Rose Calendars – Latest news

Do you also find the F1 season has come around really quickly this year? Maybe it’s because we have had such a long winter. In any case, it was good to see yesterday’s first Grand Prix of the season offering a fair bit of excitement, with new rules, a different starting line up than expected, Michael Schumacher coming out of retirement, the late Ayrton Senna’s nephew Bruno making his F1 debut, etc.

And what a result: a one-two for Ferrari and Hamilton in 3rd place. Not a bad bit of Sunday afternoon entertainment!

Watching the action unfold on screen made me think of work. Honestly! Well, it made me think of one of my favourite calendar titles we produce here at Rose Calendars: Motor Sport. It covers F1, World Rally, BTC and Indy Car to name but a few and contains some really striking images of four-wheeled action. I’m sure that any motor sport fan would love to have this calendar on their wall and it’s been a firm favourite of mine.

If you would like to advertise your business with promotional calendars with a difference, why not take a look at Motor Sport. Though I know that not everyone can be as big an adrenalin junkie as me. Maybe golf or hiking are more your thing. Just browse our 2011 calendars for a complete list of all the pictorial calendars we offer - I’m sure you will find a title that grabs your attention.

Any business promotion has to do just that: grab the recipient’s attention. Our high quality promotional calendars certainly deliver on that count because they are such a powerful and highly visible marketing tool.

Why calendars? Find out what else calendars offer that other methods of advertising can’t.

Here is to an exciting F1 season ahead! Who’s your money on this year?

In his latest Telegraph column, James May explores ideas for a novelty retail calendar by combining his love of all things fast with the growing popularity of cats. James certainly has a point when he says that combining felines and Ferraris – instead of producing yet another dull calendar – would create “a clever novelty”.

We like his thinking! It is probably a not too dissimilar thought process that led us at Rose Calendars to develop our new, innovative 2011 calendar title “Tooled-Up Terriers”, now available for your next year’s business promotion. “Tooled-Up Terriers” is a humorous calendar, featuring twelve different scenes of terriers in the workplace, repairing and working with cars. The calendar contains funny captions to complement each month’s image and is sure to raise a smile or two.

There are plenty more promotional calendars in our 2011 range, by the way. Just in case car-crazy canines don’t float your boat. Please contact us if you need help deciding which title would be best suited to your business.

Now, we’d like to think that James May’s calendar idea finds a lot of support. Read more about his vision and vote for it here. Who knows, you might help him put “Cats on supercars” on the shelves for Christmas. Just don’t forget: you read it here first!

Here in Britain, we are once again battling the elements, with a new cold spell having hit many of us this week. Of course, we are not prepared for the white stuff here, which means chaos quickly prevails: schools shut, trains stop, the media warn against non-essential travel...you get the picture.

On the other side of the world, we find a very different picture: as British Columbia in Canada is experiencing an unusually mild winter, the organisers of this year’s Winter Olympics are desperate for more snow and have been going to great lengths to create artificial snow and move the existing snow to different locations, ready for the start of the event tomorrow.

Which goes to show that there is just no pleasing everyone.

The same can be said of the promotional products industry: whereas one business loves to promote their products or services via cheap novelty pens that glow in the dark or key rings that double up as whistles or bottle openers, others opt for more sophisticated items such as quality pens or even golf accessories. Something all those items have in common, though, is their mostly very small advertising space and fairly short exposure. After all, don't most of the pens you receive as gifts end up in your desk drawer? And when was the last time you played golf?

Promotional calendars on the other hand offer much more: they have a large advertising area for your corporate message and enjoy a long shelf life of a whole year, something most other promotional items can’t offer. In addition, they are useful and an essential item for every workplace, making them a practical gift, too.

Here at Rose Calendars, we have such a large choice of 2011 calendars available - from different shapes to a variety of themes - that we would like to think we might be able to please (almost) everyone after all.

If you would like to learn more about how promotional calendars can offer very cost effective advertising for your business, too, please contact us. We would love to help you choose a title that is right for your business promotion.

And as for the snow - let's hope it falls where it's needed the most!

Business secretary Lord Peter Mandelson announced last week that Britain will be given an extra, one-off bank holiday in 2012 to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. The special bank holiday will be on Monday 4th June - the Queen's official birthday - to mark her 60 years on the throne. The traditional late spring bank holiday will also be delayed until Tuesday 5th June to enable a four-day break.

This follows exactly the same pattern as in 2002, the year of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, when the nation was given an extra bank holiday on Monday 3rd June and the late spring bank holiday was moved to Tuesday 4th June, which allowed four days of public celebration.

