To Be Continued... How Continuity Programs Keep ’Em Coming Back
By Karen Akers

Want to keep your best clients? Hold on to your top employees? Make your workplace safer? Of course you do. Here’s what continuity programs – using logoed products, of course – can do to help you achieve these goals.

Basics first: What exactly is a continuity program? A strict definition is hard to pin down, since there are so many different types out there. In simplest terms, a continuity program is something that helps you maintain a long-term relationship with recipients. Not only does it help generate attention by offering repeat exposure for your message, it can also serve as an ongoing connection between company and recipient.  “It’s a regular and systematic promotion or marketing approach,” says counselor Dan Rappoport. “It’s really a promotional umbrella, and under that umbrella is regular communication.” Done correctly, continuity programs are effective in a variety of business situations. Whether your firm wants to create awareness, recognize its best clients or reward top employees, your counselor can design a continuity program to meet those needs. Choose Your Complexity In its most uncomplicated form, a continuity program can be as simple as a series of related gifts given to clients or employees. The idea is that such exposure will make a lasting impression on recipients and keep you top-of-mind. “Continuity programs are great for companies that seek to reinforce their brand awareness and identity, seek to make sales on a regular basis and to capture a consumer’s attention as well as loyalty,” Rappoport explains. Depending upon the desired results (and the audience), any number of products can be chosen to accomplish your goal. For example, a business may choose to get its message across to employees by giving them a series of desktop items – a pen and pencil holder one month, a business card holder the next, a tape dispenser the following, and so on. Another example would be to generate clients’ interest in a new product or service by sending a series of related gifts. Or, you can simply generate goodwill year after year by sending clients different versions of the same item, such as Farmer’s Almanacs or holiday ornaments. Even companies that send clients a new calendar each year are participating in a continuity program of sorts. Easy, right? Not so fast. It’s very important to select the right products, packaging and imprint to correctly convey your company’s intentions. Your counselor can work with you to help deliver your promotional message in an effective, memorable way. “Continuity programs are thematic marketing programs,” Rappoport explains. “If we created a lifestyle promotion, one month it might be a gardening kit, the next month it might be aromatherapy, the third month might be origami. The presence of a logo on a Zen gardening kit, and next to it on the shelf an origami kit with your logo, is very effective. That’s the ultimate nirvana right there, to provide that brand reinforcement.” Call To Clients Continuity programs come in more complex varieties, too. Some of the most recognizable types focus on consumers – loyalty-based point programs such as frequent-flyer miles, membership-based programs like clubs that automatically send recipients CDs, books or collectibles. That sort of thing. With proper planning and execution, similar ideas can be applied to programs using promotional products. By setting up a system where customers are rewarded with products for certain behavior, companies can accomplish many things. For example, polling firm AC Nielsen wanted to improve participation in its HomeScan program. About 60,000 households nationwide were involved in the program, for which they were required to use a special scanner to record the bar codes of groceries they bought. From this data, Nielsen could figure out what consumers were buying and report the information to supermarkets. When participation wasn’t as strong as it liked, however, Nielsen turned to Rappoport for help. “Their problem was how to motivate and reward the panel members,” he says. The resulting program rewarded families for scanning products consistently. For every product scanned, participants earned a specific number of points. Over time, they could cash them in for products featured in brochures. These included promotional products, computer games, CDs, books and more.  “Once they accrued enough points and used it on an item, they could then accrue more points and buy something else,” Rappoport says. “So they could continually go to the well and be motivated in a continuity program fashioned to maintain their diligence.”  Appreciate Employees Continuity programs can be effective retention tools. Just as retaining and motivating top customers is important, doing the same with key employees is another major part of many successful companies’ plans.  Recognizing employees’ hard work and showing them appreciation goes a long way toward keeping them happy and productive. Particularly in tougher economic times, when financial rewards are pared back, employee-recognition-based continuity programs can have a positive effect on worker relations. “Payrolls are great, and you have to have benefits such as 401(k)s and health insurance. Those are excellent, and you need them,” says counselor Mitch Gale. “But a recognition program is icing on the cake. It allows for individual recognition, and that’s very important.” The programs don’t have to be company-wide. They can be large enough to include everyone or small enough to focus on just one department, says counselor Bill Wright: “In the sales and marketing department, the recognition might be for sales accomplishments. In the operations department, it might be for employee of the month, for saving the company money or coming up with a new idea. In the engineering department, it might be more of a team recognition, a group of people who worked on a particular project. There are lots of different areas, depending upon where you’re starting to find out what type of recognition you might want to do.” Once the type and location of program is decided on, it’s time to get the word out. A program can’t be effective if nobody knows about it. “To just hand somebody a plaque does the person a world of good,” Wright says. “But the way to get the full benefit of the program is to do an absolutely great job of promoting it, letting other employees know, because you want your other employees working to be the one to get the plaque next time.” Set Up For Safety Continuity programs can be very effective in helping companies meet workplace safety goals too. For a relatively low cost, such programs can help teach the importance of safe working practices, and reward employees for their efforts. When considering the value of a safety program, employers need to consider how an employee injury affects other workers, as well as the company. Those costs add up, says counselor Ronnie Johnson: “Look at the costs in terms of the injured employee; supervisory time spent investigating and doing reports, downtime and gawking time in the area, the effect on insurance premiums, and equipment repairs, if necessary.” Depending on what a business wants to accomplish, safety-based continuity programs can take different forms. Businesses can simply institute a safety awareness program with posters and signs throughout the company and regularly timed safety-themed gifts as reminders. For best results, it can establish a multitiered program that rewards employees who work safely. Beyond gifts given to all employees, employers can set up programs where workers who stay accident-free for a certain amount of time earn gifts or points. Departments or teams can earn rewards for having the fewest number of injuries or lost time, and all employees can be rewarded if the company as a whole meets its safety goals.  “A continuity program is a means to recognize those folks who have made an effort to not only work safely themselves, but to look after their fellow workers and encourage people to become part of the safety program,” says counselor Shannon Westerman. Getting Started The above examples are just a few ways a firm can make continuity programs work. Your counselor can look at your needs and tailor one to specifically meet your business goals. When deciding what types of continuity programs could work, consider the following: Previous experience: Have you used a continuity program before? What did you like or dislike about it? What worked and didn’t work? Expectations: What do you hope to accomplish with the program? Would you like to generate awareness, encourage loyalty, increase safety, accomplish some client-related goal, etc.? Timeframe: Do you want the program to be open-ended, or do you have a specific timeframe in mind? Programs can last anywhere from a few days to several years. Having a general idea of the scope can help determine which type of program is best for you. Recipients: Who is your target audience? Will the program focus on employees, customers, age, gender, bluecollar/white-collar, urban/suburban/rural, etc.? Results: What kind of actions do you want to encourage/reward? Do you want to increase sales? Is expanding your customer base part of the desired result? Would you like clients to visit your Web site, physical store, or both? At first glance, continuity programs may seem complicated and off-putting, but they don’t have to be. With your counselor’s skills and access to the right products, the perfect program is just a phone call away. Karen Akers is associate editor/multimedia of Imprint.

