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Quoting MyCorporation.com: "A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination thereof, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others. A service mark is similar to a trademark but is distinguished in that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a SERVICE rather than a product." This definition also applies when trademarking a domain name: The domain name must identify and distinguish the goods and/or services of one party from those of others.
A trademark name, symbol or design is followed by the Federal Registration symbols TM, SM or ®. Rights to and control of a trademark can be maintained indefinitely, but you must periodically file an Affidavit of Continued Use or Excusable Nonuse and the Application for Renewal. You must also continue to use the mark in conjunction with the same product or service indicated when you had initially applied for the trademark
Less than 20% of exhibitors actually conduct some form of Pre-Show Promotion. CEIR reports that 75% of today's attendees come to an exhibition with an agenda. If you want them to "schedule time to visit," you need to get on their "must-see agenda." An effective pre-show promotion program has three elements: The List, The Content and The Offer.
The List is almost always the most important and time-consuming activity of the three. You first need to define your targeted audience, and then collect their contact information for communication. You have several options:
- Show management: last year's registration list (be careful with high turnover industries—they may have come last year, but are they still in place this year?). They may offer a pre-registration list that is categorized into industry segments and demographic description.
- You can buy or rent a list from a professional list management company.
- You can create your own from your database or sales force input.
The Content is what you will have in your exhibit that is of interest to your targeted audience: your new product, or your demonstrations that provide hands-on interaction. What have you brought to the show that will interest your audience?
And last, The Offer—the benefit you are offering that will change your prospect's or customer's life. What solutions are you providing? What will attract them to come to your exhibit? Greater profitability? Improved efficiency? Or the opportunity to win a drawing for a valuable prize?
With the popularization of permission-based email and faxes, you are not left to print, which is the slow and hard-to-update traditional means of communicating your presence at a show. You can begin the dialog before the show using web-based pre-show promotions. With the speed of communication, you can have more than one interchange before visitors arrive at your exhibit. It doesn't really matter what type of pre-show promotion you employ, just so you do something that is a call for action to increase the awareness that you are present to offer solutions.
Don't be left wondering why no one is in your exhibit and your neighbor's exhibit is full—conduct a pre-show promotion program that communicates who you are, what you do, and what your offer is before they arrive at the show.
If you plan to use giveaways in your booth, what's your strategy? An effective promotional premium should reinforce your company's image and message in addition to supporting your communications goals at the show. With budgets tight, no one can afford to waste money on a premium that doesn't fulfill objectives. So before you order those coffee mugs, a quick review of the desired results might be in order:
- Do you have a new product or service and want everyone in attendance to know about it? Choose a premium you can give to visitors you come in contact with.
- Is your market highly targeted? Choose high-end premiums for qualified prospects and a lesser giveaway for everyone else.
- Want to pull your primary prospects to your booth? Try sending a premium pre-show that has a second half or related item that's obtainable at your booth.
- Want prospects to buy on site? Provide a special premium for on-site orders with upgraded premiums the more they buy.
- How about lead cards? Offer a premium for those visitors who fill them out or sit through a presentation or demonstration.
It may sound like a combination of Star Wars and James Bond, but it's pure reality. The rCard is a multi-patented, approximately credit-card-sized item that delivers streaming video/audio, can be password protected and fully interactive, and can hold time-sensitive data. In addition, it doesn't require a computer to access or technological skill to use; its content is accessed by a thumb-controlled navigation button. The cards also have a USB port, meaning they can be individually customized; and they can be imprinted with any logo or message.
This will have a huge promotional potential. Currently, the company is taking orders only for 500,000 pieces or more. However, it intends to handle smaller orders—in other words, the promotional products and incentive markets. To date several marketplaces have shown keen interest in this product, including the real estate, travel, entertainment/film, pharmaceutical, insurance, gaming, hospitality, and healthcare industries. We will keep our eye out for this one.
 About a year and a half ago, Incentive magazine looked at an emerging technology that promises to change the way gift cards can be used in consumer and incentive program promotions.
In the past month, contactless cards, which use a computer chip with an embedded radio transmitter rather than the traditional credit card-style swiping of a magnetic stripe, have begun entering the mainstream credit card market; and the future of gift card promotions looks a lot closer.
Merchants like contactless cards because they do not rely on a magnetic strip; rather, they rely on a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip that can be waved in front of a special reader, speeding low-cost transactions. But this chip will also free debit and gift cards from the traditional plastic rectangle, enabling card producers to turn anything from a watch to a pen to a cell phone into a "debit card."
In the incentive and consumer loyalty market, contactless card technology has the potential to strengthen the branding portion of a campaign by turning virtually any item into a reloadable or one-shot gift card. Instead of slapping a company logo on a wallet-sized card, a brewer that is running a channel sales incentive for independent distributors' beer salespeople could hand out a watch with its logo on the dial that is also a reloadable gift card offering a bonus for each new retailer convinced to carry that brand of beer. Because the watch is also a gift card, the salespeople would be far less likely to toss it in a drawer—thus keeping the incentive program top of mind every time they glance at their watch.
On the consumer side, an auto dealer who has been offering a $25 gift card to consumers who test drive a hot new model could instead give them a small toy model of that car with a contactless chip containing a single-use $25 MasterCard or American Express gift card—or 10 movie rentals at Blockbuster, 10 venti lattes at Starbucks, or $25 worth of Best Buy merchandise.
In 2004, when contactless card technology was just an idea on the horizon, Catherine Graeber, a principal analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, said using the technology in this type of promotion "could be a cool way to combine branding with a unique payment device," but warned that "the industry needs to get the basics put in place first."
Graeber warned that contactless cards will stay mainly in credit card form until consumers become comfortable with them, but it has always been clear that other forms are coming. In a consumer test of its PayPass system in Dallas last year, MasterCard put contactless chips in a Nokia mobile phone. And the first widescale roll-out of contactless card technology in the United States, ExxonMobil's years-old SpeedPass system of paying at the gas pump uses a key chain fob.
Potentials-DECEMBER 07, 2005
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