For more than 60 years, PPAI’s Pyramid Award program has celebrated the talents and accomplishments of the industry’s companies and professionals. First introduced in 1958, the award program recognizes promotional products businesses and helps shine the spotlight on the collaborative business model unique to the industry. PPB Newslink is highlighting some of the winners among the 2020 Pyramid Award’s extensive Client and Marketing Program categories.

Distributor Funk Advertising in Annapolis, Missouri, has received a Silver Award in the Client Branding category for a campaign helping its client, a small-town café, with a complete rebrand. The campaign’s goal was to allow the café’s owner to be gruff and cranky while making customers love her for it.

The café was renamed The Crazy Sister Café & Ice Cream Parlor in recognition of the owner’s prickly personality, supported by a Funk Advertising-designed branded marketing campaign that included a new logo as well as banners, postcards, stickers, t-shirts for staff and rugs at the door, each featuring crazy sayings and the cafe's new tagline, “Who Ya Callin’ Crazy?” Social media and promotional products spread over a 20-mile radius, promoting crazy sayings contests, pictures of winners, daily specials and the sister “in character.” Promotional products were also used onsite to further engage customers in sharing and recommending the “Who Ya Callin’ Crazy?” experience.

This diverse combination of marketing elements drew out-of-town customers into the café’s “Who Ya Callin’ Crazy?” experience. It generated financial and branding success as well, with 75 percent of income earned coming from out-of-town customers.

Visit www.promotionalproductswork.org to see more case studies or to www.ppai.org/Awards to learn more about the Pyramid Competition. All category entry periods are now open and there are no fees for submissions or return costs for the 2021 competition. The deadline to enter is May 29.