Making the Most of Your Mug

By Josh Hunter

How and why you should consider the way you are branding your mug.

So you’ve read about what the most popular promotional items are and you’ve found yourself here, hungry for more information on how to make the most of your mugs (if you haven’t read the other article, we suggest you click here and give it a quick read). The truth is, personalised mugs is a huge category and there is so much you can do that we didn’t want to overload you with information. So we thought the best thing to tackle would be how you’re branding your mugs. You could screen print, dye sublimate or digitally print the top, inside, outer or bottom of the mug. But what does that mean?

Print Position

This all comes down to how you want your brand to come across. Customised mugs, generally speaking, have plenty of printing area. Obviously you could just print to the outside… but where’s the fun in that? Well, if you want a fun outer design but still with your corporate branding you could print the outer side and then print to the inside of the mug with your logo for that subtle reminder when your clients take a sip of their drink. You could include a fun message on the bottom of every personalised mug that only the onlookers know about whilst the drinkers are none the wiser like in the example. These make great mugs for jokes around the office or as a fun gift to give to your clients.

Obviously you could just print to the outside… but where’s the fun in that?

Full Colour, Full Coverage

On the other side of this, you could go for a full colour option. This allows you to print in as many colours as you like. So if you’re going to print in full colour why not also opt for full coverage? Want your customers to think of the beach of every time they look at your custom printed mug? Not a problem, print a beach right onto the mug with your logo on top of the design. It might not be subtle, but they’ll definitely think of the beach when they drink from it. 360 exposure for your brand, it doesn’t matter which way they turn it, that beach will be there with them.

If you’re going to print in full colour why not also opt for full coverage?

Alternative Branding

Now you’ve got to grips with how to make the most of classic printing, what other options are there? Well, we would be lying if we said we could condense it into one paragraph but here are a few suggestions we like. You could get a chalk mug and print to it then leave it with a stick of chalk for your customers to personalised with their own kind of ‘brand’. UV print to the outer side of the mug for a subtle branding that gleams when it catches the light, especially for your more suggestive messages, whatever they may be. How about heat change? PG Tips had a super successful campaign where they gave away promotional mugs with Monkey in a dressing gown on the front that changed to him in his PJ’s after it got hot. There are plenty of other options out there when it comes to making your mugs branding memorable, but those are our little insights.