#ipmcogs

Nike: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. If you have a body, you are an athlete.”

Starbucks: “Our mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit — one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.”

Selby Marketing Services: “To make delivering a promotion simple, efficient and stress free whilst ensuring that the customer experience is exactly as intended”

We are a Promotional Fulfilment House, it’s self-explanatory.  Except for the delivery partner we are the last in a long supply chain.  We are the final hurdle before your Reward, Point of Sale, E-Commerce stock, Information Pack, Goody Bag or Mailing goes public.  As your handling partner we can make the difference.

After Gold wins for the last two years at the IPM COGs, we are shortlisted again this year for our work with Lancashire Cricket Club on the World Cup VIP ticketing.  High volume, high profile alongside small bespoke campaigns, our attention to detail is the same.  

Don’t waste your time on crisis management, hand your promotion to an award winning partner, who will nurture your vision and give 100% attention, 100% of the time.

If you have any promotional handling requirement or have a marketing dilemma and need some advice please pick up the phone.

Congratulations to all winners at The IPM Awards last week, glad to see some of my favourite people on the list.  Next up the COGs!

I’m racking my brains deciding which of our projects to submit this year, last year we got the golden gong so I’ve got to try and top it which isn’t easy.  The trouble is that in simple terms we pack parcels for a living! It’s not sexy, it’s not necessarily creative but it is essential.  Even so it’s hard to submit one single entry that will spark the enthusiasm of the judging panel.

Awards are a funny thing. They are so personal to the entrant. If they are good enough to be entered then they must be your best work and so they contain a part of you and your team. If the submission doesn’t engage the judges then it won’t win, regardless of how you and your client felt about it, and whether or not it was a success. But awards are such a great accolade. They boost your ego, they are a little shiny symbol of your success and show that a group of people who may not even know you have been impressed by your work. You’ve achieved your goal, you’ve won.

But do we really need them to feel appreciated?

We have dozens of jobs that come in and go out every day of every week, all year round.  Thankfully we don’t have to do big and expensive pitches for the work, we get a brief, shop for the best suppliers, produce the best quote we can, get the best people on the job and crack on and once a year, right about now, we start to think about getting an award.  The thing is, we treat every job as a potential submission for an award, and whether it makes an interesting read for a judging panel is another matter.  I’m certainly going to submit an entry into the handling and fulfilment category, I’ll try and make it as interesting as possible (as a judge on the IPM Awards I know there are lots of submissions to read), but if we’re not as worthy this year I think I’ll still be happy.  We’re very lucky and eternally grateful that we have a very loyal client base who continue to come to us for their handling needs and I don’t think that is down to our awards.

My client Lauren gave us the best award when she said to me this morning,

“I cannot recommend you highly enough, I have no worries about anything you do for us”.  

With comments like that, I think we’ve already won!

So, if you would like to work with a team that take away all your worries, that you would happily recommend to your peers and who treat every activity as a winner then look no further.  All you have to do is give me a call on 0161 339 5132 or drop me a line to [email protected].  

I look forward to hearing from you and hope that next year’s submission is one of your promotions.

Take care,

With the Rio Olympics now underway, Team GB aren’t letting us down this year. With an impressive 38 medals already at this stage, it certainly appears they’re still fighting strong!

2012 was a good year and 2016 is heading in the right direction – hopefully our team will keep those medals coming and continue to make us proud.

Being recognised and rewarded for your efforts is always a good boost and let’s face it, if you’re not striving to do the very best you can in what you do – you really shouldn’t be doing it.  Best thing is though, when you get that reward, big or small, it makes it all the more worthwhile and you continue to do even better the next time.

In our industry, awards such as IPM Awards (for our clients) and The Cogs (for handling houses like ours), would be deemed as the “decorated” kind but as they say “the best things come in small packages”.  Why is that? Because it’s the lesser-known un-advertised rewards that seem to put the biggest smile on people’s faces.  First and foremost, a simple “thank you” suffices and goes a lot further than you think.  Putting a spring in someone’s step and a smile in their day is surely a gift, albeit of the invisible sort.

A member of our customer service team had a huge spring in his step last year after being made the proud owner of a pair of tickets to V Festival.  He was helping with a particularly tricky project and so pleased was our client at the smooth way he executed this (it really was quite testing!) that they wished to reward him!

There are always lessons to be learnt…

For a smoother customer journey, it usually helps to keep everything in one place – in other words, if a handling house offers a full range of services, take advantage of this for the sake of a few pence.  Time and again, it happens (in some cases it may be out of our client’s control) that the customer service queries are handled in one place and the fulfilment in another.  This was the case for the project our lucky V Festival ticket recipient was helping with – queries were flying in all different directions but the answers were held in different places… and very slowly at that!

Of course the above is worst case scenario – if all parties are properly introduced and their roles made clear from the offset, it can work but takes more effort to co-ordinate.

Having a few COGs Awards already under our belt is affirmation that we must be doing something right here at Selby and we’re lucky to work with such lovely clients who never fail to let us know when our work is recognised.  Give us a call on 0161 339 5132 if we can help you.