#swagrobot

Over winter break (I had three weeks off, wahoo!), I put together JENCHIKIMCHI.com, it was an easy build, and I got it to move fast. The next step was starting to brand myself, put together a list of services, and put together what is a growing portfolio. I think we’re current now, right?

Picture this. You’re texting with your BFFL, your BFF, your BF, or any other witty acronym that modern America has come up with these days. They’ve either told you they loved you with heart eyes, or that they’re grumpy with the emoji sad face. 

Now wouldn’t it be great to get a stocking stuffer filled with emoji pins? Now you can! Say hello to Emoji Pins.

At SwagRobot, we’re all about showing off our awesome customers, and after the success of We Make Swag, we’re introducing something new, Artists Collections. 

Everyday we work with some amazingly talented artists. Now we're giving these artists the opportunity to open up their own branded stores to sell their products on SwagRobot.

Study, study, study. Research, research, research.

As I write this to you, I realize that I sound like a teacher that is lecturing all of her pupils to study for their midterm. Well guess what? I’m not your teacher, I’m just your friendly blogger who is telling you to know, study, research, and understand your consumer. By understanding your consumer, you can then understand their purchases, their likes, and what might be the most valuable to them. So instead of just telling you what to do, I’ve put together a few questions and examples that you should ask yourself before purchasing any promotional products.

Make sure that you can answer these questions:

Who is your consumer?

Do they have a certain set of mission, values or beliefs?

Example: If this is a student or youth-related consumer, think about what is appropriate for their age. A bottle opener keychain might not be an appropriate (or wise) purchase. Nowadays, many elementary or middle-school students have a cell phone, maybe a cell phone case that cross promotes safety and your company is a better solution.

Is your consumer attending an event?

If you’re giving out a lanyard with your company’s logo for a conference, maybe think about considering a flash-drive, too. Connect the flash-drive onto the lanyard and pass out at the beginning of the event. Don’t forget to add your logo to not only the lanyard, but also to the flash drive.

Is there a cause related? A special organization that donations are going to?

Don’t forget that people LOVE collecting pins. Whether it be for the awareness of an event (thinking pink or purple ribbons), or a pin that they attended “XYZ Festival 2014,” they like to be able to show this off. Is a lanyard an appropriate purchase for the VIP attendees?

Knowing your consumer can help you be memorable. It can help you spread the word.

Name: Jezebel

Hometown: Mount Dora, FL

Current Jam: Jason Derulo, Wiggle (Feat. Snoop Dogg)

What’s your favorite indoor/outdoor activity? I love sunbathing on my balcony with a nice big bowl of ice water to cool off.

If you won the lottery, what is the first thing you would do? BUY ALL THE TREATS.

What do you want to be when you grow up? Do you mean what WILL I be when I grow up? America’s Next Top Dog Model.

What’s your worst habit? Not excusing myself after cutting the cheese.

I am a firm believer of doing good for others. Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “the purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you lived and lived well.” These little moments in our lives is what grounds us. In between grabbing our morning coffee, running errands after leaving the office, we’re reminded of the great opportunities that are happening around us, that we can thankfully be a part of.

At SwagRobot, we’ve been given an opportunity to participate in something big. Slipstream, a student-driven Formula One racing team,  will be representing the U.S. at the F1 in Schools world finals this upcoming November, in Abu Dhabi. Awesome right? Hannah, a member on the team, contacted us because they want to continue the tradition of exchanging gifts with other country teams. So what are they going to exchange with other teams in Abu Dhabi... their very own Slipstream team trading pins. Slipstream is hoping to start a F1 in Schools pin-trading tradition!

After we figured out all of the details, and learned a little bit more about Hannah and Slipstream, we’re going to be honorary sponsors of Slipstream! You’ll see SwagRobot on their social media, school newsletter and on the back of the trading pins in Abu Dhabi! #swaginabudhabi This is so exciting, and we’re thrilled to finally be sharing this with everyone (we've been planning this blog and working with Hannah for almost two months!).

Globally, there's 22 million students from 44 countries involved with F1 in Schools. In Abu Dhabi there will be about 40 teams (of 3-6 students each), all learning and applying STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) by forming an F1 team full of designers, engineers, resource managers, and more. This is an exciting opportunity for these students, as well as an experience of a lifetime. Best of luck to Hannah and the rest of the Slipstream team when they compete next month in Abu Dhabi!

