Photo CutOuts Blog

Teaser: fun new things on the way!

March 18, 2019March 18, 2019 admin

More Fun Things from Photo Cutouts

We have been writing about all kinds of delightful photo cutout events to plan for in this month of March, but perhaps now is also the time to remind our readers of some of the other fun options we offer for events. So find a bit of time, pour yourself a nice cup of tea or coffee or a gin and tonic (no matter what time of day, I don’t judge), read our blog and then peruse our website – a picture is worth a thousand words!

The beauty of our reusable Speech Bubbles is twofold: First you get to use them for your event, then you can reuse them at home! Our set of six speech bubbles are very popular at weddings* (particularly if you have a photo booth), though feel free to be creative with how and when you want to use them. Then, bring our speech bubbles home and use them as a message and reminder board at home – much better than having a chalkboard and dusty chalk everywhere! And you can always be super generous and present a few to extended family as the gift that keeps on giving … messaging … reminding …

https://www.photocutouts.co.uk/speech-bubbles.htm

* Though we do have a set of Wedding-Themed Speech Bubbles in case you are concerned about what your guests might write!

When you are celebrating big money being handed to your charity, what will truly stand out in the press photos? Why, Big Cheques! (OK, technically they are Giant Cheques.) We have three different sizes available and can make either a printed version or a re-useable dry wipe cheque. Whatever your preference, our giant cheques are a wonderful way to announce that big sum!

https://www.photocutouts.co.uk/charity-cheques.htm

If reality sometimes needs some pizzazz, why not zing it up with our Virtual Reality Boards? Here you get to combine a photo cutout board with a downloaded app that then gives life to your photo board. While, in my ever-so-humble opinion, my writing is quite lively, it may be best to check out the link below which shows a photo board coming to life:

https://www.photocutouts.co.uk/virtual-reality-photo-boards.htm

So, does anything strike your fancy? Something surely must! Then contact us by phone or email or via an online form:

Tel: 08450 570 321

Email: office@connectedshopping.com

Online contact form: https://www.photocutouts.co.uk/contact.htm

Here’s a Little Teaser

Now, here at Photo Cutouts we not only have a talented team who design and create photo boards and the other amazing and fun things I wrote about, we also have a team of innovative – nay! strike that, I am being faint with my praise – genius, yes, I said, genius thinkers of fun. (Well, to really tell the truth: they are actually grown men who are wishing and acting like they could still be young boys.)

Our Fun Think Tank Team (FTTT) have come up with some new products for more fun times. I don’t want to give away anything quite yet, but I have been authorized to tell all our readers that it will be MEGA …

Tune in next time for some April event planning and fun times with photo cutouts!

And keep on tuning in for the MEGA new products reveal coming soon.

Photocutouts.co.uk

08450 570321

March Delights, Part 2: The Second Half of March

March 4, 2019March 5, 2019 admin

As promised, here are March Delights, Part 2: The Second Half of March

(Don’t forget, last week we started brainstorming about some fun-filled festivities that could be celebrated in March, and if that includes some photo cutout boards, then so much the better!)

March 15: The Ides of March

Ooops! Last time we totally forgot to add this delight…though some might wonder if it is a true delight when you are told to “Beware the Ides of March!” Well, to those doubters we say “Doubt not!”, but instead celebrate Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar with a toga party and Roman-themed feast. And if ever there was an opportunity for a photo cutout board or two, this is definitely it!

For a bit of a background on the Ides of March (and to confirm there really is nothing to beware of) check out:

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/beware-the-ides-of-march.html

And if you are in Manchester, why not visit the Manchester Art Gallery and gaze at Edward John Poynter’s The Ides of March

https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-ides-of-march-205859

March 17: St. Patrick’s Day

We did address St. Patrick’s Day in our last blog (which was a delightful read!), and so this is only a reminder that those lucky Irish have a Bank Holiday on Monday, March 18. In other words: an extra day to party and commemorate that fun-filled party with photo cutout boards!

March 20: First day of spring!!!!!! (aka Vernal Equinox if you wish to be posh)

True, this is a Wednesday, but sometimes a party or even an enjoyable event mid-week is just the ticket. To add to that excitement, there is a super moon on Thursday, March 21.

Explore equinoxes and solstices courtesy of the Royal Museums Greenwich:

https://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/equinoxes-and-solstices

March 31: Mothering Sunday Day (We also “spring forward” with a time change)

We have saved the best event for last! Whether you take mum out for a fancy lunch or tea; or buy mum an extravagant gift or make one for her yourself; or spend the day (or even the week) cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, remembering to replace the toilet paper, and all the endless little tasks mums take on – it really does not matter what you choose to do. The point is to treat your mum to a treat!

