Give a gift that's used all year

There are thousands of gifts you can choose from when looking for something to show your appreciation to customers and prospective customers. We encourage you to consider giving a customized calendar this year.

You may ask why would we recommend giving a calendar when you have so many options to choose from -- why not a brochure or a notepad? While these are nice gifts, they don't have near the staying power and branding awareness of a calendar. Often, people will toss a brochure in the trash after a few days, if not a few minutes. With a calendar, you're guaranteeing that your company name is looked at every day, every month, for a full year -- giving you branding power all year long.

In addition to their long-term impact, giving calendars away as corporate gifts shows your appreciation and your thoughtfulness; you're giving a gift that individuals can use to organize their schedules and plan for special events -- further assurance that your gift will be used long-term versus meeting the trash can soon after it's received.

Customizable Calendars for Your Business

Custom promotional calendars give you both short- and long -term marketing impact. The calendars you see in the below images are all customizable for your business, and are only a few of the many options we have available.

Email Shawn Brincks, Director of Merchandise, to discuss the custom calendar that will best promote your business.

Ag Media Summit and Our New Video Camera

AKC Marketing attended the 12th annual Agricultural Media Summit in St. Paul, Minnesota. When we returned, we invested in a hi-def video recorder.

This will all come full circle as you read to the end.

At Ag Media Summit, we were thrilled to attend the program , "Web: Get connected: Exploring cutting edge communications in the digital age," presented by Ben Self. Walking into the conference room, we were prepared with the following, courtesy of the schedule:

During the 2008 election cycle, Ben Self served as the Democratic National Committee technology director and supervised the technology projects of the national party, focusing specifically on the Website, computer infrastructure, compliance software and national voter file database. In this role, he led projects that entirely revamped the technology of the national party, including a complete replacement of the Web site and the Democratic Party’s national voter file, VoteBuilder. Self will share some of what he has learned in his career, including experience in new media technologies, statistical data analysis, data warehousing, database architecture and administration, system design and system development.

At the end of the presentation, we were armed with excellent examples of how new technologies, especially video, can create an entire movement. Below are examples Self presented:

Nick Griffin's BNP: Not In My Name

Two dangerous, racist and fascist politicians were elected to the European Parliament in the not-so-distant past. They were elected due to the traditional political Party's low voter turnout. The below video was created to show that the two elected BNP did not represent Britain in the European Parliament. British citizen's wanted to prove they're an open and tolerant society. As a result, thousands said, "Not in my name," banning together with this powerful video:

Don't Let Up! Obama for America barackobamadotcom

Another, much lighter, example is that of Obama's campaign for election day volunteers. The following is a brief but to-the-point video, asking voters to get out early to help others get to the polls on election day.

No matter what your political views, it’s a great example of how you don’t need fancy production-style video to make a point.

We are actively involved in helping our clients tell their stories using social media, and it has become clear that a great way to enhance those efforts is to use video. We recently invested in a hi-definition camera so that we can take high quality footage of key events and campaigns for our clients, and build on our current activities with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and additional social media outlets.

We told you this would come full circle - Stay tuned for more!