Change Marketing

Change Your Market

Change Marketing is imperative for the 21st century and the name of Artistic Toy's campaign that informs marketing professionals how to think differently in terms of the products they are using and the messages they are sending to their customers.

Marketing is an attitude, not a department, and your client's marketing message is represented in everything they do from answering the phone to arriving at their next appointment. If they are not considering the psychological and emotional impact of routine business activities they are missing extremely valuable opportunities to connect with clients and prospects.

It is a well known fact that people buy more for emotional reasons than objective rationale. You need to know the ways to connect with the emotions of your target audience. Studies have shown that businesses who can emotionally connect their lead generation and lead conversion activities to their customers experience three times more business from those customers. Ever imagine why McDonald's would choose to fill their "happy" meal with lots of fun toys and games?

While the economic down turn has slashed marketing budgets, I challenge you to help your clients think differently. Develop successful strategies that emotionally connect before they re-invest in the same, worn out methods they were using before. It is change that has proven to drop to your bottom line.

Artistic Toy will be featuring sales tips and creative product information focused around our popular line of reversible puppets to help you engage your clients in the Change Marketing conversation. We will feature 7 products over the next 14 weeks focused on emotional triggers in the most popular industries. We challenge you to join us and change your market.

Character Ad Challenge

One of the biggest barriers to selling plush toys is overcoming the intimidation factor.

"You want me to walk into my client's office and present a toy as a viable marketing strategy. That’s crazy…. Who would use such a bold and outrageous tactic? I have very serious clients who will throw me out of their office if I presented a childish gimmick."

This objection and consequently misconception is rampant in the minds of Promotional Product Distributors and their clients. That is why Artistic Toy has launched the Character Ad Challenge.

We challenge you within the next 30 days to review your favorite industry or business journal and tell us which advertisements you found with a reference to a Character. Last month I got my first copy of the Harvard Business Review and you may be interested to know what I found. See our new web page Characters In Marketing to review the results.

This type of market research is exactly what you need to overcome any hesitation you may have about presenting plush toys. The experience you gain from this search will equip you with confidence in your quest to build character and generate orders that can change your future. Everyone that participates in this challenge will find new lead opportunities and magazine results posted on our Characters In Marketing webpage. This webpage will soon become a place you can visit to see hundreds of advertisements with examples of characters being used in marketing. This will be a great foundation for you to present new ideas to your clients or prospects with confidence.

It’s the 21^st century, and to remain competitive you must innovate and you must commit to learning what it is you don’t know. You must continue to self-educate in order to see more clearly so that you and your business continue to grow. Be eager to learn, do something intentional to grow every day as you move closer to reaching your potential.

Artistic Toy is committed to principles that will help enable your organization to achieve its growth potential. We value your time and thank you for taking the Character Ad Challenge.

To participate in the Character Ad Challenge:

Send an e-mail to esocci@artistictoysmfg.com including the Publication Name, Publication Date, Page Number, and a brief description of the ad. Then check our Characters in Marketing webpage to see all submissions.

A New Year Filled with New Additions

Typically each new year at Artistic Toy begins with meeting our new and current clients at the ASI - Orlando and PPAI - Expo in Las Vegas. This year we have had some exciting additions which is why you didn't see us at these trade shows. On December 5, 2009, the owners of Artistic Toy received their newest member of the family. His name is Maxwell David Socci. This Character came 30 days ahead of schedule, he was 17.25 inches and 4 lbs, 11 ounces. While we have some bigger toys in our line, we have nothing that resembles his beauty. This character is not for sale; however, we will share him with you anytime. He is particularly active from 11pm to 4am, so he would be happy to see you during those times. They say your life will never be the same when you have a child, I will verify that is an understatement.

In preparation for our first new addition, we made some more additions to our extended Artistic Toy family. On Monday, December 14, 2009, we added two new people to help us in our reception and administrative support areas. Our team carefully selected two candidates who represent the type of "characters" we look for at Artistic Toy. They are self-motivated, have leadership experience, and have an authentic charisma that attracts people to them.

It is my pleasure to introduce to you Amorie Rivera and Brooke Donaldson as our new team members. They have been trained to help you with most customer service and sales related questions like product configuration, timing, minimums, pricing, website, samples, catalogs, and quotes. If you have anything they can't help you with, they know who to ask to get you the answer.

So while we welcome our new additions to the family, our team is focused on giving you great service you can expect from Artistic Toy. In order to ensure that customer service does not slip through this transition period we decided that participation in the January trade shows would distract us from focusing on our most important assets -our employees and current customers!!!

Thank you for your continued business and we look forward to seeing you later this year.