Cut Vinyl Graphics

[don]

kwatt wrote:
Or do we go down the path of allowing ONLY subscribers access to any official signage?

K.

It could be used as a tool to encourage all those non believers out there 😉 .

Now that UKW is attracting more and more traffic and other innitiatives are being put into place, I would have thought more members would want to subscribe to take advantage of these offerings.

Don

[Martin]

Re: Cut Vinyl Graphics

I’m sorry? But could someone please explain to me the point behind this idea :con:

Please do not missunderstand my seemingly impertinent opening statement, but I fail to see the benefit of the expense for these being produced, just to stick on the side of someones van 😯

Whilst the symbol represents a whole lot to us here and now ( which I very much appreciate) but what on earth would any casual observer reckon to it? What does it mean? Why bother?

The reason I ask is that (for example) a company that is very much involved with this site and has a number of vans with loads of stickers on them, doesn’t even have a sticker to show the ‘Trade Association’ his company subscribes to. I wonder why that is? OK I do know….(Just teasing)…Because it means NOTHING to ‘Joe Public’ and is about as useless as getting a signwriter to put “REBMULP” on the front of his van!!!! (That’s PLUMBER backwards by the way….why do they do that as well?)

[kwatt]

Re: Cut Vinyl Graphics

The point Martin is to raise public awareness.

There’s only two ways to do that, which are in fact one way.

Advertise through work of mouth, a very good advert indeed.

Spend countless thousands, even millions, trying to get your message across.

Word of mouth is obviously working for us along with some of the other stuff that we do to promote UKW but we simply do not have the resources to push that any further, nor are we ever liable to have to the degree that we’d make any significant headway. So how do we, or you, suggest that we promote ourselves as being the good guys of the trade?

I would agree that this might not be the same calibre as a multi-million pound TV and print advertising campaign, but it’s a start and even a hundred vans running around the UK with the logo on the back is going to be seen by hundreds, if not thousands, of people a year. That’s why they put stickers on the back of a bus, have done for years and many people swear by that method of advertising.

Since all the subscribers (to my knowledge) are also listed in Repairs@ does it not make sense to have people looking at the site? Even if they don’t use it today, they may well in a year or whenever an appliance fails giving the members in here a far better chance of catching that call and gaining from it.

We’ve blasted the trade with a mail out, we cannot afford to do likewise to teh general public, even just the 4500+ that we did you really don’t want to know what it cost, suffice to say it was a lot more that £10K just for that alone.

What I can’t understand here is why, or how, you don’t get that this is about promoting ourselves to the public, it might not be the best way, but it sure as hell’s cost effective.

And, just as an aside, from memory I think it was “Marbles” that originally just had a marble and http://www.marbles.com for their advert. Seemed to work for them as people have a natural curiosity about the web, I know I often take a note of a URL on a van to check out later. 😉

Oh and there was no need to eat up our bandwidth reposting the sample logo BTW. 😉

K.

[admin]

Re: Cut Vinyl Graphics

Martin, as your a whiz with pictures and stuff….(horse poo under the carpet ect)

how about you altering the graphic for us, lose the border around our logo and get the repairs@ “wheeled toolbox” in there, please,if you can.

ta

kevin

[Del]

Re: Cut Vinyl Graphics

Surely we must look to promote UKW at every oppurtunity. We started off as a self help group to lend one another support and we have all been taken aback by the popularity of the site.

This is in no small measure due to the help and support given by the members and moderators in the public forums. We were all agog when we reached our first million hit’s and congratulations were expressed all round.

Have we really become that complacent that when, just past our 2 nd official birthday, as we reach almost 4 million hits we dont think that these efforts are even worth a van sticker?

We travel to meet one another from the four corners of the land, have forged links, developed a strong bond and a commeradery with one another. Promoted our individual businesses on the site, built up a trade information system second to none. Agreed a defined level of service and given advice and assistance to the public.

Our little community has raised the bar so much so that we now attract
manufacturers, insurers, work providers, spares suppliers etc. offering help and support on things like training and sharing information.

And still we question wether that little lot is worth a van sticker to help promote it further. 🙄

Never mind Ken at least they’ll be on mine 😉

Del

[admin]

Re: Cut Vinyl Graphics

Sean (del), you generalise, when you should direct the comment at Martin.

Kevin

[Martin]

Re: Cut Vinyl Graphics

Gentlemen,

I am delighted in the response (so far) at your reaction to my post 😀

I will attempt to answer your comments and concerns so far:-

kwatt wrote:Next question, do we pay for it out our pockets (shouldn’t cost much really) or do we use the funds?

If it’s free of charge to all that wish to have van stickers, the majority of UKW members (subscribers or all) will request they have a few. If however there is a price to pay, then many more will decline or consider such an offer. If the cost of this facility is burdened upon the subscribers alone, I believe many will be non too happy at the expense however small it may be.

kwatt wrote:The point Martin is to raise public awareness.

Agreed…. to maintain any business you have to maintain as high a profile as possible, but I really fail to see how van stickers will do that at this stage 🙂

Del wrote:And still we question wether that little lot is worth a van sticker to help promote it further

I am answering your complete post here Sean by first reminding you that I am on your side here mate in spite of your misgivings lately over my recent posts…… 😉

“Our little community has raised the bar so much so that we now attract
manufacturers, insurers, work providers, spares suppliers etc. offering help and support on things like training and sharing information.”

Preaching to the converted here a bit, not selling to the public though.

“Promoting UKW at every opportunity?”…..

of course, I like many have contributed to the cause as well you know. 8)

“Have we really become complacent, that our efforts are not even worth a van sticker?”