There are of course still other holidays and just plain fun days to celebrate, like Holi (March 21), Purim (March 21), PI day (March 14)…but if we were to go through them all, you would have way too much to read, and not enough time to plan and organise your festive event! Don’t forget that part of that party planning involves calling us fairly promptly.

So, calling all you ladies and gentlemen, and hostesses and hosts who are planners of parties and events: call us at Photo Cutouts (tel: 08450 570 321) so we can begin on bringing your vision to life!

Once you have hosted your event(s) with our enchanting photo cutout board(s), we would be thrilled to receive some of your photos that we could then share on our social media web pages.

Here’s to wonderful, fun-filled March!

https://www.photocutouts.co.uk/contact.htm

Some early March events to celebrate

February 20, 2019February 27, 2019 admin

A late February Haiku

Oh February.

January sales are done;

We look to March on!

Yes, the January sales are done, and though the stores have new arrivals (with an appalling colour choice of mustard yellow this year, but I digress), one isn’t quite in the mood for buying a new spring wardrobe yet. February is supposed to be a short month, but it seems (to me) to somehow drag on.

So what to do, what to do? How does one deal with splattering rain, blustery winds, and inadequate sunshine?

Well, how about plan? Yes, plan for the delights that March will bring! Now, it is important to note that with delights there is always an opportunity to host a party, soiree, rendezvous, shindig, bash, get-together, revelry, festive social gathering, and/or merrymaking event (as I exhaust my computer’s thesaurus skills). And our charming team at Photo Cutouts are on hand to start turning your vision into a reality so you will have photo (cutout) memories to last a lifetime!

And so, here are March Delights, Part 1: The First Half of March

March 1: St. David’s Day (Wales) →→→ https://wales.com/stdavidsday

You don’t have to be Welsh to celebrate with daffodils and leeks, sing a Welsh song, eat some Welsh rarebit, Welsh cakes, Glamorgan sausages…and also just celebrate all your friends named David (but make them buy the booze!).

March 4: Mardi Gras →→→ https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/mardi-gras

Apparently dating back to pagan times celebrating spring and fertility rites, it is now also called Carnival or Carnaval and it’s the decadent party before Lent. So channel your pagan god/goddess; or dress up like they do in New Orleans in masks, feathers, and a colourful costume of green, purple, and gold; or even celebrate for a week like the Brazilians! And I invite you to click on the link above, and read what the Danish do….

March 8: International Women’s Day →→→ https://www.internationalwomensday.com/

Celebrating, appreciating, recognizing women. Need we say more?

March 17: Patrick’s Day

Celebrate this sainted lad by putting a shamrock (or a bunch of them) in your buttonhole; wear your fanciest green outfit but make sure you have a stretchy waistband to accommodate for eating some corned beef and cabbage (and the possible festive flatulence that comes with this dish); and finally toast all things Irish with one (or more of these Irish beers):

TOP 12: Beers that everyone should try in Ireland…

So, my planners, I have given you some ideas for celebrating delightful things in the first part of March. All you need to do now is contact us at tel: 08450 570 321 or email: office@connectedshopping.com or fill in an on-line form at https://www.photocutouts.co.uk/contact.htm

Until next time, and don’t forget we love, love, love when you send us photos of you and your photo cutouts!

Photo board boosts seasonal campaign for Christmas Tree grower

January 28, 2019 admin

Photo Cutouts customer The Natural Christmas Tree Company have given us some nice feedback on Facebook about their Christmas 2018 campaign:

“Fantastic service and quick and efficient design and logo placement! The photo cutout has been a great success for us!”

-Harry Edwards

If you run a Christmas tree business, as Natural Christmas Tree Company owner Harry Edwards does, it’s probably fair to say that your business is seasonal! It involves work all year round, but the bulk of sales will happen during a short and very busy period each year. What can you do to maximise sales during this period? It would be pretty disappointing if you worked so hard and not enough people got to hear about your business.

Seasonal Marketing Campaign — Branding can be as subtle or as in-your-face as you choose.

To avoid seasonal sales flops, businesses can do a range of things to boost awareness and get people buying. One part of this mix is a photo cutout board: a colourful stand-up board that projects a friendly image of your brand. It comes with face holes so that customers can take funny photos of each other – with your company branding front and centre!

This helps create a buzz about your company by word of mouth and via social media. The board can be anywhere that helps to get the message out: at shopping centres, in front of your premises, at trade shows and other events, or just via social media by sharing photos of employees and others posing and making faces!

