Promoting More than Beverages for Dew Downtown Flagstaff

They say everyone loves a parade, but be that as it may, Nackard Companies used a recent Christmas light parade in Flagstaff, Ariz., to promote the city’s upcoming Dew Downtown Flagstaff.Dew Downtown Flagstaff is an annual freeride ski and snowboard competition that plows through San Francisco Street, Flagstaff’s main drag. The course is strewn with urban obstacles – cars, tires, rails and barrels – which competitors navigate to the finish line, winners awarded with medals made by Nackard Companies with LexJet TOUGHcoat Water-Resistant Self Adhesive Polypropylene applied to metal.

Medals aren’t the only thing Nackard Companies and the beverage distributor’s P.O.P. shop manager Steve Lalio will make for Dew Downtown Flagstaff. Besides hundreds of signs for the event, Lalio also plans to wrap one of the 55-gallon barrels being used as an obstacle so it looks like a Mountain Dew can.

“They’ll put the barrel in the ground and put snow on top of it, so when the skier comes – they’re jumping over cars, tires, handrails and other urban obstacles along the way – this will be one of the obstacles they hit,” says Lalio, who adds that the event, which takes place Feb. 9-10, is open to skiers and snowboarders and practically all ages.

To make the event bigger and better each year, luring more sponsors and crowds to Flagstaff, the promotions are being ramped up. One of those promotional opportunities the Nackard Companies was involved with was the Christmas light parade. Nackard Companies decorated the Dew Downtown Flagstaff “float” with banners along the side, a Coroplast skier finishing a ramp ride and a large logo with the basic facts about the event.

Lalio printed everything on LexJet TOUGHcoat Water-Resistant Polypropylene. The prints weren’t laminated, except for the big logo circle since that particular piece will circulate around town at street corners and businesses to continually promote the event in town. The extra time out in the weather and the repeated handling necessitated the addition of the LexJet 5 Mil Luster Standard Low Melt laminate.

For more information about Dew Downtown Flagstaff, go to www.dewdowntownflagstaff.com/, and to read about last year’s event and what Nackard produced for it, click here.

A Once in a Blue Moon Point of Sale Display

Point of sale display printed for Blue Moon beers

It happens once in a blue moon… That is, a blue moon. No, the moon doesn’t literally turn blue. Technically, it means there’s an extra full moon once every two and a half years, on average. This month, Aug. 31 to be exact, is the next blue moon, which won’t show up again until 2015.

This relatively rare event was the perfect opportunity to promote – what else? – Blue Moon beers. It also happens to coincide with a MillerCoors display design contest, so account representatives Anthony Copetillo and Vinnie Montemurro and P.O.P. shop manager Steve Lalio of The Nackard Companies in Flagstaff, Ariz., collaborated on a display concept for a Wal-Mart in Show Low, Ariz.

Printing a point of sale beer display“MillerCoors put out a creative display incentive for August and September, which included Blue Moon. They showed us some examples of a full theme, and I thought this concept would be perfect for the season. It also gave us an opportunity to educate customers about all the characteristics of Blue Moon beers,” says Copetillo. “I give Steve some ideas and the points I want to see on the display, then he comes up with the design theme. Steve always has great ideas that are exactly what I’m looking for, so there are rarely any changes to his design.”

Lalio’s design is divided into three parts to comprise the full backdrop behind the beer display – in-depth information about the different Blue Moon beers (year-round, seasonal and specialty), a centerpiece to draw attention and illuminating copy about what a blue moon is – plus the phases of the blue moon that “float” in front of the backdrop.

“We submitted it to MillerCoors and it caused some ripples. They were happy to see that we’re educating the customers about Blue Moon,” says Copetillo. “I’ve been doing this for 18 years and now more than ever people want to know what food to pair it with, the flavors and the characteristics of each beer.”

Printing point of sale display for beer companies
Here's a similar display conceived and executed by the Three Musketeers of The Nackard Companies: account reps Anthony Copetillo and Vinnie Montemurro and P.O.P. shop manager Steve Lalio.

The backdrop was printed on a Canon iPF8000S on LexJet 8 Mil PolyGloss Banner in seven 36″ panels, which were then stapled to the wall. Lalio says he designed it in Photoshop and used the ONYX RIP to properly tile it so that it could be spliced into one seamless backdrop. The total size is 21 feet wide by six feet high.