Doozy Of A Dozen It seems that every year the animated feature film market gets larger, and 2000 was no exception. The Emperor’s New Groove, Road to El Dorado, Rugrats in Paris and Titan A.E. were just a few of the movies released that year. Add to that live-action films such as 102 Dalmatians, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and My Dog Skip, and you’ve got some formidable competition. So, when DreamWorks was getting ready to market its latest flick, Chicken Run, it had a tough task on its hands. Luckily, since the film was claymation – a very slow, painstaking filmmaking process – it had the luxury of a long production schedule to think up something fun and creative.  DreamWorks decided to use the time to its advantage, planning a year-long promo – just the right timeframe for a chicken-related product: a dozen eggs. “We had to find something chicken-oriented, but not dead-chicken-oriented, because the whole premise of the movie is the chickens surviving. So we decided on eggs,” explains counselor Michael Bedenbaugh. Naturally, real eggs were out of the question, but Bedenbaugh was able to modify ceramic versions into pretty realistic substitutes. Twelve different eggs were produced, each imprinted with the photo of a different character from the movie. During the first month, each recipient received an empty egg carton labeled “Chicken Run Egg of the Month Club” and a separate box with an egg featuring “Rocky,” one of the film’s characters. Each month, recipients received another egg featuring a different character, until the set was complete. The promotion created the desired buzz among recipients – movie critics, journalists and various public figures. In fact, it worked far better than DreamWorks anticipated. “It was their most successful promotion of the year,” says counselor Doreen Sullivan. “It got attention everywhere. People all over the world were calling DreamWorks, asking for the eggs.”

Pizza Pins’ Perfect Pitch Although employees were participating in Round Table Pizza’s voluntary training program, the firm wanted to generate more enthusiasm. Round Table decided it wanted to reward workers who completed sessions, which is where counselor Mari Machado took over. “I came up with the idea of a pizza pin,” she says. “Four slices would stand for each training module, and crew members would get a new pin each time they completed one.” The pins not only served as recognition among employees, they raised awareness among managers and customers as well. “Management could come into a particular store and see where each crew member was in his or her stages of training just by a visual … and it showed the customers that the company was investing in employees’ education and that it wasn’t just a minimum-wage job,” Machado explains.

Striving For Safety When steel manufacturer Bon L Canada Inc. wanted to emphasize workplace safety, it instituted a multitiered program to get employees on board. “We found they had a very high accident rate and plant morale was extremely low,” says counselor John Covey. “What we aimed to do was reverse that.” The resulting program consisted of three elements: 1) overall safety awareness, 2) individual employee incentives, and 3) team employee incentives. Products such as keytags, screwdrivers, pocket knives, pens, magnets, first-aid kits and more were used as gifts and prizes to reward employees and reinforce the company’s safety goals. Within a year, Bon L saw concrete results: Its accident rate dropped 86%, creating significant savings in lost-time pay. And thanks to the program and the low accident rate, employee morale grew as well. Overall, it was so successful that Bon L re-instituted it for another year and recommended it to other branches of the company.

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