Shopping Centre site space for promotional activity

August 11th, 2010

For Brands wanting to engage with their customer in the run up to Christmas you need to consider the environments that your customers will be in. There is a growing trend in the UK for shopping centre shopping! Fairly obviously the background to this has got to do with the weather, proximity of shops and parking! So shopping centres are a great place for you to be connecting with your customers in the run up to Christmas!

There are however a number of considerations in running any shopping centre promotional activity, availability, promotional stands, promotional staff, shopping centre shopper profile and cost. Availability is one of the main problems, as these promotional areas within shopping centres are limited, and there only tend to be a selection of three or four promotional stand areas per shopping centre, and a finite number of shopping centres in the UK. The key to selecting the shopping centres that best suit your brand is to research shopper profiles and the retail outlets in each shopping centre, then ensure the footfall (number of shoppers using the mall) is adequate – or even easier get your brand experience agency to do it for you!

Once you have a short list of shopping centres that you would like to attend check on availability of the site space, this is easily done by your agency and the better agencies would normally do this for free as part of the proposal. Decisions on the duration of your promotion will depend on your budget, but remember erecting and dismantling a stand can be fairly costly so to achieve economies, it would be better to increase the number of live days that your promotional staff are working the stand.

Flip Video Westfield

Flip Video at Westfield Shopping Centre London

Cost of site space normally doubles in November and December, so be prepared to pay a premium when capitalising on Christmas shoppers. You will also need to ensure that you have an engaging stand which not only helps to communicate your brand message and image, but also adheres to shopping centre rules no matter where you go. To illustrate this point, if you were looking to visit a premium shopping centre in London, you would definitely want to attend Westfield Shopping Centre, who have restriction on the height of your stand so that shoppers still maintain a line of sight from one store to the next. London promotional staff are also very important to the image of your brand as well as the image of the shopping centre so ensure your agency selects promotional staff that are a credit to your brand and the shopping centre.

Ensure your stand is inviting and engaging and that your products are ‘demonstratable’ and the key benefits of your product are communicated in a professional manner by providing comprehensive training to the promotional staff, and dont forget to make all elements relevant to your objectives. To sum up, my recommendation is to “BOOK NOW” and plan for the winter months! For more information please contact the office on 08456800682, we would be happy to give advice FOC!

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Promotional Staff London

August 4th, 2010

I have recently been asked if there is a difference in the quality of promotional staff in London compared to the rest of the UK! There is a very easy response to this question, in every city there are strong promotional staff and weak promotional staff, I know this sounds fairly simple but you should not base the decision about which city to hold promotional activity in based on the quality of the promotional staff.

The way to improve the quality of promotional staff on any campaign in any city is to ensure you use a supplier that not only focuses on the process of recruiting quality staff onto their database, but also regularly cleanses the database and has a system of rating staff after every job. Don’t feel you shouldn’t ask a supplier to outline what their processes are in this regard, but even better ask the agency for a copy of their credentials which should focus on quality assurance. If they have not included slides on a stringent recruitment procedure and staff rating system then they probably don’t have one.

Very few agencies actually focus on these vital steps, we commit to ensuring staff quality by employing quality assurance managers who travel the length and breadth of the country assessing activity and assesing staff to ensure what we have promised clients is actually delivered and that information on staff quality is used internally to provide the next project with the highest quality staff available.

So in summary my tip for ensuring the highest quality staff on your next promotion is to ensure your staffing agency has stringent processes which not only are used to weed out bad apples but also ensure the promotional staff that work hard and perform are offered as much work as possible.

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Leafleting in Birmingham and London

August 3rd, 2010

There are rules around leafleting in many city centres in the UK, gone are the days when you would run off 500 leaflets and call up a promotional staffing agency and tell them to supply you with staff to hand out the leaflets. Recently there has been a trend for inner city councils including Birmingham and London to license any leafleters. While it is not prohibitively expensive, you cannot leaflet without these licenses! Licenses can either be purchased in an individuals name or in a companies name and each license can be purchased for a 12 month period.