The moon phases, which dangle from fishing line a few feet in front of the backdrop, were printed on LexJet TOUGHcoat Water-Resistant Self Adhesive Polypropylene, laminated with LexJet 3 Mil Luster UV Standard Low Melt and applied to a heavy card stock.

“I used the PolyGloss Banner for the backdrop because I knew the Blue Moon and fall colors would really pop out with that material. We designed it so that it was informative about not only the beer, but the blue moon,” adds Lalio.

Nackard Companies Does the Dew with Inkjet Printing Huckfest

Dew Downtown Flagstaff banners

This past weekend was epic in downtown Flagstaff, Ariz. Dew Downtown Flagstaff came to town and set up an urban ski and snowboard festival on Flagstaff’s main drag, San Francisco Street. When the event was confirmed about two months out, the city began hoarding any snow that fell in Flagstaff, then trucked a bunch in from nearby Mormon Lake to build a 2-3 foot base.

Printing promotional products with an inkjet printerSan Francisco Street was then prepared as a snow-packed urban ski and ride terrain park with jibs, jumps and vert for competitions and an open event so that locals could take their turn trying the rails, stairs and other terrain park features

Nackard Companies, a regional beverage distributor signed up as one of the corporate sponsors and the print shop, led by P.O.P. shop manager Steve Lalio, was recruited to produce most of the signs for the event.

Lalio estimates that the shop printed about 100 signs. Most of the signs were banners printed on LexJet 8 Mil Ultra Photo Gloss Extra, laminated with LexJet 3 Mil Luster UV Standard Low Melt.

Other signs were printed on LexJet TOUGHcoat Water-Resistant Self Adhesive Polypropylene and applied to Coroplast. Lalio also printed the snowflake “medals” for competition winners with TOUGHcoat Water-Resistant Self Adhesive Polypropylene.

“We had three big events at the same time, but we pulled it off somehow and a lot of people showed up for the event,” says Lalio. “It’s too bad we didn’t have more snow in town, but they made it work well.”

How to Win Space at the Point of Sale and Keep It

Printing cooler wraps for the point of sale

A crucial ingredient in the beer wars is securing as much advertising and promotional space as possible at the point of sale, whether it’s a c-store, liquor store, bar or restaurant. And the key ingredient in making that happen is a combination of design and printing horsepower, a combination The Nackard Companies P.O.P. shop manager, Steve Lalio, has in spades.

Cooler wraps with adhesive backed materialThe Nackard Companies, based in Flagstaff, Ariz., serves the entire state, excepting the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas. The company’s wide reach demands a special emphasis on dominating as many spaces as possible for their brands in the market. A recent project completed in early December at Premier Beverage, a liquor store in Sierra Vista, Ariz., illustrates the power of point of sale printing to do just that.

In this case, the daughter of Premier Beverage’s owner happened upon a cooler wrap Lalio had created for a c-store in Flagstaff. Word got back to Premier Beverage and the request was made for the Lalio/Nackard treatment for the liquor store’s cooler.

Down came the competitive cooler wrap and in its place went Lalio’s handiwork. The concept was simple yet striking: A blue icy background interspersed with craft beer logos and bottles distributed by The Nackard Companies.

“Craft beers are taking off and we’re doing our best to come up with unique ideas to promote those products,” says Lalio. “In order to really understand it, you have to see it in person. That blue background really pops out and makes the store brighter and more alive. The question I ask before I design is, ‘What attracts you to something? It’s eye candy, and to me it’s the background. And, you don’t want to clutter it too much; you want to advertise what you really want to sell to the public.”

Advertising at the point of saleLalio printed the giant project – which is one main cooler graphic 27 feet long and 56 inches high, a corner cooler that’s 20 feet long and 56 inches high, plus the approximately 20” x 80” cooler corners – on LexJet TOUGHcoat Water-Resistant Self Adhesive Polypropylene with a Canon iPF8000S inkjet printer.

The prints were then laminated with 3 Mil Luster UV Standard Low Melt laminate and applied to Coroplast. In the end there were more than 20 panels created for the area salesperson to attach on-site.

“A gloss laminate looks real sharp with outdoor banners, but indoors we typically use luster because of the lighting. If it will be up there for a long time, like this one will be, we laminate in case they need to wipe it down for whatever reason,” says Lalio.

The real challenge was getting everything lined up just right so that the entire piece appears as seamless as possible. Lalio says it’s just paying attention to the minute details, taking extra time to scale everything and accounting for intrusions like air vents that ensure a big project like this comes together from print to installation smoothly.