It looks like 2012 will be an exciting year for Britain, with the Olympics beginning in London a mere six weeks after the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

If your business is about to celebrate a milestone, why not mark the occasion in style by producing special promotional calendars? Here at Rose Calendars, we don’t just offer over 100 stock titles, we can also help you create your very own bespoke calendar, using your own images and highlighting special dates like product launches and trade shows. Customising calendars can be a daunting task at first but, in the right hands, it can result in a truly individual business gift that stands out from the crowd. What better way to advertise your business than with a promotional tool that is not only visually appealing and extremely useful, but completely individual, too.

Rose Calendars have been manufacturing promotional calendars for over 100 years and have a lot of expertise in creating bespoke calendars for many different types of businesses. Please contact us if you would like to discuss your options or see examples of bespoke calendars we have produced over the years.

As a further alternative, we offer calendar enhancement, where a stock title gets personalised with a cover and/ or interleaf completely unique to your business. Again, we’d love to advise you on the options available to you – please get in touch.

The “noughties” are well and truly behind us - we are now into the “tens”. Most of us have left last year’s budget behind and are busy planning this and next year’s expenditure. But how exactly do you make sure that your marketing budget is achieving the best possible ROI?

Advertising and promoting your company’s goods and services is essential and often done with the help of promotional items. As the most important aspect of a business gift - besides its visual appeal - is its usefulness, promotional calendars are an ideal choice. Their functionality ensures that business calendars get referred to for a whole year and they can be targeted exactly to the recipients, like existing and prospective customers for example. In short, promotional calendars offer an extremely cost effective way of getting your name and advertising message seen by the right people, for a longer period of time than any other method of advertising.

With over 100 years expertise in helping a variety of businesses spend their marketing budget wisely, Rose Calendars are the calendar manufacturer of choice for all your calendar requirements. Our range of more than 100 titles covers many categories and contains something for every taste and budget.

Our range of 2011 calendars will be launched on our website shortly, so please check our homepage soon. Alternatively, we can inform you automatically once the new range is online. Please register for this by visiting our 2011 calendars page and filling in the short form.
 
We would be pleased to answer any queries you have regarding the use of calendars as an effective marketing tool – please do not hesitate to contact us. We look forward to hearing from you and to helping you improve your ROI!

“2011?”, you might be thinking. “Surely they must mean 2010?”

Of course we would like to wish you all a prosperous 2010, but - being calendar manufacturers, which means we are always a year ahead of ourselves - we would like to extend this wish to 2011. You can already buy your promotional calendars for 2011 now, which means forward thinking and the assurance that your advertising message will be as strong in 2011 as it is in 2010.

Thank you to all our valued customers for your continued loyalty – we are confident that your 2010 calendars are an invaluable investment and look forward to supplying your 2011 calendars next year. Remember, early orders benefit from best prices and the widest choice of titles.

Though available already via our representatives, our exciting range of 2011 calendars is due to be officially launched in the New Year, so be sure to check out our homepage soon. Alternatively, you can register to be informed automatically about the upcoming launch of our 2011 calendars.

All the staff at Rose Calendars would like to wish all our customers, suppliers and business contacts a Merry Christmas and a prosperous future, whatever the year!

Stuck for an innovative idea for your next corporate event? Well, from 2011, you could invite your clients to join you on a flight into space! This week, Sir Richard Branson’s enterprise “Virgin Galactic” unveiled the rocket plane which is going to take paying passengers into space from as early as 2011, pending an extensive testing process.

At around £120,000 each, tickets for the two-hour round flight don’t come cheap, so most companies, though they might like the idea of weightless corporate entertainment, will have no choice but to continue promoting their business in more down-to-earth ways for now – pardon the pun.

Business gifts delivering incredibly good ROI include promotional calendars (though, admittedly, they don’t offer quite the same experience of weightlessness). And what about shelf live? A handful of clients experiencing six minutes of floating in space compared with year-long exposure of your brand message to a large audience, targeted specifically by you. No contest, you say? We agree.

Corporate calendars can really help boost your brand and - until space travel becomes a bit more affordable - are still one of the most cost effective ways of advertising your products or services. Useful, too, as almost 100% of workplaces use calendars on a daily basis. Furthermore, you can target their distribution and use your business calendars as both a thank you to existing clients and a prospecting tool for future ones.

A family-run business, Rose Calendars have got over 100 years of experience in the promotional calendar industry, so if it’s value for money business promotion you are looking for, please contact us. We look forward to sharing our expertise with you and make your marketing budget go further. Our extensive range of 2010 calendars contains something for every taste and budget.

