Greetings Loyal Airmen, and welcome back to our second October Flight Log. We thought it might be fun to talk about give-away premiums this week. A few years ago, while planning our convention trips, the Air Chief and Art Director Rob Davis got to talking about what kind of Airship 27 branded premiums we could produce economically and offer as give-aways at these shows.

The first one we came up with was our Airship 27 Productions cloth patch. Rob even whipped up a gorgeous flier to advertise them. We had 100 done up and over a two year period either sold them or gave them all away.  The idea of any premium is to work as an incentive to the customer at the same time be something to help advertise the company. For the patch, if any of our Loyal Airmen bought two or more of our titles at a convention, they would get a “free” patch.  Should they simply wish to buy one, we sold them for $3 each.  Needless to say they were a big hit among all our Loyal Airmen.

Last year we thought it was time to try doing coffee cups.  Unlike the patches, we could only sell these, so we conservatively had 5 made up. We sold the first four at the Windy City Pulp & Paper show and the last one went at PulpFest. It would be nice to do these again some day. But high priced items are always a tricky sell.

So what about next year, 2016?  Well, keeping in mind that Scaldcrow Games will be releasing their rpg module “Ron Fortier’s Cape Noire” game based on our Brother Bones series of pulp books, we started thinking it might be nice to do up some custom dice. Rob found a company on-line and began working with them to create the perfect set.  Eventually they came up with two designs.  One die would feature the Undead Avenger himself, Brother Bones and the other our dirigible log. See above. The middle die was that with the logo and sadly, the process of shrinking it down to fit the die made the lettering on the bottom banner undecipherable. After some back and forth, the production agent suggested the third image, that with our company name wrapped around the bottom of the logo. That works and so that will be the second piece to accompany the Brother Bones die.  Like the patches, these are cheap enough where we will either sell them for $3 a set, or give a set away for free to anyone who buys two or more of our titles.  We think they will make a very cool premium and hope please our Loyal Airmen.

These kind of things are fun to whip up and the Air Chief hopes all you Loyal Airmen appreciate them. We are always open to new ideas for such, so feel free to let us know. As the patches are all gone, we’re looking at new a brand new one for 2017.  What do you think?

Ron – Over & Out!