When you put your ear to a conch shell what do you hear? According to the common myth when you listen to a conch shell you can hear the sea. This isn’t actually the case; it has more to do with sound frequencies bouncing off each other that produce that sound. But the matter of the fact is, whenever you see a conch shell you relate it to the sea due to the sound it makes. This cross association is something that has been identified in the business world also.
The whole point of jingles etc. is to create a catchy tune that you will keep in your head. And when you are making a decision where this company is a choice, hopefully due to the cross association between remembering the tune, to choosing a company should occur and you choose the company based on the fact that it was in your head at the time. I remember as a kid one of the most catchiest jingles on the radio was “Don’t sign on the dotted line until you talk to tempo.” At the tender age of 7 I didn’t even know that Tempo was a furniture sales company, but whenever I past the Tempo store I always used to sing that jingle.
So say that you have a catchy jingle made up, you have tested it with target audiences and it works perfectly, what next, how successful would a radio advert be? Can you guarantee that spending thousands of pounds on a radio advert will work, and even then will it even reach the right demographic? All these problems are risks many companies take before advertising publically, but as a small business can you afford such risks?
To this I suggest something that was probably not thought of before, and that is promotional merchandise. You are probably thinking how will a promotional mug, or a promotional pen convey my jingle to my target audience, short answer is it can’t. But what you need to realise is the promotional merchandise industry has become so much more, and extended into many different consumer products, in this case, mp3/mp4 players. The great part about this item is you can advertise in two ways, physically and through audio. By this I mean not only can you imprint the logo on the front of the casing, but you can also incorporate the jingle into the workings of the mp3 player.
This completely takes advertising to a new level, with dual layer advertising, this really can be a great way for the future, who knows where the future of technology will go, but the promotional merchandise market will not be too far behind.
So it’s coming up to a month on since the big Wembley extravaganza and the buzz is still around the office, Wembley stories are still being told, The BTC Group LIVE merchandise is still being passed around and the Business gained from our 2011 Wembley show is still being dealt with. So what have we learnt? The first and probably most important thing learnt is, that eventually no matter how long it takes, but “Hard Work DOES Eventually Pay Off!” The BTC Group LIVE staff worked their promotional specialist fingers to the bone when it came to all aspects of the BTC Group LIVE Show, with a special Mention to our Senior Marketing Manager Jon Birrell, who had many a sleepless night in the run up to BTC Group LIVE 2011. 
