What qualities do you look for in your promotional or corporate gift merchandise?

Grabbing attention is one thing but you need to keep that interest as long as possible, what should you do to get the best return from your promotional merchandise investment.

You could choose pens, USBs, Baseball caps etc all common items but are they relevant to you? More importantly are they unique to you? If your competitors all give out the same items you will need a reason for yours to be the one that gets used most.

You could try something new and innovative like the VoyagerBlue® contactless card shield from Gizmo promotions. This is product that is unlike any other on the market. Protecting your client everyday from the threat of fraud and ID theft by shielding their wallet or passport from unwanted scanning of their contactless technology.

Made to high quality standards in the UK the product will give lasting protection to contactless Bank cards, membership, loyalty and biometric or e-passports.

More importantly you can brand the whole card with you message, that’s a really big advertising space placed in you clients wallet, It’s a lot of space for a little cost. 86x54mm and then double sided. For the same price as buying your customer a cup of coffee. Passport size is 122x83mm again with the freedom to print your chosen message on one or both sides.

Interested?  Gizmo will be delighted to talk to you. If you are a company wanting to use our remarkable contactless card shields in your promotional campaign we have distributers across the UK, we will put you in touch with a specialist in your area.

If you are promotional distributer then get in touch now to get aboard with Gizmo Promotions and the innovative VoyagerBlue® cards.

 

Get more info from www.gizmopromotions.co.uk.

 

 

Gizmo announce BPMA membership

 

Gizmo promotions are pleased to announce that the BPMA (British Promotional Merchandise Association) have welcomed our company into the organisation as an associate supplier.

 

The BPMA Established in 1965, is one of the UK's leading industry bodies dedicated to promoting best practice around the sourcing, manufacturing and distribution of promotional products.Existing to enable members to be more successful and be seen as exemplars of best practice, centres of excellence to customers and partners within the promotional merchandise industry. The BPMA upholds a strict code of conduct that members must adhere to, and provides access to professional training and development resources to ensure members can continually improve their knowledge and expertise within the industry.

If you are a buyer of promotional merchandise such as the innovative new VoyagerBlue ® contactless card shield as supplied by Gizmo you can rest assured that you are backed by a commitment to high industry standards and best practices. Also as a buyer of such material you can access valuable information about effective campaigns using such merchandise within your marketing strategy.Gizmo promotions are delighted to have achieved membership of the BPMA, a significant stage in our development strategy.

Our aim is to bring exciting new products to the marketplace. The launch of the VoyagerBlue®  contactless card and e-passport shields is an example of an innovative product with extensive creative merchandising and branding opportunity brought to market by Gizmo Promotions.

As a marketing professional you can utilise a remarkably large area for your printed message, either both sides of credit card size or both sides of passport page size. This gives you a fantastic advert that your client has a real reason to keep. The cards help shield from theft and ID fraud by blocking the unwanted scanning of contactless technology such as bank cards and e-passports.

Read more about VoyagerBlue ® cards and how they prevent IDfraud and theft here, and if you have any questions visit the contact page or comment on the blog.

 

RFID fraud and you

 Many people dont realise the cards in their wallet are going contactless! After reading about this technology take a look at your cards and see if they are contactless. Bank cards, membership cards, seaon tickets etc.

A contactless credit card uses RFID technology to store information about your account and to transfer it to the merchant. Standard credit cards carry data on a magnetic strip; when the card is swiped against a reader, the data is transferred.

Contactless credit and debit cards are now becoming the norm for many financial institutions. Similar technology is now being used in many other “plastic card” variations such as loyalty cards, membership cards and in some cases hotel room key cards.

 The primary advantage of the cards lies in the speed of the transaction; bringing the card within a short distance of the reader is sufficient... There are now readers for various applications that can read at 1.5 metres and we would expect this to be exceeded.

Contactless cards are shipped out in RFID shielded envelopes.

These cards contain a chip or tag which in these instances is known as a passive RFID tag. When the tag is scanned the coiled antenna in the chip creates a magnetic field, this allows the chip to become energised and create enough power to transmit the encoded memory data.

