The begining .

A very telling story.
Years ago a social friend was a Marketing Manager for an Investment Fund that attended 25-30 tradeshows a year. Their current tag line was "Stress Free Investing" and at every show she handed out about 2000 Stress Balls with their ad copy. (Basically, an uninflated balloon filled with sand.) Now at first this seems like a pretty sound promotional concept. But in reality imagine this poor woman hand trucking box after box of sand around with her all year long! We did some research and were able to come up with a much better solution.
We were able to find a credit card sized "mood ring" that showed a person's "stress" level. Not only did they cost 75% less, they had more ad copy space (Read: more information to her customers), and best of all, 2000 of them fit in a single box! I wasn't there but she told us that the item created quite a stir at her booth with conventioneers all 'testing' each others 'stress' levels and how she (and her back) were so happy.

We've always thought of that as a perfect example of how we want to serve each and every customer.

By the way, they are still a client!
Another more recent example.

A client in Las Vegas requested something that she could put in a gift bag that was to be given to all entrants registering for last year's Las Vegas Bike Fest. Quickly doing the math we concluded that instead of spending money on something that might not bring customers to her establishment. For example, a key chain or a bandana. We instead advised her to contact the Harley-Davidson dealer in Las Vegas, purchase a motorcycle, and place a voucher in the gift bag for a free spin on a 'Wheel of Fortune'. She labeled one slot on the wheel "Chance to Win a Harley", "1 Free Beer" on all the others, and gave a raffle ticket to all potential bike winners stipulating when the raffle would be held and that the winner must be present. I wasn't there but I heard it was quite a party, they did raffle off the bike, and that the added traffic MORE than paid for the purchase price of the motorcycle.
Clever readers will note that Showcase Promotions didn't make a dime and basically talked ourselves out of a pretty good commission. Thats exactly the point! If I owned her business I wouldn't have put anything into that bag that wasn't going to drive the MOST potential sales my way, why should we have asked her to?
We treated her business like it was our business.

By the way, we will do that for you too.