Applications need to be made through the Birmingham City Council and all applications take a minimum of 7 days to have an application approved. Ngage have applied for these licenses and can provide you with a cost effective way to deliver leafleting campaigns. There are a number of other areas that you should consider when putting together a leafleting campaign as follows:-

  • Time of day and footfall figures
  • Effectiveness of literature – attention grabbing
  • Number of staff required
  • Delivery and storage of leaflets
  • Event Managers to manage breaks and where staff are positioned to ensure  maximum exposure
  • Promotional clothing

Should you require any further information on City Centre leafleting please contact Mark Meurer on 0845 6800682.

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Ngage delivers call centre for Sony

July 14th, 2010
Ngage Call centre

Ngage Call Centre

Ngage – well known for its high quality promotional staff, has been asked by Sony UK to manage its recent trade-in promotion. The basis of the promotion was to offer customers the opportunity to trade in an old television, DVD player etc. For that they would receive a discount on the purchase of a new product, at the same time it acted as an incentive to recycle unwanted equipment. The promotion was run in conjunction with the world cup football in South Africa.

Ngage solution included designing a dealer portal (Database) which would assist dealers in claiming the discounts given to customers. The database not only allowed claims to be submitted, but also allowed the call centre to be run seamlessly to ensure claims were dealt with in a timeless fashion. It could have been very easy for Sony to get a call centre based in India to manage this process, but the added value that Ngage offered over and above designing the database was to ensure staff making calls to Sony customers to confirm claims were personable and engaging.

We all know that people don’t want a cold call from anyone, so it was very important to ensure a professional telephone manner was instrumental in obtaining a very high percentage of confirmations. With approximately 250 calls made by each call centre operative per day, we managed to make approximatley 10,000 calls per week. A very effective promotion from Sony’s point of view but also very tightly managed claims process ensured dealers were reimbursed very quickly. If you would like more information on Ngage and how we can deliver on your call centre needs please contact Scott on 08456800682.

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Ngage Operational and promotional staff make TV advert

July 1st, 2010

You may recently have see the new Homebase advert which includes a makeover of a childrens hospice in Walsall, well we are extremely proud to announce that Ngage managed the entire project and our promotional staff feature right through the advert. This is not only a very proud moment for Ngage, but also illustrates the varied skills of our promotional and operational staff. The makeover was designed by a partner design agency but the planning and delivery was carried out by Ngage.

Over a two day period we selected furniture from Homebase, completely cleared the Akorn hospice of furniture and stripped walls and floors,went about installing flooring painting murals on walls and roofs, replaced lights and installed furniture and fittings to deliver what ended up being an amazing space for the hospice. We are very proud of all the staff that worked on the project – they did an amazing job. If you would like more details or a copy of the advert please dont hesitate to contact Ngage at 0845 6800682 or enquiries@ngageltd.com

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Homebase changing rooms

May 26th, 2010

We have recently managed a campaign with Homebase, which has resulted in an amazing “changing rooms” sponsorship of a childrens hospice in Walsall. You may have seen the transformation in the train station on television, Homebase wants to transform every spaces into wonderful places! To amplify what Homebase did in the train station, we also transformed a park bench in Crystal Palace park, a phone booth in Coventry and a bus stop in Bristol!

Homebase then opened up a competition for anyone in the UK to nominate their public space that they would want to have transformed. I am very excited to announce that a childrens hospice in Walsall has won the competition and today we have sent promotional staff, operators, shopfitters, mural painters, and electricians to transform their rooms in two days.

Thank you homebase and thank you to all the highest quality staff for delivering what will no doubt be an amazing transformation and will make a huge difference to their lives. Watch this space for photos of the transformation.

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Mystery shopping comes of age

April 21st, 2010

We are increasing being asked to supply mystery shopping staff who mystery shop brand experience activity! We have always used this method internally to visit our own brand experiences and promotions to ensure that the quality of our staff is maintained and also to ensure that if we have our eye on all live activity – the last thing we need is to find out about a problem from our client! We are now being asked by a range of agencies to provide mystery shoppers or what we prefer to call them “Quality assurance managers” and we are increasingly visiting competitors activity to rate the event / promotion / brand experience.