An RFID reader is a device that is used to interrogate an RFID tag. The reader has an antenna that emits radio waves; the tag responds by sending back its data.

Most new android phones are now supplied with what is known as NFC capability; (near field communication) they are basically short range RFID readers. You can also buy RFID scanners for as little as £50 on the internet. Combine the availability of NFC reader apps with some unscrupulous technology aware organisations then we can all see the possibility

Your e-passport or Biometric passport contains exactly the same kind of chip. By using the downloadable apps you can copy all your passport info including the digital photo.

 

Why not protect your own “tags” by shielding them with a VoyagerBlue® credit card shield or passport shield from Gizmo Promotions. As an alternative to these shields some people wrap their cards in tin foil,"Fry" the chip in a microwave or buy an expensive metal wallet. 

You can help protect your ID for just a few pounds whereas if your ID is stolen it may not be “just a few pounds”.

 

Thanks to technovelgy

 

 

 We have recently upgraded our in house printer and have seen a significant improvement in performance compared to our last model, our thanks go to our suppliers who have been supportive during the changeover phase and making sure we did not have a break in production. The new machine operates smoothly and has cut production time down by 10-15%. QR CODES NOW AVAILABLE see above at www.gizmopromotions.co.uk
 Combining our in house facility with our Major print partners, an award winning company who have achieved ISO9001, ISO14001 and ISO27001 we are in the excellent position of being able to meet all major production requirements and still have room for rapid growth.
 We are about to go live (as we go to press) on the Trade Only website the specialist promotional merchandise supplier search facility.
 We are delighted to announce our presence at the Trade Only National Show taking Place at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry 23rd and 24th January 2013.
 This along with our ongoing association with Forum events and their program for 2012/13 gives us a nice amount of both industry exposure and product PR as we target brand awareness and expansion of our distributor network.
 If you are a promotional merchandise distributor you can find out about becoming a distributor partner on our distributor page.
Regular readers will have noticed some changes in the website appearance; we are taking on valuable feedback from a wide range of experienced contributors. We always welcome your comments and in fact encourage them. We hope to make it simple for you to navigate the site and also to get across in an easy to understand manner our product offer.
 We know that many people are unaware that they even own a contactless bank card of any kind; however with 24M of these cards out there people are now beginning to catch on. Also the growth in the use of contactless cards into other areas such as membership cards and loyalty cards means awareness is growing. Along with this knowledge comes the awareness of the security threat posed by RFID systems. Add this to the biometric passport numbers there is a huge amount of data available to the airwaves that needs protection.
 Keep checking in to the blog to stay updated with the latest news about contactless technology, fraud and how we can help you prevent ID theft. www.gizmopromotions.co.uk

Cheers Gizmo

Event organisers summit

Fantastic couple of days at The Grange Tower Bridge Hotel for the Event organisers summit thanks to Forum Events met a great variety of different organisations from Blue Chip to big Universities. The reaction to the card was usually at least highly impressed if not  truely staggered!!. As usual many people had got a contactless bank card and didnt even know they had.
 In fact one customer asked me the question is it like a farraday cage, Well only partiallly because it does not fully surround the card, however it does the same job. She asked because she had her card wrapped in tin foil to create the farraday cage . The card does however do the same job of not allowing malicious penetration of the card by any unauthorised party.
Another customer described how he had his ID stolen and how seeing a driving license with someone elses picture with his details was a scary thing. And the big loan they took out as well. One lady described how her stolen passport had been recovered by police and the photograph had been changed. So going by the the stories I have heard in the last few days this ID fraud game is not so isolated.
At the event we were issued with a data card which was (you guessed it) CONTACTLESS not much on it but my scanners could ping it. The new free NFC app on my S3 was super for demonstrating passport reading. Extracting everything needed to create a fake including the digital photo of my ugly mug. Commercial customers If you would like a demo of the readers and how the voyagerblue protects your data from fraud get in touch.
Cricket update amazing penultimate ball win by 2 wkts on Sunday. Chasing 198 my mate Keysy  hit a six to win with just 0ne ball left. Stunning that means win 1 out of 2 and we are Champions.
Hope your week is going well
Cheers Gizmo