HUB Promotional Group has rebranded as HPG with a fresh look and approach. HPG is the parent company of suppliers HUB Pen (PPAI 110772, S11), Beacon (PPAI 113702, S10), BEST Promotions USA (PPAI 461689, S4), Cooler Graphics (PPAI 226076, S4), Debco (PPAI 317015, S4), BCG Creations (PPAI 207888, S6), Origaudio (PPAI 421483, S7) and HandStands (PPAI 111285, S7).

After the successful relaunch of Hub Pen as “Hub” in September 2019, HPG’s marketing services team went to work reimagining HUB Promotional Group as “HPG.” Jason Lucash, senior vice president of marketing and innovation, says, “There was a lot of confusion in the market about the difference between Hub, the pen company, and Hub Promotional Group, the parent company—it didn’t help the logos and colors were almost the same as well.”

Lucash adds, “‘Hub’ is synonymous with ‘pens’ in the promo industry already, so it felt like a small leap to drop ‘Pen’ from the name. It also has a broader product assortment than only pens now, which we’re expanding even further this year. The parent company name had started to build some awareness, so simplifying it to HPG meant it wouldn’t lose that momentum entirely."

He says the brands that make up the HPG family are all very different. “Different cultures, products and production techniques. But they’ve all succeeded by going above and beyond for their customers and, because of that, the brands they’ve built have value we didn’t want to diminish,” he says. “Our approach was to redesign HPG’s brand to be neutral yet flexible. So, on the surface, it would never compete with the other brands, but we could use elements of it to wrap around them, leaving a subtle but distinctive mark that’d bring some consistency to the group.”

The HPG rebranding and new website was first revealed in early January. However, the HPG booth at The PPAI Expo 2020 attracted the most attention to the new creative direction for the group with its neon sign, surreal art and imaginative product displays.

“We wanted to design a space and experience that no one could walk past without stopping, if only to do a double-take. It’s not every day you see a photo of a giraffe in Palm Springs with balloons covering its torso,” says Lucash. “It was a lot of work to pull together our brands in one space, as well as a big risk. We knew it was the right move when we were the busiest, loudest booth relative to those around us for three straight days. This year’s theme for the booth was ‘Expect the Unexpected.’ You won’t want to miss what we do next year either.”