Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 18, 1994                   TAG: 9402180130
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL Staff Writer
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IT'S NOT JUST PENS THEY SELL; IT'S CREATIVE RELATIONSHIPS

In these days of downsized advertising budgets, more companies have been turning to the advertising specialty industry - the folks behind those imprinted pens and scratch pads - to get their names across to customers in the most cost-effective way.

"Advertising is changing a great deal," said Cynthia Dillon, president of Roanoke-based Design Marketing, a distributor of specialty promotional items. "Nobody has money to waste."

Rather than spending on brochures or mass media campaigns as they did during the 1980s, many companies are opting to narrow their focus, Dillon said Thursday at her company's marketing expo at the Radisson Patrick Henry Hotel.

"What we develop is creative and targeted," Dillon said, surveying displays of ball-point pens and green marble clocks.

For the expo shoppers browsing through the wares offered by the specialty-item manufacturers who work with Design Marketing, the purpose of such an advertising strategy is simple: ensuring name recognition.

"Get attention, that's what we're trying to do," said Nikki Morgan, convention sales manager for the Roanoke Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau, which represents the valley at trade shows and other regional gatherings.

"We have to get their attention within seconds," Morgan said. And once they have that attention, gifts such as pens and golf balls - personalized with the bureau's name, of course - are effective reminders of the organization, she said.

If the wide range of wares on display at the expo was any indication, companies go about ensuring name retention in vastly different ways.

The more expensive items - that $100 clock, for instance, or a $50 custom-packaged tool set - typically are given as recognition gifts to employees or to valued clients, rather than as gimmicks.

But the calendars (stock and custom designs), the pens (in a dizzying palette) and the notepads (cut in whatever shape the customer desires) are put together by Dillon's company into marketing packages tailored to reach each client's target audience.

"The idea now is `relationship marketing,' " Dillon said. "We don't just sell them pens anymore - we tell them how to use those pens."