Other seasonal business include fireworks, food stalls, lawn care & gardening, outdoor adventure, travel, and many more. If you run a seasonal business, don’t let all your hard work fail to pay off at peak sales time by not shouting loudly enough about your business! A Photo Cutout board is a proven (and fun) part of the seasonal marketing mix.

Here are a couple of boards we made for seasonal fireworks supplier Standard Fireworks, to help make sure their peak season wasn’t a damp squib and really went off with a bang.

Get in touch today to discuss your branding requirements for your next peak season!

www.photocutouts.co.uk

office@connectedshopping.com

08450 570321

Bigger, better, faster

January 8, 2019January 8, 2019 admin

It’s all go here at Photo Cutouts! We have just bought another brand new large format printer that enables us to print your boards in record time, and with the best quality and colour reproduction in the business. We’ve also invested in some more top-class cutting and laminating equipment to enable our experts to make an absolutely perfect board every time.

large format print promotional materials — Our awesome new printy thing

Why have we invested in this new machinery? Because we need it to supply the ever-growing demand for face in hole boards! More and more businesses, charities and campaigns are adding the simple idea of a face in hole board to their promotional arsenals because it’s a great way to draw people in and encourage them to interact with the brand.

Marketing promotional branding print — One way to distract children before they see the dentist!

It can be a simple as an off-the-peg board to help create an atmosphere – see the range of themes on our site. Or we can add some personalisation or branding to one of these boards, which is quick and easy. Alternatively we will use a design that you provide, or design it for you ourselves as a full bespoke service. We make space-saving folding boards, cutout props of any size and shape you want, and even AR boards that come alive with an app. If it’s large-format free-standing promotional props you need, we’ll print them for you and ship them out in a matter of days.

Promotional cutouts and standee props print — Make it big, bold and larger than life! (As you can see, it doesn’t have to be a rectangle)

Our success with face in hole boards has proven they are one of the best ways to get a public image across and communicate a message. Your design or our design – we’re happy either way, and now with our industry-leading new equipment we can print and deliver your board to you even faster than ever!

Face in hole board marketing — You’re safe with us!

Visit our site to see your options

Email us

Give us a call on 08450 570321

Garden centre chain puts Snow Globe boards to good use

December 12, 2018December 12, 2018 admin

Snow Globe boards add Christmas cheer

This week’s blog post is about how a business used Photo Cutouts boards to promote its stores and gave customers a fun experience at the same time. It’s the story of how a garden centre chain boosted its public image with a co-ordinated set of our Snow Globe boards distributed across 22 of its branches. It’s also the story of how you can do the same to promote your business.

Snow globe christmas face in hole board — This is the Snow Globe board before being customised with the customer’s message.

Klondyke & Strikes Garden Centres like our Snow Globe board so much they ordered 22 of them – one for each of their branches in England, Scotland and Wales. For use during the festive period, the boards are placed strategically at each branch to encourage visitors to pose in them and take photos. The sharing hashtag for Instagram, Twitter and Facebook is #KlondykeSnowglobe.

To tempt customers to share their photos on social media, Klondyke & Strikes are running a ‘Show us your best festive face’ competition with a prize for the best snow globe photo. Customer have really gone for it – just look at the Instagram page for the hashtag #KlondykeSnowglobe and you’ll see how well the campaign is going!

Snow Globe scene — Some of the Snow Globe layouts are absolutely gorgeous.

We really love what Klondyke & Strikes have done with the snow globe boards. Face in hole boards have a vintage feel, and these scenes are examples of real old fashioned window dressing which has always been a vital part of retail but which so many other stores forget to do well. We wish them every success with their seasonal campaign and hope that these beautiful displays make customers feel like spending more! It just gives a nice warm fuzzy feeling for customers that their staff have gone to all that effort, doesn’t it?

Visit our site

Email us

08450 570321

Exhibition stand boards boost engagement

November 28, 2018 admin

Take a stand with a face-in-hole exhibition board

We’re always going on about how good our exhibition stand boards are for boosting brand awareness and encouraging engagement. After all, what’s not to like about giving people a chance to literally get into your brand? Well, you don’t have to believe us – just listen to our customer Rentalcars.com, who had a 3m by 2m board at the Travel Counsellor’s Annual Conference in Glasgow earlier this month.

“The event went great thank you, the photo cut out was very popular. It looked great, the colours are so bright and clear. I’ve put a few pictures below, thanks so much for your help with this. I would have no issues using yourselves again in the future.”

Thanks

Janine.