Some may think that this is unfair, would it not be in our interest to give bad reports on staff quality? Well no, in our view we are purely improving the quality of the entire discipline and hopefully informing clients of the low quality promotional staffing suppliers, I know this because we are increasingly giving glowing reports for some of our better competitors, they are professional hard working and give the industry a good name. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we are also highlighting areas that we believe are priorities for delivering successful activity. Should you require the services of our quality assurance managers in the UK, please contact us and we can discuss how we can help ensure high quality of your promotions.

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Flight cancellations create demand for promotional staff in London

April 20th, 2010

Due to the volcanic eruption and the unfortunate impact this has had on international travel, Ngage has been required to step in and run an exhibition at the London Marathon Expo for a company that is US based who were unable to come over and use the exhibition space that they booked.

Exhibition equipment had been sent prior to the show and what was required was for Ngage to provide an event manager and two promotional staff to attend the Expo, man the stand and promote our clients products.

This was actually a fairly easy exercise, in that staff were briefed on email as well as on the telephone, the setup was managed by an Ngage production manager.

The second requirement we had due to the travel restrictions was due to a cab company offering travelers a cab service from Paris to Calais. Ngage was asked to provide hostess staff at Gare Du Nord train station in Paris, communicating the alternative travel offer. Due to our extensive database and the fact that we work in over 19 international countries we were able to provide staff that kept the taxis running 24 hours a day.

If its Team leaders in London, promotional staff in London, or hostesses in Paris you can always rely on Ngage to deliver

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Promotional staff quality

April 12th, 2010

Having spent the last few days at the NEC in Birmingham, I was surprised to see the varied quality of promotional staff, and to be honest I was quite shocked at vast majority!

It was fairly evident that clients had requested promotional models to create interest in their exhibition stand, and whilst I must admit these glamorous promotional staff  or commonly referred to as promotional models or promo models did attract my eye, this attraction was however not converted into interested in the products or brands they represented. There are more effective ways of attracting customers to your stand, it doesnt mean you have to spend huge sums of money on the design and build of your exhibition stand, rather think about the branding of your stand, and keep the message as simple as possible. Assume people dont know your product, and spell it out to them.

The most effective way of utilizing promotional staff is to employ great communicators, whilst they may not be eye-candy they will convert your potential customers into new customers, and will represent your brand and create some form of connection between your brand and your customer. So in short here are my top tips for creating impact at exhibitions:-

1) Employ communicators that are able to communicate at different levels

2) Training is vital – not on stand training, but rather structured training

3) Always have an expert on the stand for more technical questions

4) If the exhibition is across a number of days, try to create a rota to give each of the staff a day off

5) Ensure staff are getting regular breaks

6) Supply chocolates and drinks, its a long day and hard work so keep them energised

If you have any questions please do give us a call at Ngage on 08456800682. Mark Meurer

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The Gadget Show Live

April 11th, 2010

Ngage is representing Cisco at The Gadget Show live Exhibition at the NEC Birmingham. Our promotional stand which is showcasing Flip and Linksys is exposing the brands to 14000 consumers each day from the 7th to the 11th April 2009. At the show we have also launched the Flip Mino HD 2!

Even with 15 promotional staff / exhibition staff and product demonstrators we have been completely swamped. The exhibition stand was designed by Ngage and has two sides, one side is the Flip side, which contains a band stand, with full working drums, guitars where customers can jam. Promo staff fils all “Jammers” and then demonstrate how easy it is to shoot, connect and share videos.

The other side of the stand demonstrated Linksys, and how we are able to connect a home to be able to view photos and videos on your hard drive to your TV. We have also been collecting customers details through the use of a competition draw which will allow us to start a mailing list. Please come down and visit us at stand G2 we look forward to chatting to you!

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