October is breast cancer awareness month and here at Motivators, we are doing our part.  There is a tremendous array of breast cancer awareness promotional products.  Whether you're participation in a walk, run or even bar crawl, you are sure to find something to promote your event.  Lapel stickers, debossed bracelets, pens, pamphlets, key chains etc. will keep you promoting the cause all year around.  That's not all:

Westbury, NY. Motivators, Inc., a leading online provider of promotional products, announced today its collaboration with the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund. Beginning today, whenever an order is placed for an item featured in the Breast Cancer Awareness section, A portion of the proceeds from this order will be donated to the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund, a Long Island-based breast cancer charity. This ongoing fundraiser will continue beyond October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

So not only are you raising money individually, but your order will help donate as well!

At age 36, Christina Applegate was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. Now, four years later, the actress is willing to put on pink -- a color she says "usually washes me out" -- in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Applegate's foundation, Right Action, has teamed up with sportswear company ASICS to create a line of pink breast cancer awareness promotional products. The "Anchorman" actress told the AP that she hopes the brightly-colored apparel will help bring attention to the issue. "Every time you look at a pair of shoes or a jog top, you'll know you're creating awareness and conversation, especially with the bright pink, people will ask, 'Why are you wearing bright pink?'" she said.

The goal for her organization, Applegate said, is to increase breast cancer awareness among younger women. "This is not a disease only for 50-year-old women," she said.

According to the Right Action website, the ASICS breast cancer awareness collection includes running sneakers, a sports bra, head bands and knee pads. Items will be on sale through Oct. 31.

This past weekend, I did the Breast Cancer Awareness walk at Jones Beach with the Motivators team. Much to my delight, we received 2011 promotional items just for participating: comfy hooded sweatshirts that came in very handy for the cool, windy walk. Gathering way too early for any Sunday, we came to show our support for such a great cause.

The weeks leading up to the walk, I tried and tried to find out if dogs were allowed to attend. During the summer months I wouldn't dream of bringing Brodie to a Long Island beach because of the crowds alone, but in the off-season I thought "why not?" I tried calling Jones Beach - ring, ring, ring. I tried calling our local coordinator of the walk - voicemail. I tried asking around the office - nothing. Finally, about two days before the walk, it was posted: per Jones Beach State Park, no pets allowed. There it was - my answer.

I'm usually a rule-follower, but I just couldn't come to terms with this. I saw news footage of last year's walk and there were several dogs in the background, so I thought it might be worth a try. Worst case scenario: they tell me he has to leave and we turn around.

Sunday morning I was a little nervous about knowingly breaking the rules, but I think I was even more nervous that Brodie might be "B-A-D" (we spell that word in my house because he's quite the sensitive boy, cowering at the mention of it). To my surprise, the whole thing went off without a hitch. We walked the entire boardwalk and were not stopped once. There was a bit more pulling from my eager border-collie than I would have liked, but I was incredibly impressed with the way he behaved overall. We also met plenty of other dogs along the way who were showing their support with breast cancer awareness promotional products. Brodie was strutting a pink bandanna with the awareness ribbon symbol to show his support as well.

After the 5K walk, the stress of the crowd and getting lots of pets from new people he'd never met, my normally energetic pup was pooped. Mission accomplished. He came home and zonked out for the rest of the day while we watched the Bills/Giants game. The walk turned out to be a truly rewarding experience... on many levels!

Being that I am not a tech junkie, I rely soley on my boyfriend for all the new electronic goodies and apps on the market. Today, he let me know that I can now download a new app to my Ipad called "Snooze" (created by LetsGive) which will connect my alarm clock to my bank account. Now, why would I want to do that? Well, for those of you like myself who love sleep and have trouble getting out of bed each morning (I probably hit snooze atleast 4 times).. what if it cost you $0.25 every time you hit snooze? Would that encourage you get a move on it? Well, this new app does just that. Each time you hit snooze, your bank account is charged $0.25 and that money is donated to a charity of your choice. Isn't that just great?

Well, there is one problem with this - although it is costing you each time you snooze, it is for an awesome cause! So technically, everybody wins! I can just picture myself snoozing away and reminding myself that I am actually doing good by spending those extra minutes in bed while supporting my favorite charity.

I think we should try this at home. Even if you don't have an Iphone or Ipad, you can use your promotional alarm clock that you received at your last tradeshow instead. Set up your night table with some spare change and your custom imprinted piggy bank. Each time you roll over, don't forget to put a quarter in for charity. At the end of the month, we can put all of our hard earned "sleep money" together and donate to the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund just like Motivators customers do when they place an order for any of the branded Breast Cancer Awareness Promotional Items!

