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Products selected
for skucon attendees
included a custom-
packaged brew,
essential oils and an
iconic pocket tee.
INNOVATE
|
APRIL 2017
|
23
For those skeptics who refuse
to believe, Schultz continued,
“emotional connection” is “a
subtle concept, often too subtle
for many businesspeople to
replicate or cynics to appreciate.”
All buying decisions (all!)
are made emotionally and
justi ed rationally. From the
vice president of marketing
who decides on a multimillion-
dollar promotional budget to
your decision about the last
car you bought: if you mapped
the emotional journey of your
decision-making process, you
would discover that you made an
emotional decision and justi ed
it with reason.
When it comes to building
campaigns, particularly our
own campaigns, we must map
everything
we sell to an emotion.
(If it is good enough for $19
billion Starbucks, then it should
be good enough for us, too).
e promotional products
at skucon provide a unique
case study into this process,
as we have feedback from all
attendees involved. We have
the customer (commonsku)
working with the distributor
(RIGHTSLEEVE) who worked
through their supplier partners:
RuMe Brandsuite, SanMar, Hit
Promotional Products, Redwood
Classics, Gemline, BamBams,
Maple Ridge, EMT, iClick, NEXT
Products, YourCo (A T-Shirt
Tycoon Solution), SnugZ USA
and Clearmount.
When we at commonsku sat
down with RIGHTSLEEVE, the
distributor, to talk about product
at skucon, what we worked
toward was the answer to this
question: What emotion do we
want to evoke in the hearts and
minds of our customers?
e answer was one
word:
Inspire
.
Everything from the product
selection to the artwork and
design, to the imprint styles, to
the distribution of product at
the event, was tailored with the
emotional imperative:
Inspire
our audience
. (Even the event
was held at the Inspire eatre
in Las Vegas).
But, to truly electrify with
emotion, our vision had to
be shaped into something
tangible, a conduit. Take
the skucon t-shirt, for
example. We wanted an iconic
piece that would become both
inspirational
and
aspirational
for attendees. We conferred with
Lauchlin Burnett and Stephen
Musgrave, both directors at
RIGHTSLEEVE who, working
with designer Tee Hamilton,
set out to tackle the ambitious
task. Not only would we need
to create a memorable item
but we also had to impress the
experts—our attendees—which
meant producing something
extraordinary.
We started with design rst.
Design is the rst emotional
touchpoint that catches
the recipient’s eye. Design
is what drives most of our
product decisions.
We’re also rmbelievers in
the idea that creativity is not
limited to the sphere of originality;