Joe Logo – your hardest working employee – besides you

by Jennifer Cox

Now that you’ve met your invisible yet highly valuable employee, the one I just introduced you to named Joe Logo, my objective is to share ideas, hints and tips to help you make him work REALLY, REALLY hard – for you and for your business! Believe it or not, with a bit of thought on your part, Joe can become the hardest working guy in the business, other than you, of course!

I promise that I will not pound you with “buy my stuff” information, as that is not what I am about. Yes, I would love for you to call me when you need to order something with your company name on it – that is indeed true… And since I am being perfectly honest and transparent, let me be direct and tell you that the reason I am helping YOU think about how YOU can build YOUR BRAND is to build my brand – specifically with you.

When your business grows and succeeds, I hope to be involved in that, providing logo’d apparel and products for you and your customers, and serving you as your branding partner and expert.

So right here and right now – I want to prove to you that I am about much more than “buy my stuff,” as that is only a portion of the value of your Joe Logo!

Read on fellow business owner, and see if any of these ideas strike your fancy…. Let’s begin the adventure of making your company the “Kleenex” of your community or your industry!

3 Sneaky Ways to put Joe Logo to Work

Social Media Contests – Run a social media contest where customers submit a caption to go with a photo you posted, and in which your logo is visible. Or submit a few photos, again where your brand is visible, and ask them to vote for their favorite, and it will then be added to your website or something. People participate in these sorts of events and then they either intentionally share it with their friends and family, or the social media platform does it for them. Either way, your employee, Joe Logo, is out in the wild, doing his thing – making people think about your company.
Referral Programs – Happy customers generally like to share their experience with the people around them. When you up the ante and offer an incentive or reward for talking about your company, now you can get some serious “word of mouth” action going. Offer a coupon if a new customer mentions a current customer. Offer a discount when they bring someone with them and that new person places and order. It is a low-cost, high-impact strategy that works.
Infographics – Infographics are those visual stories that pop up all over social media. Create one that talks about your industry or your product and puts your business into that story or as the presenter of the story. Here is an example – (not a single sales pitch, I swear!) Note: You need to click the little tiny box in the upper right corner to see the whole thing. Golfzing’s Joe Logo is the golfball wearing sunglasses at the top and the bottom of this image, presenting branding to their target audience!

How many XLs Do I Need?

by Jennifer Cox

“How many of each size do I think I will need?”

Boy – is this question a stopper- but only until you realize there is a short cut to knowing how to order the right amounts of the right sizes!

When you know the current “size scale” for sportswear, you can accurately estimate how many items of each size you should order so that you have what you need with minimum extras.

Scale for sportswear is currently listed as 2442, meaning that for an order of a dozen items, you would order 2 medium, 4 large, 4 xlarge and 2 xxlarge. A modified scale (based on 14 items) would also include 1 small and 1 xxxlarge.

Use this scale ratio to know how many of what sizes to order when you order larger quantities of shirts. This gives you reasonable estimate of what amounts to order for each size. For example, an order of 200 shirts, estimated using the current scale, would be: 14 S; 29 M, 57 L; 57 XL; 29 XXL and 14 XXXL.

If you know the group for whom you are ordering apparel, you may know that 14 small and 14 xxxl is not right, and you can make those adjustments before the order is finalized.

Ordering shirts with your logo or event on it is not impossible! There is a local embroidery or apparel decoration professional that would love to help you to get exactly what you need! Remember, we are here to help you. When you need information, ideas, help or resources, we are a quick call or keyboard away. Let us know how we can help because we want to make sure that you look great!

Joe Logo to the Rescue

by Jennifer Cox

Meet “Joe Logo.”

“Joe Logo is the hardest-working employee that any business owner can have, besides themselves” says Jennifer Cox of the National Network of Embroidery Professionals based out of Kent, Ohio. “He never misses a day of work. He never calls in sick. His kids never get sick. He is completely THERE for your business – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, year after year.”

Joe Logo is a character Cox created to help business owners understand just how important their company name and their company brand is to the overall health of their companies.

“People don’t realize that they have an incredible resource in their company name and logo,” Cox explains. “If they have not yet put their company brand to work in their community, they’re missing out on a ton of ways to build awareness of their business.”