"Sleep for the Cause" has a nice ring to it - what do you say Motivators employees? Who's in?

Well, call me Mr.KFC but it seems more often than not KFC's branding decisions, well, they interest me. This isn't my first blog entry about a KFC branding decision, last time I blogged about them they changed their bucket and logo colors in order to "Un-Brand" themselves. Well, KFC is attempting to rebrand their famous buckets once again. This time they are doing it in hopes of creating the single largest corporate donation of all time. Currently, KFC has changed their world famous fried chicken buckets to pink, every pink bucket sold, KFC will donate .50 to the group Susan J Komen for the Cure. The goal is to donate $8 million dollars. This program, while surely dont in good nature, has created a bit of controversy. According to ABC News, Barbara Brenner, executive director of Breast Cancer Action says "They are raising money for women's health by selling a product that's bad for your health … it's hypocrisy." According to medical experts, there is an established connection between eating fatty, high caloric food and the risk for breast cancer.I certainly can not question that KFC is doing a wonderful thing by raising record amount of money to donate to the cause, but it does go a long way in showing how careful you must be about how you market a brand or program. When done incorrectly, even a program for a good cause can backfire against you. We here at Motivators have had an ongoing program for a few years with the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund, a Long Island based breast cancer charity. A large group of promotional awareness related products were selected so that when ordered , 10% of the proceeds would be donated to charity. Some of these items are promotional awareness products, some are promotional pink products and some of the promotional products have a direct connection to helping to promote breast cancer awareness. Don't let your good efforts go to waste, make sure when you market your charity program that when you market your program, you show a direct connection to your cause.

The interesting thing about working with promotional products is how often you notice an opportunity to "promote." It was today in our lunch room that I realized there is a great opportunity for many companies to promote that is not being taken advantage of enough. The promotional checkbook. Let me start from the beginning. We here at Motivators are supporting the American Cancer Society by going to Breast Cancer Awareness Night at CitiField. Motivators are big supporters of Breast Cancer Awareness by the way and we donate 10% of all profits from Breast Cancer Awareness orders to the Carol M Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Society. Many people here wanted to come out and support so we all brought in our checks today to pay for the tickets. There is truly no reason for financial companies, banks and definitly companies who promote ON checks to to not be giving away promotional checkbook holders! It's a funny thing when it comes to checks, a lot of people actually take pride in what is on their checks. You don't need to be a bank to want to take advantage of the promotional checkbook holder either, any company that wants to be top of mind when their users write checks can benefit from this not used enough promotional product. Promotional checkbook holders run the range in price. We have them from under a dollar to fine, high quality leather checkbook holders in the $20 - $30 range. So...pun intended...CHECK them out.

12 days and counting til the Making strides Against Breast Cancer Walk at Jones Beach and so far the Motivators team is doing great. We've raised almost $1,300 so far, and we still have 12 days to get more moolah! We've more than doubled our amount of walkers since last year, so the Motivators team will definitely be making it's mark. Of course, everyone will be able to know it's us because we'll be wearing our custom t-shirts designed by graphic designer extrordinare Anthony Zuaro. I haven't yet seen the design, but I'm sure it will be great. And just for fun, I found some great breast cancer awareness designs over at cafepress. You can get these designs on a variety of breast cancer awareness items, but the most popular seem to be t-shirts.

As Terek mentioned in his blog below, this year Motivators will be participating in the 2008 Making Strides against Breast Cancer Walk at Jones Beach. As Team Captain, it's my responsibility to make sure that everything goes according to plan on Sunday October 19. I'll be here at the office bright and early (obviously equipped with coffee as I don't function without it in the early morning hours) ready to meet up for the car pool. That's right, we're eco-friendly, we car pool to fundraising events. I'll make sure everyone is perky enough to give out whatever breast cancer awareness promotional products we bring with us that day. But most importantly, I'll make sure that everyone is wearing their promotional t-shirts that we're having custom made for the event.

This morning, my Team Captain Leader package arrived with all the promotional marketing materials I need to make sure that Team Motivators is good to go in a few weeks. It included all our offline fundraising donation sheets, posters advertising the walk, and promotional buttons, but only 4 of them. It ALSO included the official Team Leader t-shirt. Now instead of being able to request a size for this t-shirt, the American Cancer Society has just generalized that all Team Leaders are an XL. This happened last year as well and when Jen handed me the t-shirt, I was swimming in it. It reached down to my knees (I'm not a tall individual) and my hands ended about 7 inches before the shirt did. It was massive. And so is this years shirt. I passed it along to Sarah Ellis, who noted that she loves large t-shirts.

