Eastman Kodak introduced the first Box Brownie in February 1900 and in doing so they opened up photography to the masses. The Brownie was a pretty basic cardboard box with a simple lens that took pictures on 117 roll film. It was simple to use, cheap at $1 per camera and its launch was backed by a marketing campaign that encouraged everyone to pick up a camera and take “snaps”.

During its lifetime hundreds of millions of Box Brownies were sold. Of course of the years it went through a number of design changes and technology “upgrades” but the fundamental box shape remained.

It would be fair to say that the Box Brownie will have introduced many Professional Photographers during the early 20th Centaury to their profession. It also had a huge impact on our ability to chart social history through the snapshots that were taken with the Brownie.

Whilst the Brownie brought photography to the masses it still relied on roll-film technology that needed processing using chemicals and a fair degree of skill. With roll film there was never any ability to preview your photos, instead you had to wait until your film had been developed and printed before you could see what pictures you had taken.

In the same way that the Box Brownie revolutionised photography in the early 20^th Centaury the introduction of digital image technology, digital cameras and mobile phones with integrated cameras has revolutionised photography 100 years later. Today pretty much every mobile phone can take good quality photos and these can be posted onto web sites and social networks sites within seconds and shared around the world.

Kodak USB Sticks

It’s not just the amateur photographer that has switched to digital photographic technology but professional photographers now typically use digital cameras rather than their film based alternatives. One of the benefits for Professional Photographers of this digital revolution is their ability to save and distribute their portfolios electronically. This applies not only to how they save and store their own work but increasingly to how they save and distribute their client “shoots”, portfolios and wedding photos.

For some they will simply email the photos or post them on a web site to be “downloaded”. Others might supply them on a CD or DVD but one of the more recent and innovative trends are to distribute them on a USB memory sticks printed up with the logo and details of the photographer. The “branded” USB flash drives look much more professional than a CD or DVD and help to promote and develop the photographers brand – they in effect become a sales vehicle in their own right and they personify just how much the world of photography has moved on from the early days of the Boxed Brownie.

It’ll be interesting to see if Kodak can survive the next few years and reinvent themselves as a printer company. Realistically we’re likely to have to say goodbye to “Kodak Moments”.

Understandably lots of companies want to include their contact phone number or web site address on the sticks as well as their logo but this creates an even greater print challenge. One option (but it’s not appropriate for some companies) is to print the logo on one side of the stick and print the contact information on the other side of the stick.

USB Credit Cards - Complex Print

The other option is to “simplify” the logo or reduce the number of colours in the logo to allow it to be reproduced in the limited space available. Again, not ideal particularly if you have to comply with internal Corporate Brand Guidelines and have to deal with the “Brand Police”.

To be fair to the “brand police” printing and reproducing your brand or logo correctly is critical. There is absolutely no point spending a fortune designing and developing a brand only to compromise it simply because the product you want to reproduce it on can’t support it.

Unfortunately the reality is that many standard shaped USB sticks are pretty small and the print area on the sticks can be even smaller. Small, compact and portable USB memory sticks are popular with users but they’re not always ideal for complex logos.

USB Cards with Complex Logo

On some small USB sticks it is possible to print full colour but by squishing your brand and any strapline onto the print area you will, in some cases, make it impossible to clearly see/read the end result.

There are several ways to deal with this challenge including using a Credit Card style USB memory stick. These are exactly same shape and size (but are 2mm thick) as a bank or credit card but they have built in flash memory and a USB connector. One of the main benefits of this product is that it fits neatly into a wallet and provides lots of flat space (front and back) to print on. You can also use the latest full colour printing process techniques on these cards to achieve a very high-resolution reproduction of any complex design.

Alternatively you if you would prefer a more “traditional” looking USB stick then you could consider the “Slider” model. This USB stick is capless, it has an integral keying loop and it’s a little larger than other memory sticks without being excessively large. But, the real beauty of this model is the very large print area onto which you can print.

If you think the USB Credit Card or Slider flash drive might solve your memory stick dilemma then give us a call (it’s free) and we’ll provide you with a personalise quote and our in-house designer will mock-up an example for you (free of charge) so you can see just how it will look.

The brochure contained 379 pages of full colour print and weighed in at 1080 grams. Granted it was a nice looking brochure but it must have cost a small fortune to print them. But the print costs paled into insignificance when the sale representative went on to explain he’d spent the previous day with his manager stuffing these brochures into envelopes to post out across Europe!!

A conservative estimate would suggest that it must have cost an average of about £20 to print, pack and send each brochure out via Airmail!

Is this crazy or do customers still expect to receive high quality brochures to browse through and to encourage them to trade with your business?

These same brochures were also to be handed out at Trade Shows and Fairs but given their weight I’m not sure how many of the attendees would have been willing to take one and lug it around with them all day – walking around trade shows can be tiring enough without being lumbered with hefty brochures. It must be interesting to check the bins around the exhibition halls to see how many brochures are dumped.