Joe was born at 6:30 one morning several years ago as Cox was driving to a weekly business meeting for her professional leads group. The networking organization was designed to help professionals in different fields create sales leads for each other from among their own customers. At that time, Cox was the sales person for a family-run embroidery business. Explaining to the group why the people they knew needed to become embroidery customers proved challenging.

“Every week, the leads group showcases several members. You get up and give a 5 to 10-minute presentation,” Cox says. “I was scheduled to be the first presenter that morning. I came up with Joe Logo as I drove to the meeting as a way to explain the benefit of the services that I offered in a way that might make more sense and be more memorable.”

To demonstrate the benefits of wearing logo’d apparel and using logo’d products, she personified Joe Logo into a valuable employee that everyone in the group could relate to.

Her referral group laughed at her characterization of Joe Logo. Yet at the same time, the business owners at the meeting suddenly understood that what she was offering was much more than some good looking shirts and jackets.

“When you say ‘corporate embroidery,’ many business owners are not sure if they have a need for that,” Cox says. “But when you talk about Joe Logo being punched in on the time clock yet he is sitting there with his feet up on the desk, twiddling his thumbs and goofing off, now that is a completely different mindset. Joe Logo is just waiting for you to put him to work!”

Cox thinks that every business owner can become well acquainted with their Joe and put him to work in all sorts of ways to help make their company more visible.

Embroidery professionals, apparel decoration professionals and promotional products distributors are all experts at putting Joe Logo to work for the business owners in their communities.

“We love to talk to business owners about how we can make his Joe work harder for him, or how we can help create his Joe. We are not just selling embroidered shirts. Business owners are not walking around without a shirt on – they do own clothing!”

We are trying to help our customers build company recognition, brand recognition, customer confirmation and identity within the community. We do all that by helping business owners put Joe Logo to work.

In her presentations, Cox provides examples of how Joe Logo can help a business.

“As a woman business owner and even as a homeowner, when somebody comes to install my internet, update the meter mail machine, fix the dishwasher or connect the cable TV and they show up in a company van (Joe at work), wearing a logo’d shirt (Joe’s working again), carrying a badge or I.D. (Joe’s front and center here), I have the confidence to let them in the door because they are clearly from the company that I called,” she says. “When he walks up wearing the logo, it gives him instant credibility. I am willing to open the door and allow him into my home or business.”

“Every company that calls on businesses or homeowners should be using Joe Logo on every wearable surface – bags, hats, jackets, shirts and sweatshirts,” she says. “If you have 18 plumbers working in your community and they all look cleaned up and spiffy, that is going to generate an impression, a feeling about the company and their services that is much different than the guy that shows up in old ratty jeans and a dirty T-shirt in a rusted out truck.”

Cox stresses that Joe Logo can also help build camaraderie among employees at company gatherings.

“Nice tone-on-tone embroidery for a golf outing is a classy way to build company brand recognition,” she says. “Joe can be as subtle or as brash as you want. If you’re in a bowling tournament with other contractors in the city, you may want Joe to be pretty prominent, so put him on the back of the shirt, let him get a bit more splashy!”

“Joe can work for everybody. Everybody has Joe, but you’re probably not using him very well. He’s your least utilized, yet most valuable and cheapest employee – because he’s always available to work.”

Even business owners who don’t have an official logo can still put Joe to work for them.

“Your font, your colors, your overall style, all of that is the foundation for your Joe,” Cox says.

Once a business owner starts thinking about Joe Logo as an actual member of the staff, it’s easy to see all the different ways that Joe can help.

“I’ve had customers that call me two and three years later saying, ‘Hey, I need to put Joe to work,’ or ‘Joe’s asleep on the job here and I need to wake him up’,” Cox says. “Joe makes it easy for you to be thinking about how to use your logo better.”

“The business owners thought it was cool that they had a Joe, and that they could put him to work for their company right away, no training required. Once you put Joe to work, it is hard to imagine why you want to let him sit around and goof off!”

Joe Logo works because he’s fun.

“People like fun,” Cox says. “People remember fun. It totally changes the branding conversation, no matter how small or how large the business is.”

“Once you meet Joe, don’t be surprised if you discover that you don’t want to run your business without him.”

If you do not know a great embroidery or apparel decoration professional, feel free to check out the national Embroidery Professionals Directory or email Jennifer Cox at NNEP to find a local embroidery and/or apparel decoration professional near you!