………of course not! But I suspect it will have little or no impact (to the general public) at this stage any more than someone that has a certain Trade Association sticker on their van right now 🙁

If we are wracking our brains as to what to spend our subscription funds on? Let me suggest we concentrate on discounted Public Liabilty Insurances Premiums, Vehicle Insurance Premiums, Employees insurance and many other facilities that would be of greater overall benefit.

kwatt wrote:Oh and there was no need to eat up our bandwidth reposting the sample logo BTW

I deleted the logo on my post to ease the situation….SORRY!

[kwatt]

Re: Cut Vinyl Graphics

And nice juicy topics like this and the way that they are discussed is why I just love this forum and the people on it! 😀

There’s no problem Martin, really.

The subs funds are not really in question Martin, but I fail to see how we can use them to achieve what you suggest in your last post. The only thing that will make a difference there is sheer volume of numbers and, given the lacklustre responses to even buying a few pumps as a group I’m guessing that that’s a non-starter for now. That is unless we can come up with a blinding deal on one or all of them.

So, that would mean, logically, that asking people to dip into their pockets to fund any advertising is, for now, liable to also be a non-starter. Therefore, we’re left with what we can do to promote ourselves within an acceptable budget.

What I do not think is that we should sit with out thumbs in a body cavity thinking that we’ve done a good job! We may well have done, but it’s simply not enough and we have to raise that bar, again and again. If that’s a £2 van sticker, then it’s a £2 van sticker… if it’s a 2 million quid campaign in Good Houskeeping and Which then fine, I can live with any of them as it’s of no concern to me whatsoever. What is a concern to me, personally, is that we promote one place, one point of contact that all our businesses can reap benefit from. And, IMO, any way that we can do that and push the message out to the public or anyone that’ll listen to us has got to be a “Good Thing” ™. 😉

The nice thing about Sean’s idea and the supplied initial idea is that it has the subscriber number on it, so only we can issue them for now and audit the people with them on their vans. So the only people that’d get them are those that subscribe and all of those are signed up to the charter. It’s a bit like CORGI, without the costs. 🙄

K.

[Penguin45]

Re: Cut Vinyl Graphics

I think I’d like a couple of stickers for the back of the van. God knows they’ll get read enough in Leeds traffic. Maybe by the other non-joining engineers in Leeds…… 🙂 .

It’s not complex, it’s cheap and cheerful – we don’t need the Subs number (yet) – stick ’em on the front page for £2.50 inc P+P and I bet we’ll shift some.

Cheers,
Chris.

[admin]

Re: Cut Vinyl Graphics

Perhaps we should finalise a design, sizes and colours and then cost it.

We then can decide if its a goer or not.

Remember that some will not be able to accomodate large stickers as they’re vans will already be written.

I think that UKW should fund it ,sell them to those who want them and make the profit and or loss. As its long term we should eventually get the costs back.

We could also do this same idea to the “wheeled toolbox” advertising that idea.

[Martin]

Re: Cut Vinyl Graphics

kheath wrote:Perhaps we should finalise a design, sizes and colours and then cost it.

Having mellowed somewhat overnight and the effects of being influenced by the democratic process such forums generate. I’m thinking, that perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a couple of additional stickers on my van. After all, Repairs@ customers will spot it straight away 😀

[Alex]

Re: Cut Vinyl Graphics

I don’t think we need the number on each individual set of stickers either. Makes life a little more difficult, at least if they are the same they can be posted out on request once a few has been made.

I’m not a fan of too many labels on a van, makes it look like a well travelled suitcase. However these seem quite discreet yet have an impact & I do agree it may pull in a few more members in the trade. As for the public, I doubt if they would care too much. Just look at a builders van, or the van of the guy who attends your fire extinguishers, are you interested that much in what bodies & associations they may be part of? If you are in the trade, you may well notice, as in plumbers vans with CORGI notices.

In spite of my reservations, they look good, and worth a go. I just remember the DASA ones, the only vehicles I saw them on were Expert Appliance Care; and they had no makes of appliances they attended on their vans; therefore giving plenty of room for a label that meant nothing.

Alex

[Dave_Conway]

Re: Cut Vinyl Graphics

One suggestion I would make and this is not to imply the public are thick or anything 😉

Currently the website address is shown as http://www.UK Whitegoods.co.uk
with gaps and capitals which may encourage people to actually type that in to their browser, much better (IMO) to have it shown correctly http://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk

Dave.

[NWAR]

Re: Cut Vinyl Graphics

For my tuppence worth:
I totally agree with Dave’s last post – it just makes it look that little bit tidier.

And in line with the flightless winged one I think the subscriber number should be dropped from the logo. It’s extra information which won’t generate any further interest from the reader (if they’re interested in the first place then the address is all they’ll need to look us up).

As for the trade association thing – unlike most trade associations we actively pursue public interest and today’s public are a very inquisitive bunch. Like Ken many people remember web sites that spark their interest and look them up when they get home/to work. The logo is simple yet effective – exactly what a logo should be – in that it gives the reader an impression of what it relates to without flooding them with too much information which, inevitably, results in loss of interest for most people.

So people see the logo and recognise the part they want (“that reminds me, my fridge isn’t working properly” or “my hob doesn’t spark” or whatever) – they’ll quickly associate the part of the logo with their own circumstance then all they have to take in apart from that is “ukwhitegoods.co.uk”. Easy.

I personally think that van stickers could be an effective tool for UKW at this stage. Now if we could just make the homepage that bit more appealing and user-friendly…

Craig

[Author]

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