Twister USB Flash Drives

Ironically, the same brochure could have been loaded onto a USB memory stick and sent out across Europe for a fraction of the cost.  In fact, not only could the brochure have been pre-loaded onto the USB sticks but they could also contain video clips, price lists, press releases, links to web sites and so on.

OK, you can’t “browse” a USB memory stick in the same way you might flick through a printed catalogue but the content is there for someone who is genuinely interested and there is a much stronger likelihood that they keep the USB Stick (branded with your company logo and contact details) rather than consign it to the bin.

The same arguments apply at Trade Shows and Exhibitions – it makes far more sense to hand out the information about your company and its products on something that is not going to end up in the bin but will instead be kept and used and will act as a reminder of your company and what you have to offer.

Not convinced then we encourage you to run a test – use USB sticks printed with your logo and pre-loaded with your brochure(s) at your next event and see if you get any uplift in sales and enquires compared to previous events where you handed out printed brochures.

You will pay a premium for this Rush Service simply because of the higher costs of printing in the UK. The core cost of USB sticks are the same whether you need them in a hurry or have a little more time for us to ship them in for you from our factory in China.

USB2U Rush-Service

UK print is charged “per colour” and there is a set-up fee for each colour as well so it’s not really a service that makes sense for very small quantities simply because the fixed set-up costs have to be amortised over a small number of sticks.

In an ideal world you really need to allow around 10 working days for any order of customised USB memory sticks because this way you can take full advantage of the cheaper costs of getting the sticks printed at our factory in China and you’ll get a much wider choice of USB sticks to choose from.

The models of USB sticks that we tend to hold in the UK ready for “rush printing” are the Twister, the Chic and the Trident and we’ll normally hold these in a range of standard colours which typically include as a minimum black, blue and red.

The most popular size of flash drive requested by our customers is 1Gb or 2GB so these tend to be the sizes that we carry but if you want something different it’s always worth checking what we have available.

Chic, Tridet, Probe and Twister Flash Drives (Price exclude Rush Service)

Most suppliers of USB flash drives won’t entertain pre-loading data on “rush jobs” but if you have your data ready and it’s less than say 100MB we’ll try and support any request to load this onto your USB sticks as well.

So, if you’ve been let down by another supplier, or perhaps you’ve just left things really late give us a call and we’ll do all we can to help you with a solution.

Part of its enduring appeal is its ability to keep reinventing itself and attracting a whole new set of customers. When they were first launched around 10 years ago USB memory sticks were only available in a pretty limited range of styles, most were made from plastic and most of them came in a fairly standard rectangular shape. Of course in those days a typical USB memory stick was 16MB or 32MB, which is tiny, compared to the 1GB and 2GB, which are usually used as promotional products today.

Wooden USB Memory Sticks

Whilst memory sizes have been increasing the designers and manufacturers of USB memory sticks have been hard at work developing an ever increasing range of new products to encourage companies to use them for their sales and marketing activities. Today USB memory sticks are available “off the shelf” in hundreds of different styles and shapes including leather USB sticks, credit card shaped USB drives, USB badges, USB barrels and USB carabineers to name just a few.

The range of material used in the fabrication of USB memory sticks has also expanded to include; metal, aluminium, cork, PVC, leather, paper, bamboo and wood so there is now pretty much a USB stick that is suitable for everyone and every company. If you can’t find exactly what you want then most suppliers of USB sticks will offer to design and build a bespoke solution for you – you might have to wait a couple more weeks for custom solution but this is a small price to pay to get exactly what you want.

Wooden USB Flash Drives

Some of the “prettier” looking USB memory sticks around at the moment are those manufactured in wood or bamboo. Because they are manufactured from a natural material there is a slight variation in every single stick but this, in many ways, adds to the overall aesthetic. There are lots of different wooden USB sticks around, they’re all very tactile, warm to the touch and when they’re printed or engraved with a company brand or logo they look fantastic.

Of course wooden USB sticks have the benefit of being able to carry an “eco-friendly” tag because all of the wood or bamboo used in their manufacture come from renewable sources – handy if your company needs or wants to push out an environmentally conscious image.

Wooden Flash drives are typically the same price as “standard” drives but because they’re a little bit different they do help any brand printed or engraved on them stand out from the crowd.

• Currency speculators have built up over $6bn of short positions against sterling (effectively betting that it will fall).
• There are doubts about the Bank of England’s Bank of England’s plans in relation to quantitative easing in the UK.
• Opinion polls over the week-end seemed to indicate that Labour could hold onto power in the forthcoming general elections – the market is concerned that labour will not deal with effectively with the UK’s record fiscal deficit.
• The Prudential’s purchase of AIG’s Asia business will put further pressure on the pound because $25bn of the transaction will be in cash and in dollars.

If the pound does fall to $1.4 then this will represent a 17% fall in a relatively short space of time. This has a significant impact on the cost of imported goods into the UK and has a direct bearing on the costs of branded flash drives and custom USB memory sticks.

Pretty much every USB memory stick in the world in manufactured in China and suppliers of memory sticks pay the factories in China in US dollars. Consequently, the fall in the value of the pound has a direct impact on the cost of USB flash drives. Couple these currency cost increases with the recent 2.5% increase in VAT its easy to see why costs risen over the past couple of months and look set to increase moving forward.