The bright & clear colours are due to our brand new printing method, which gives the best colour reproduction available today. We printed this particular board from the client’s own artwork. From what Janine tells us, it helped to draw people to their stand and start conversations by giving them a fun photo opportunity. A Photo Cutouts board could do the same for your brand at your next exhibition! And don’t forget, photos get shared, which means further exposure for your brand!

We also make smaller and more portable face-in-hole boards than can be folded up and carried under your arm! They’re easy to carry to exhibitions and then pop open and are ready in minutes. Here’s an example of one used recently. UK Mediation took it to the CIPD Annual Conference earlier this month. The 100 x 180cm size was just right for their stand layout.

UK Mediation said in their exhibition announcement, “We’ve been hard at work developing our fully-customised exhibition stand. There will be activities to take part in, including an interactive game, and some fun photo opportunities that are sure to make you smile! We promise that it’s going to be SUPER!”

The photo opportunity was the Photo Cutouts board – always a hit at expos.

Want one for an upcoming expo? Get in touch!

Visit our site

Email us

Call 08450 570321

Theme of the Week: Animals!

November 12, 2018November 12, 2018 admin

Looking back at the photo cutouts we’ve made, we’ve realised that they often feature animals. The reasons for this are as varied as our clients, but it seems that many charities, brands and products have chosen to feature animals in their photo cutouts. It’s the same in advertising. Think how many brands have an animal as their mascot. So this week we’re featuring our animal friends. Welcome to the Photo Cutouts zoo!

Horses

A four-legged friend will never let you down – and neither will we! Here are some equine boards from the last year or two.

Animals horse Liverpool — A horse in this board for the Liverpool International Horse Show.

animals horses — This board for Retraining of Racehorses features … you’ll never guess.

Animal board horse — This three-hole board was used at Chepstow Racecourse.

Animals horse — More horses – this lovely board was for Sense charity to use at the Badminton Horse Trials.

Donkey ride seaside — All right, this is a donkey. But it’s an equine, right? This traditional seaside board was used by The Sun newspaper.

Seaside donkey animals — More seaside donkey rides – this time for the Sandgrown Family, part of Blackpool Better Start’s campaign.

Dogs

Man’s Best Friend has featured in quite a few of our boards. We like to do tricks for our customers!

Photo cutout board animals dogs — This one was for Xero, featuring their actual office dog Jinty!

Animals dog full fact milk — Full Fact Milk’s campaign featured a sheepdog. And a cow, obviously.

Dogs board animals vets — A rather naughty woofit running off with sausages in this board for Vets4Pets.

Sheepdog animals Yorkshire Day — A trusty sheepdog features in this board for Yorkshire Day 2018.

RSPCA animals dogs board — A cartoony dog is one of the animals in this board for the RSPCA.

Huawei Chinese New Year animals dragon dog — A Chinese New Year board for Huawei featuring what we think is a Shi Tzu.

Animals dogs face in hole boards — Does this one count? This board for the RAF gives a new meaning to ‘dogfight’!

Fish and other aquatic life

Our aquatic friends have also graced several boards. Check out these fin-tastic images of fish! You’ll be hooked! (I’ll get my coat – Editor.)

Fish animals — Don’t be Koi, take a look at this lovely board for the Japanese Water Gardens!

Fish board charity — This board was for the For Fish’s Sake campaign, run by Hubbub.

Dolphin Octopus animals — This board for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has a variety of marine life.

Animals shark — Sharks are fish, right? This one was for Nuts Go Row, who rowed the Atlantic for charity!

Animals crab — Don’t forget the nippy crab in our traditional seaside board of Skinny Jim!

Bees

Where would we bee without bees? Here are two boards that have helped to create a buzz.

Bees animals promotional board — This is a client design by Plan Bee, before we cut the face holes out.

Other animals

Here’s a smattering of other members of the animal kingdom who have featured on our boards. Noah would be proud!

oinkfest pigs animals — Three little piggies in a board for Oinkfest!

Animals cows ice cream — Cows grace this board for Isle of Arran Ice Cream.

Bat Halloween — There are bats in this Hallowe’en board.

Animals rooster board — Dusty The Rooster, designed by Aardman, features in this board for the London Wetland Centre.

Animals face in hole board — Bunny, chick and lamb in one of our Easter boards!

That’s it for now, but there are sure to be plenty more animal boards leaving our production facility. Do you have an idea of how to use animals to promote your product, brand, cause or business? Got a ‘pet’ project you’d like us to turn into reality? Get in touch to throw us a ball, and we’ll fetch it!

Email Photo Cutouts

Call 08450 570321

Visit photocutouts.co.uk