Looking ahead to 2011, if space travel is outside your promotional budget, why not register to be informed about our upcoming launch of our 2011 calendars. One of our stunning calendar titles is certain to take your brand message higher in 2011.

This Sunday, 29th November, is the first advent, which marks the start of the Christmas season. Advent begins on the Sunday nearest to 30th November, the feast day of St. Andrew the Apostle, and covers four Sundays. The advent calendar tradition has its origins in 19th century Germany, where protestant Christian families drew a chalk line on their door for every day in December until Christmas Eve. In the early 20th century, the chalk lines were replaced with printed calendars.

It was Gerhard Lang who printed the first advent calendar in Germany in 1908. The very first calendar he made - unlike the modern versions - did not have windows. Instead, coloured pictures, representing each day of advent, were attached to a piece of cardboard. Later, little doors were added which were opened each day and revealed a religious picture, a verse or a sweet.

At the height of World War II, German advent calendars stopped being manufactured because of the strict rationing of cardboard. However, in 1946, Richard Sellmer initiated the manufacturing of advent calendars again in Germany. He had to secure a printing license from the U.S. Military and bought the paper he used in the U.S. Military zone. Advent calendars were handmade back then. In 1950, advent calendars started selling and became very popular, especially in the United States.

Today, the tradition is known all over the world and has a firm place in many homes, though it has lost its religious background somewhat, with many calendars depicting current pop stars or cartoon characters and most of them containing chocolates and sweets.

Rose Calendars do not manufacture advent calendars but can look back on an equally long tradition. Founded in 1908 – the same year Gerhard Lang produced the first printed advent calendar in Germany - the company is still a family-run business and has been specialising in the production of promotional calendars for over a century now. Over the years, many companies have benefited from using one of the many Rose titles as a cost-effective tool for their business promotion.

So if it’s corporate calendars you are looking for, please contact us. We look forward to sharing our expertise with you and making your marketing budget go further. Our range of 2010 calendars is sure to contain something for every taste and budget.

You can browse our 2010 calendars and also register to be informed about the upcoming launch of our 2011 calendars.

It’s National Tree Week next week and we thought we’d take the opportunity to let you know about our efforts to be an environmentally conscious company here at Rose Calendars.

We have long recognised the importance of taking a more environmentally aware route in our business and undertake a number of initiatives to reassure our customers that the calendars they are purchasing are eco friendly. We only use paper from sustainable sources and a selection of our titles, our Go Green range, is printed on recycled paper, which – due to developments in paper manufacturing - is difficult to tell apart from standard paper these days. Our mailing cartons are also made from recycled board. We even collect and recycle all the drinks cans and plastic milk bottles our staff use every week.

But we don’t stop there. Just because we have done our bit, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t encourage our customers to do theirs. For that reason, all our pictorial calendars carry detailed recycling instructions. We feel that if we all do our bit, collectively, we are able to be “greener” and make an important difference to our planet.

Promotional calendars are extremely useful business gifts anyway, but if you would like to emphasise to your customers and prospects how environmentally conscious your company is, choosing a calendar printed on recycled paper is exactly the right tool which gives out a strong message in your favour. To get a better idea on just how impressive corporate calendars printed on recycled paper can be, please take a look at our Go Green range. On a broader scale, our large selection of 2010 calendars is sure to contain something suitable for your business promotion.

You can always contact us for advice, whether you’d like help choosing the right calendar for your advertisement or to check which titles best suit your budget. Our friendly team will ensure you receive the best possible service.

The clocks went back a couple of weeks ago, bonfire night has been and gone, we’ve had to scrape ice for the first time. Christmas is approaching fast – in little over six weeks we will be panicking over last minute preparations and many businesses will be starting to close down for the holidays.

Don’t let the approach of the New Year catch you out.

Have you ordered your 2010 promotional calendars yet? It’s not too late to place your order, though you should try to do so soon to ensure you get the calendar title you prefer for your business promotion and to allow for the distribution of your corporate calendars in time for the New Year.

Not sure which calendar would best suit your business promotion? With over 100 titles, the Rose range of advertising calendars offers something for every taste and industry sector. We also have a friendly and experienced team who can help you with your choice – please contact us for assistance.

On a tight budget? Promotional calendars offer a fantastic return on your investment and we have many value options available, some specifically designed to conform to Royal Mail’s large letter format to minimise your postage costs.

Need reassurance that you are spending your marketing budget wisely? Our happy customers are our best advocates and many have benefited greatly from using calendars in their marketing mix. Learn about their success stories by reading their testimonials.

Please browse our extensive range of 2010 calendars for a detailed look at what’s available. If we can be of any assistance or you would like to check stock levels on your chosen title, please contact us – we are always happy to help.