Some suppliers will have protected themselves to some degree against these fluctuations but this is only likely to be short-lived. If you are looking to buy branded memory sticks now then be prepared for quotes to be valid for just a day or two (the suppliers need to protect themselves against the vagaries of the market) and be prepared to make decisions quickly to secure the best price you can.

USB memory sticks are no longer the preserve of the “techie” but instead are the de facto accessory for a significant number of us. It’s the ubiquitous nature of the memory stick coupled with their ease of use and sheer usefulness that makes them popular.

Combine popular with usefulness and a price point that is relatively inexpensive and you have a near perfect promotional vehicle. Couple this with the ability to brand them easily or produce custom versions that take on the form factor of your products and you begin to see their value,

But, the one aspect of a branded memory stick that continues to confuse, baffle and at times frustrate people is what you call them. Are they branded memory sticks, USB sticks, USB flash drives, USB pens, flash pens, USB pen drives, thumb drive, USB thumb drives or any combination of these.

Whilst this might seem to be a trivial matter it does make sourcing branded memory sticks all that more tricky and of course for suppliers looking to promote their services its equally difficult. There can be few products called that we all recognise instantly that we give different labels to. After all an umbrella is an umbrella, a mouse mat is a mouse mat but a memory stick, well, take your pick.

Fortunately, this small issue doesn’t look like it’s going to dent the inexorable climb of the branded memory stick towards to top of the promotional product pile. After all, no matter what you call them what is not in dispute is that they do a fantastic job at promoting a company’s brand or product.

So how do you make sure that the PR message is delivered in a manner that is impactful, cost effective, relevant and above all practical.

The answer is the simple Branded Memory Sticks. But not just any generic, standardised and boring shape or size. What the optimum delivery vehicle for any press pack is the Custom USB Memory Stick. Technology has now markedly improved, to allow  a simply picture or graphic to emerge as a unique Customised USB Memory Stick that is in the shape of the story / product / brand you are trying to promote.

So whether its the launch of a new car, drink, food, financial product, in fact any shape or size you can think of, a Customised Memory Stick can be made to that shape. Simply load the press pack onto the Customised Memory stick and away you go. So why does it tick all the boxes?

• It is human nature for someone to start playing / pulling apart a Customised USB Memory stick and to start showing it to other colleagues and ultimately plugging it in to see what all the fuss is about. For example, a well known health product provider wanted to launch a new female sanitary towel and a key part of this was PR. So they produced a USB memory stick in the shape of the product! The impact was dramatic, how could it be anything else.
• A range of factual and multimedia data can be loaded onto the Customised memory stick which autoruns once the memory stick has been plugged in.
• This is a great keepsake so the story / product you are trying to promote will have longevity.
• The cost of manufacturing has fallen dramatically and the minimum order quantity for Customised Memory Stick can be as low as 100 units.
• So how to you go about getting a Customised Branded USB Memory stick? Firstly contact an established and reputable UK USB Memory Stick provider. The process thereafter is simple.
• Send a picture of the shape of the memory stick you are after.
• A 3d Cad drawing will be prepared for sign-off.
• Tooling will be produced and a pre-production sample manufactured.
• Once this is agreed the full production and delivery will take less than 2 weeks.

So before you start pulling together that next cardboard folder full of reams of paper, think again….. Custom USB Memory sticks could be what makes your PR campaign a success or not.

A memory stick is a great way to transport data but they can easily find the bottom of your pocket or bag. It is a good idea to remember that USB2U can provide a range of suitable accessories and packaging to help avoid losing that important little stick! There are many different options of accessories and packaging available such as, lanyards, key rings, carabiners and USB extension cables.

Lanyards

Lanyards are probably the most popular choice with many of our customers. They can be attached securely to the USB drive and placed around the users neck – a great idea to avoid losing vital data!. And while lanyards are typically worn around the neck, it’s not unusual for them to be hanging out of pockets or belt loops, wrapped around as wrist straps or attached to and hanging from many other things! Lanyards can also be branded with your logo or message.

Keyrings

Key Rings are also a useful accessory to consider. Like lanyards they can be attached to the USB drive and in turn attached to your keys meaning you will never be without your memory stick and data! They are available in different sizes and are more robust than lanyards.

Carabiners

Our carabiner’s are fast becoming a favourite. These function like a climber’s carabiner and can be attached to the hook of your branded USB. They’re also great for attaching onto bags or laptop cases. Unlike most small key rings they are also big enough to carry a brand or logo.

USB Extension Cables

USB extension cables are worth considering if your PC box is located under your desk. You simply plug the extension into the USB drive of your PC and feed the cable onto your desktop. You’ll never have to struggle to plug your branded USB drive underneath your desk again!

All of the above mentioned accessories can be supplied with your order of branded USB memory sticks and are available in different colours, shapes and sizes. If you are not sure about which would suit you best please contact USB2U where an Account Manager will be happy to discuss your options.