Upon looking at it at lunch, Sarah noted that it really was ginormous. She tried it on again and then commented that she was sure, if she tried, she could fit her entire self into the shirt. So she tried, at first sitting in her chair and it worked. And then she squatted down on the floor, to see if she could hide herself completely inside of it. First, she fell over, which was hilarious. And then she tried again and this was the result.

After Sarah had successfully submurged her entire self in the shirt (and proceeded to look like what we've determined to be a bright blue breast cancer awareness garbage can), I said probably the most overly used phrase that people say when they see a large t-shirt: "You could fit a whole 'nother person in that shirt!" Everyone always says that about big t-shirts. How many people actually go the distance and try it though? Here at Motivators we're truly dedicated to quality control and we firmly believe in testing all of our products. What if some oddly inquisitive customer were to call up and ask, just how many people can you fit in an extra large t-shirt? Well, merchandising decided we can't not know the answer to that question. Our sales people need to have the most accurate answers to all of our customers queries at all times. So for the sake of product testing and quality control, we're pleased to tell you that the answer is 2.

Please Note: While the picture clearly depicts that 2 people can in fact fit into an extra large t-shirt, Motivators does not reccommend cutting costs to purchase 1 shirt for every 2 recipients. Side effects may include: Choking, Difficulty Walking, and Vertigo.

The month of October is approaching once again and we will enter into Breast Cancer Awareness Month.  Last year, Motivators took part in a Breast Cancer Walkathon which helped to raise money and awareness.   In addition to repeating the walkathon this year Motivators will also be contributing 10% of the proceeds from every order placed for promotional breast cancer awareness products to the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund.  I personally appreciate all that Motivators is doing to help in the ongoing fight against breast cancer, which has taken the lives of many women, including my own mother.  Prayerfully, one day real soon because of all the contributions and work of the people we will be able to celebrate that we have found a cure.

The title of this blog was inspired by some promotional t-shirts that I saw last year at the Making Strides against Breast Cancer Walk. Last October several of us got together and woke up at a ridiculous hour of the morning to head to the Making Strides walk. We'd spent months fundraising and getting psyched for the walk. So, that brisk October morning, I woke up and called Tony (my co-captain for the day) to make sure he was awake. Being the prepared individual that he is, Tony was wide awake and ready to go. I put on my promotional long sleeve t-shirt that I had receieved from the American Cancer Society, hopped in the car and headed off on my way.

After picking up Tony, we stopped at the office to pick up some extra promotional t-shirts that we needed for the event, since extra people had volunteered to go at the last minute. All the other promotional products that we needed for the walkathon were already packed and in my car, but I did a quick inventory check nonetheless. Promotional pink cowbells? Check. Promotional drawstring backpacks? Check. Promotional ribbon mints? Check. Promotional Hats? Check. We were all set. Sabrina and Danielle parked their respective vehicles and jumped in the Jetta. We may not have had any eco-friendly promotional products that day, but at least we were doing the environment a service by carpooling.

The beach was packed that morning and thousands had gotten up early, just as we had. Not even on the hottest days of summer had Jones Beach seen this kind of attendance or this much pink. Swarms of people were at the check in table as I handed off our donation envelope and we were practically mobbed when we started handing out our promotional products. We're all firm believers that everyone loves free stuff, so we felt like we were saying Thank You to all the people who had come out in support of the event. Below is one of my favorite pictures from the walk, a local PAL hockey team with the promotional cowbells that we handed them. They all look so cute!

Little boys love cowbells apparently so they just kept ringing them. One mother looked like she wanted to ring our necks for giving them to them, but other parents touted the promotional noisemakers, saying that they'd be great to use at the boys' hockey games.

We gave out the rest of our swag and headed off to walk. Here's a great team picture. Tony took it, whcih explains why he's not in it!

 The walk was long and it was a beautiful morning. By the end of it we had all removed our promotional sweatshirts because we were sweating so much, but we all felt a great sense of accomplishment regardless of how hot or tired we might have been. It was trul;y humbling to see all the survivors that walk and we were proud to be walking with them, which is why...

We're doing it again this year!!!

Sunday October 19, the Motivators team will be out in full force at the 2008 Making Strides against Breast Cancer Walk. We'll have promotional apparel and probably some great things to give away, and as team captain I'm really excited to be participating once again this year. I'm hoping even more Motivators sign up and I hope we raise even more money than we did last year! So to all of you reading this blog that want to sign up, you can do so at the Official Motivators Team Page. And you can make donations there as well!

LET'S GO TEAM MOTIVATORS!!!!