalk it up to fun” SPAM category (the prize was a pair of glow in the dark boxer shorts, among other things). And Don’s 9 year old daughter, Samantha, took home her first “Kid’s Que” award – 4th place in chicken! Forget printing…the next generation is going to make a living with BBQ! (Oh, and Full Frontal did take home a ribbon in the “pork” category.)
Don had this to say, “Minnesota in May is one of my favorite events – it’s a great way to kick off the BBQ season. There were 71 teams participating this year! The Highlight for me was hearing Samantha’s name called. We had been working for weeks, and she had to cook in the rain…she was a trooper. Since she had recently recovered from having 2 broken arms, her team name was “Broken Bones BBQ”. That’s the thing about BBQ, there is never a shortage of fun!”
We at Highlight Printing are fortunate enough to have Don cater our client thank-you BBQ’s twice each summer. We call it “Smokin’ In The Summer” and this is our 5th year of hosting these events.
Check out Don’s tweets @: http://twitter.com/FullFrontalBbq
The author, Lisa Bickford, president of Highlight Printing, is a veteran of the printing industry and a lover of all things printed. Since 1984 she has worked her way up through many areas of the industry before acquiring Highlight Printing in 1996 with her husband Don, who has also been in printing since the early 80’s. The things she continues to find most satisfying are the wonderful business relationships that have developed with clients, vendors, & co-workers, and the energy that is created from challenge resolution. You can email her directly at lisab@highlightprinting.com
This Printing Blog was launched in November, 2008, as a vehicle to share ideas, information, and innovationsTo see other topics within this blog, click HERE.
Highlight Printing, Minneapolis, MN: Marketing Tips and Tricks: Printing is More Effective Than Ever!
Highlight Printing, a local printer near downtown Mpls, offers these tips and tricks for marketing:
Question: How can you use your marketing dollars and efforts most effectively?
Answer: The most successful marketing campaigns dovetail a well-branded, clearly-messaged, on-line marketing effort, advertising campaign and a similarly branded and messaged, printed campaign.
Just like everything else in life, it is all about balance. And right now there is a huge opportunity for you because marketing is out of balance. With so much emphasis placed on internet marketing, other forms of marketing are being neglected…which gives you a greater chance to get noticed. These are some ideas to round out your printed marketing communications:
- Direct Mail: Have you gone to your mailbox at work or at home to see how much less mail there is these days? A great way to get noticed, simply because of the lack of competition. And what better way to steer people to your website than through direct mail? BTW — did you know that Google recently did a big direct mail campaign about how to better use “Ad Words”? Yes, that’s right…Google. And yes, that’s right…about an internet product. In their research, they determined that print was a better way to communicate with their customers and that it rounded out the information available on their website or that they had previously communicated via email. One other thing…people still prefer to read a piece that has been printed on paper rahter than verbiage on a screen.
- Hand-outs: One of the advantages to brochures, sell-sheets, fliers, etc., is that they are tactile…people actually hold them in their hand, which gives you the opportunity to do something that will engage them. It is more personal than the internet or other traditional means of advertising. Plus, hopefully they hang on to it for future reference, unlike the web where you have an average of 8 seconds to make an impression before they move on to the next site. If your prospects are businesses, an effective way to create information that they will hang on to is still a folder that they can slip into their drawer…ooo, then follow up with additional info periodically as a way to stay useful and top-of-mind with your prospects.
- Leave behinds: This is a tool we use all the time: We create as many useful, attractive, promotional pieces as we can think of, with the hopes that folks will leave one of the items that they find particularly useful on their desk to stay top-of-mind…wouldn’t want them to have to look up our phone number, would we?! Some of the items we use are: notepads, post-its, magnets, coasters
- Take-aways: Just like a hand-outs and leave-behinds, but more suited for trade shows. One trick we advise is that if you print a sell sheet for a trade show, print it slightly over-sized (9×12??) and print it on card-stock. That way if someone is walking around filling a bag full of info, when they reach in to pull out that info it will be your piece that hits their hand first.
If you’d like to brain-storm about your identity, branding, and/or marketing efforts, we would love to do so. There is not much we find more satisfying than working with businesses on the verge of blasting out into the marketplace.
BONUS: NO CHARGE FOR THIS CONSULTATION!
The author, Lisa Bickford, president of Highlight Printing, is a veteran of the printing industry and a lover of all things printed. Since 1984 she has worked her way up through many areas of the industry before acquiring Highlight Printing in 1996 with her husband Don, who has also been in printing since the early 80’s. The things she continues to find most satisfying are the wonderful business relationships that have developed with clients, vendors, & co-workers, and the energy that is created from challenge resolution. You can email her directly at lisab@highlightprinting.com
This Printing Blog was launched in November, 2008, as a vehicle to share ideas, information, and innovationsTo see other topics within this blog, click HERE.