For more information about Slipstream, check out their web site at http://slipstreamf1.us.

For more information about F1 in Schools, check out their web site at http://www.f1inschools.com

Here's another hysterical post that I wrote for SwagRobot. This picture depicts a unique relationship between Christopher and I, as well as the ongoing inter-office struggle that we have between being a Mac and a PC user!

One day we counted that we have the following devices... 3 iPhones, 3 iPads, 2 Apple laptops, 1 Apple desktop, 4 Apple TVs, 2 Windows laptops, 1 Nexus 4 phone.

Fonts. Typography. Words. Letters. 

Yes, I am throwing out random words that only are connectable to a designer/creative. It’s like opening the best wrapped Christmas present and being overcome with pure joy, and enthusiasm. It’s like when you finally get the highest quality kitchen appliance perfectly placed in your kitchen… whoa, I guess you know where my head is at, fonts and kitchen appliances. Pretty accurate.

There is so much value in choosing fonts to best represent your brand. Depending on your company, and logo, sometimes the more common or popular fonts are the best to use. They’re popular for a reason, right? But you must determine (just like your marketing campaign) what your purpose is. Is it to be stylish? Then choose a stylish font. Is it to be clean, and legible? Then choose a sans serif font. Is it supposed to imitate handwriting, or look elegant? Then choose that type of font. Just make sure that you put enough work into the thought process of a font, so you can benefit from it in the outcome. Nobody wants a lapel pin that they can’t read because the stroke on the Papyrus font was too wide.

By the way, don’t ever use Papyrus font. It’s just not a good idea. Don’t use Papyrus or Comic Sans, those are on the top of the list as a designers worst nightmares. No really, we discuss things like this.

Since I brought you to the nightmares, I’ll give you some clues about some of the more popular (dare I say overused fonts) of today. Gotham, anyone? You’ve seen those green screen ratings in the movie theater, right? That’s Gotham. What about Obama’s political campaign? That’s Gotham. NYU’s typeface, that’s Gotham, the list goes on, just Google it.

Another one is Lobster font. It’s a widely available font that is used anywhere from print to web campaigns. Someone even created an elaborate web site called lobsteristhenewcomicsans.com. We know how they feel, right?

The other day I sat down with the three owners of SwagRobot to find out how it all started, check out my interview below.

Tell me how SwagRobot was built.

Chris: SwagRobot was built between Beth, John, and myself. We all knew that we wanted to create a company that would provide a better experience for the customers in the promotional marketing industry. When we were trying to come up with our business model, we knew that we wanted to start with mobile accessories, and then later expand from there. Now not only do we offer mobile cases, and accessories, but we’ve added to our catalog lapel pins, keychains, and most recently lanyards.

 SwagRobot is such a unique name, how’d you come up with the name SwagRobot specifically? 

John: We always knew from the beginning that we wanted to brand ourselves and have a mascot. I’ve always thought that it was a valuable element in creating a company. We easily connected to “SwagRobot” because it spoke to both of products, and that we wanted to incorporate a bit of fun into our name and mascot. We didn't just want to build another website, we wanted to build a brand.

At the beginning of creating our website, and developing our mascot, we went through a few weeks of UI testing, where we would ask what UI testers what they remembered most from our website after just viewing it for fifteen seconds. No one ever forgot the name.

    So tell me about your logo.

Beth: We obviously came up with our name first, and we had an artist sketch out some ideas. We used those designs to start creating some different variations of robots, where it not only incorporated the basic elements, but also a robot who looked fun, personable, and of course had some swag going on. 

 Colors, I love colors, and I love learning about colors, so how’d you come up with the orange and blue?

Chris: Originally we started with green and orange.

John: We took into consideration how the brain associates with colors. Blue and orange are complimentary colors.

Chris: And blue is my favorite color.

John: There has been some tweaking since we first started. We still stayed with blue and orange, but changed the composition of both colors a little bit.

Beth: Did you see our ColourLovers page? 

So where do you see SwagRobot in five years?

Beth: We’ve talked about getting into prototype manufacturing. I’ve been researching desktop 3D printers, obviously not for us to purchase now, but definitely in our future.

John: We want to not only be creating custom promotional products, but we want to create promotional products that don’t even exist yet.